After being off of our bikes for about a week it was with a little trepidation that we set off again on the road out of Bukittingi. It only took a few minutes to start enjoying riding again however. Originally we had planned to bus to the coastal town of Padang and cycle from there. As fate would have it though no bus from Jakarta would take us to Padang so we had no choice but to go directly to Bukittingi. The good news however was that Bukitinggi is 100 km along the road towards Lake Toba, our destination which would cut down on some biking. Not only that the elevation of Bukittingi was about 800 meters above sea level compared to 0 meters in Padang. So instead of two long days uphill, we started with a long downhill.

The riding was great. The scenery was lush, the greenest so far, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. On the first day of biking the first 55 km were downhill, though the last 20 were mostly uphill. After 55 km we also crossed the equator, something none of us had done before and thought could be quite interesting. Our interest waned severely though when we paused at the gaudy marker of the 0 latitude line and were descended on by 25 hawkers of cheap T-shirts.

We stopped in Lubuk Sikaping for the night. The only experience we'll relate was the problem we had finding a hotel. We went to the first one we saw and asked to see the price list. The receptionist gave us the list. There were three classes of rooms and we told her we wanted to see the cheapest one. She said "Full". Kind of hard to believe since it was obvious not a soul was around. We asked to see the middle class room. Again she said, "Full". Obviously this was a ploy to get us to stay in the most expensive room. We held our mouths, walked out and eventually found something a bit further down the road.

The next day we started biking again and the road was wonderful. Rolling hills along a lush, river plain make for great cycling. After 25 km the road entered a forest and the place echoed with the calls of monkeys. At one point we dismounted and followed a trail into the jungle. We were rewarded with some great monkey music (just like one of those New Agey nature CDs) and even saw some monkeys jumping from tree top to tree top.

A few km later we got had some problems though. Sarah's knee was acting up (due to an incident with a chicken in Madura) and it was obvious we couldn't bike anymore that day. We had been planning biking 3 days and then catching a bus up to Lake Toba, but we decided to cut that short and head their directly and take it easy there for a few days. So we caught a bus, tied our bikes to the top and arrived (for the second time in a week) at 4 in the morning. Being to late to check into a hotel and too early to catch the ferry to the island in the middle of Lake Toba, where were planning to stay, we caught some sleep at the ferry port. We were up at the crack of dawn and caught the first boat to the island of Samosir.