1987 Indonesia

Once Upon a Time…

 

For years and years Indonesia had been number one on my wish list of places to go. To far? Unreachable? That was until I discovered a different way of traveling; Backpacking. Together with Charl, a good friend of mine, we started to read through numerous books and travel brochures and slowly a fascinating itinerary developed. Volcano’s, sawa’s, white sandy beaches and temples, just to name a few of the things on our list to see and do. We even tried to study the language, something that hopelessly failed.

 

 

After months of preparation it was finally time to go… On the 3rd of September we headed towards Brussels Airport where we boarded a Garuda 747 for ehh… a not so long flight… 

Hardly 10 minutes after takeoff we were informed there were issues with one of the engines, a flog of birds had crashed into it, and we had to return to Brussels. After we dumped must of our fuel we made a safe landing and the long waiting started. After many nerve wrecking hours we were finally brought to a hotel in Brussels and after a more or less sleepless night we returned to the airport the day for a second attempt to fly to Indonesia. This was certainly not how we had expected our holiday of a lifetime to start…

 

The 4th of September, 2nd attempt. After another long day of waiting at the airport we finally took off with almost 24 hours of delay. This time we were more successful to gain cruising altitude without flogs of birds in our flightpath. The long flight had begun… 6 hours and 40 minutes later we landed safely in Abu Dhabi where we could hardly believe our eyes and the things we saw. A short break, another takeoff and another 8 hour flight. Then we finally descended in Jakarta, our adventure had begun!

 

Java

Bali

 

Journeys