Mt. Rinjani Trek

Here's one lesson to be learned when traveling....DO NOT listen to Lonely Planet. When reading about the trek in our book, Lonely Planet describes the 2 day trek to the crater rim as an easy hike. However, they did not mention anything about hiking for 9 hours directly STRAIGHT up a mountain. Now, when I say straight up, I mean straight up. There was no zig zagging to make the hike a little easier, no, we hiked straight up the mountain.

The majority of the hike was through the jungle on the worst cut trail I have ever seen in my life, with every step being literally 3 to 4 foot high. After about 6 hours of hiking through the jungle, we thought we would surely be coming to some sort of a break. Oh no, the next 2 hours were spent hiking through sand, literally taking 1 step forward and then falling 5 back. And if that didn't seem like enough, we then had to crawl on rocks for another hour to reach the crater rim.

Once we were at the top, I have to admit this was one of the coolest experiences of my life. But that hike up was literally the most physically challenging thing I have ever done...literally could not walk for 2 days afterwards.

The view from the crater rim...
Me at the top, just happy I made it.
Our campsite...

Our porters busy at working making banana pankcakes. These guys deserve a lot of credit for making our meals and hauling all our supplies up the mountain...all while wearing flip flops.
The morning at sunset. The peak you see at the top of the picture is Bali and if you look very closely, you can see the three Gili Islands branching off from Lombok.