Sunday, 10 September 2017

Experience adventure with Crappotours

CRAPPO-TOURS real travel that you never forget😀😀

Less a travel company more a state of mind. To become a tour leader special qualities are required , some may caricature these as a "gungo-ho sense of adventure and recklessness". The primary ingredient is to take a group who want to have a trip together and they can trust one self confidant leader or just act as a committee , taking an organised professional tour is not the Crappo-tours way. That said there are  many tour companies that aim at budget backpackers, who not only overcharge but provide a similar Crappo-tours experience.

Idul Adha: Eid al-Adha, also called the "Sacrifice Feast", is the second of two Muslim holidays celebrated worldwide each year, and considered the holier of the two. August 31, 2017 – September 1, 2017.

Well in preparation for this feast heards of sheep, goats and cows were appearing and filling every street corner. Indonesias population is 87% Muslim so this is the biggest celebration. It has a similarity to Christmas (or perhaps ,Thanksgiving in the USA) in that everyone travels to see their family. It is a state Bank Holiday and long weekend 

LONG WEEKEND: Only means one thing to intrepid Expats , a chance to get out of town and explore. Many experienced hands had there flights booked to jet off to Singapore or Bali, leaving straight from work on Thursday evening returning refreshed on Sunday evening  on perfectly well organised package flight and hotel breaks.

Crappo-tours: Devotees always have a better and original idea. Some confident colleagues who have lived in Jakarta for a year, which gives them natural Crappo-tours leadership rights had a plan. We would drive to a City in the cooler mountains, walk by waterfalls, soak in thermal springs and climb a volcano. Once more we would not rush off straight from school but leave at 8pm to avoid the traffic on our way to Bandung. The car was just big enough for the 5 of us and our driver, comfortable enough for the 3 hour journey.
Motionless in macet: Gridlocked cars as work continues on Jakarta’s metro system.
Jakarta Traffic 😢 https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/23/world-worst-traffic-jakarta-alternative

Well we are pleased to confirm that our journey from South Jakarta to Bandung, justifies the Guardian description of the "Worlds Worst Traffic". Our 3 hour journey had passed and we were not even out of Jakarta on the "fast Toll road", 
😰 Keep calm deep breaths, check the Google maps. Well our journey should have taken 1 hour so making a mental adjustment the remaining "google 2 hours" journey was going to take maybe 6 more hours.

After 5 hours we all needed a break, not least our driver, we were still in bumper to bumper traffic. In the UK you may see traffic jams like this on an August Bank Holiday where everyone fancies a trip to the country and spends a day on the M1 instead. There would be helicopters and TV news bulletins, warning people not to travel . This was just such a situation but in the dark in sweltering tropical heat and no obvious TV crews.... At the roadside cafe stop the last straw for me was a self inflicted accident. Wanting something out of my bag I opened the "tailgate" of the car. Immediately a suitcase tumbled out and managed to scrap most of the skin off my shin 😡(I joke not a week later I still have the scar.) 
Needless to say we ploughed on, fatigue allowed some neck crooking sleep, conversation of the lets all get to know each other and talk about similar travel disasters dried up. With grim determination we stuck it out for another 5 hours arriving at our hotel at 6 am just in time for 1st Breakfast! We all went to bed and had last breakfast at 10 am....

Rather like the 4 Yorkshire men of Monty Python fame, we all now have a story to tell, when someone complains about traffic.
"Call that a traffic jam?" "That's nothing we once travelled from Jakarta to Bandung..... Blah Blah Blah... That's a 3 hour journey of 92 miles....It took us 10 hours at 9 miles/hour...BEAT THAT, Ha.

We are now forged into a group by our odyssey and a mutually complete denial of our own stupidity
CRAPPO-TOURS real travel that you never forget😀😀

I've been told that BLOGGS are bite size , so I hope this is digestible.
More to follow about the fantastic time we spent in Bandung and how we managed to get back and are still all talking to each other.




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