Pangadaran: Green Valley, Green Canyon, National Park

This blog post is going to be a bit different because as a traveller I rely on blogs to help me figure out what to expect and how to get places. Pangadaran was different. The only real information I could find was in Indonesian or through wikitravel. Therefore this blog is intended to help fellow travelers.

Matt and I left Jakarta from Halim airport (the smaller one) at 8:00, which was an hour past schedule, flying with Susi Air. You can also get to Pangadaran via bus, but since we were limited for time we opted to take a plane. The plane was tiny, fitting only 12 passengers and we were only able to book the tickets about 3 weeks before we left. Not going to the lie the flight was a little scary as I heard the main pilot turn to the pilot behind him and say "I'm so confused" and the other pilot say "When you land, just hit the brake as hard as you can. You'll be fine."

We arrived and had no clue how to get to the city and were offered a ride through susi air for 100 thousand rupiah each. I had no clue if this was a good deal, but we also had no clue how else to get to the city, so we took it. The road there was rough, and extremely bumpy, making me glad I had some gum for my empty stomach.

We checked into our hostel "Panorama a la Plage." This place was the cheapest we found and we had a private room with 3 beds, and air con, western toilet, and a shower all to ourselves for 20 dollars a night. It also included a delicious breakfast of eggs, toast, fruit, and coffee/tea, or a banana pancake.

excellent hostel

Now lets do a quick food review. We ended up at Malibu to start, simply because they looked open. Let me just say the food is yummy! Stick with the chicken steaks, indonesian food, or salads. The only things we ate that we found disappointing was the fish and chips (chips were good, but the fish was way chewy) and the sandwiches. I can also highly recommend a pitcher of the "suck my dick" cocktail, which was made with real fruit and vodka. We drank one each night.

view from malibu bar

Next door is Bamboo. We were not pleased with our food here at all. The fries were especially awful, and the whole time we were offered massages from a nice lady. Super kind, but not how I wanted to enjoy a meal post 7 hours of hiking. If you walk off the beach you will discover "Relax," and let me tell you I wish we had found this gem sooner. The lady who runs the place is german, but they offer a wide variety of food. I was able to get an espresso for 7000 rupiah, and we got a to go cheese sandwich on WHOLE WHEAT BREAD! and a fruit parfait with the best yogurt (homemade) I have ever tasted. The lady talked to us for awhile and you could tell she really loved pleasing her costumers and put a lot of effort into making everything homemade.

Green Valley/Green Canyon: As wiki says, worth doing both. We had a tour with 7 people and we crammed into 1 van and 1 scooter. We payed 350 thousand for our tour but check through the hostel and I think it'd only be 300 thousand. First we drove to Green Valley, stopping to look at some wooden puppets and take pictures over the rice fields (after living here for a year I'm over it....)

The best part was for sure Green Valley. We walked a short distance down a trail and then carefully used a rope and eased our way onto some rocks and into a cave to swim. The water felt magnificently cool and refreshing, in comparison to the usually warm salty ocean water. Then we played around in the area jumping from small waterfalls and using a swimming rope to launch into the river. After we had our fill of the area we swam down the river to where we had started. This involved several waterfall jumps, none being higher than 3 meters. Another Indonesian man carried our supplies back to the car and met us there. We ate a simple lunch of nasi goreng and mie goreng because it was ramadan and most of the places were closed due to fasting.

Our next stop was Green Canyon. This has absolutely become a tourist site. 25 or more boats lined the water waiting for passengers to load. We took a 10 minute boat ride where we saw monitor lizards and monkeys along the side. Once we got into the canyon they stopped the boat, we got out and inched our way up the river against the heavy current. In some places there were ropes to use. At one point we were fighting so hard against the current and the only thing to hold onto were rocks covered in gross transparent crabs, about the size of a nail head. They stung if you touched them in the wrong place. There were a few places to jump from, but these were hard to get to, slippery, and we had no life jackets, so we decided not to.

The rock you can jump from

We stopped at a turtle sanctuary and a cool beach on the way home, and this ended our day.

Pananjung Pangadaran Nature Reserve:
The main pointer I have for this is to take plenty of water. We took 2 liters thinking it'd be lots and it was not. As far as we could find it cost the same amount of money 207 thousand rupiah to get into the park, and to get into the park with a guide, so we opted to get the guide. He took us around the tiny park of the reserve showing us ancient hindu temples, japanese imprisonment caves, different types of trees and various animals. This part was alright and took about 2 hours. Even though we went in early morning I was sweating like crazy.

When we asked about hiking in the other parts of the park they "strongly advised against it" but offered to take us for an additional 300 thousand. We declined, they dropped us at the "white sand beaches" (more on this later) and we opted to go anyway. We had worn our boots and hiking clothes, brought food and what we though would be adequate water. There are no trail maps of the park and the trails are mark very obscurely, luckily my boyfriend used the GPS on his smartphone to help guide us. I took lots of pictures and hopefully this will help.

Start out by walking away from the park entrance and exit. You will see a cement bridge, cross it and continue going strait. Additionally feel free to ask any Indonesian you come upon.

You will come to a little intersection. take a right, and continue strait, until you see a path on the left. Take this path. You will come out by a green sign, all written in Indonesian.

Walk parallel to and past the sign, looking for a tree that does not have a top. We thought this was odd and as it turns out it is the marker for where you should go. The grass looks worn where the path is. Follow the red markings from here on out. You will cross over this obscure log.

We noted that there were some wasps near the trail so we went a bit higher than the trail to cross it for safety. Continue on path until you come to a fork, take the right fork.

The next part is where we almost got lost: The path continues on, or there is a small creek the rocks make up a sort of bridge over the creek, and you need to go over the top of it.

you'll see the bridge to the right

there it is!

You will go over another bridge made of sticks. It's a bit wobbly, but we mostly just jumped.

You'll hike for a bit and then reach the creek again. Continue down the creek, crossing over at various points. Once the creek is gone you will have some steep uphill and downhill trails until you reach the falls. You will start to hear ocean waves at this point. Hope this wasn't too confusing and actually ended up helping

the water wasn't flowing very heavy, but still a spectacular view

We stopped at the white sand beaches on our way back and I can say they were not worth the effort. I think coral beach with large plateau into the ocean would be a more correct statement. We didn't want to go as far out as you need to to swim, so we just opted to sit and rest in the water on the shore. They monkeys are seriously scary. They got in a gang fight, chasing away an injured monkey into the water. I remembered that we were warned the monkeys grab things, so i got up and ran to grab our bags to safety and ended up cutting my toe on something.

Batu Kiras: So we went to the airport and there were no flights out that day, and we were pretty stuck. We ended up getting an ambulance to give us a ride to this village for 50 thousand. Absolutely a place to check out, but only if you have the time, or are wanting to learn to surf. The waves come in around the corner, so you can walk out on one end and catch a wave to the opposite end of the beach, which makes it way less exhausting and less work.

We stayed at wooden guesthouse for 200 thousand rupiah, and we ate from the local restaurants for super cheap because we were running out of cash and there was no atm. It cost us 200 thousand to get back to the airport the following morning, and our flight with susi air was delayed again (we got a text the previous evening) from 6:00am to 9:55 am and actually left at about 11:15, and had a stop in Bandung. From Bandung it was literally just us and 6 pilots.

Hope this post was helpful and informative. If you have a questions feel free to comment and I will try to get back to you.