# ooooharia raio oba oba oba, ooooharia raio toba toba toba #

After a day out in Medan, it was time to head to Toba, and as you may have read in pretty much every other post, travelling is never straight forward and so the journey began with an eight hour bumpy ride. We arrived at Parapat pretty late and had to stop there for a night before our boat ride over.  

   

Hotel in Parapat

With stunning views, I wanted to go for a wander and breath in some of the natural air, and so I did, walking through the tunnel and getting a glimpse of the blue and green was just great.

Here are some snaps from my jalan jalan (walk)...

So my initial thoughts were that the place seemed pretty untouched for such a glorious sight and site. I later discussed this with my friend Megan, who said it seemed like a place that 'once was' and there certainly is an element of that too. Nonetheless, the weather was perfect and the colours bold, I was looking forward to the rest of my stay. 

After breakfast we found our boat ride which ran hourly. 

Top left to right: Bob (Axel's friend) and Axel (fellow teacher)
Bottom left to right: Megan, me (as if you need reminding) and Amy ( also fellow teachers)

The boat trip took an hour and involved the usual fun of photo requests, however, the view was much more distracting. 

The houses and hotels have an interesting shape, 'boat-like' with intricate patterns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batak_architecture

Just enjoying the boat trip!

We arrived at Samosir cottages and were pretty impressed with the hotel, the atmosphere and the staff. The patterns everywhere are great and for me resemble that of the Incas.

yes- I should have been sat in the middle with my fake i'm trying to play the drums pose.

Voila! A walk down the stairs reveals a huge swimming pool!!

Why is there a boat in my swimming pool?

lounging

A funky tree

A part of the funky tree

So, on the first day we thought we would try to find this waterfall that is apparently nearby...with feet covered in manure and some leg ache later we gave up and accepted failure.  However, we got to see some of Toba by foot.

The yellow sandy road

Batak apartments

Reggae? no, not all

Rice paddies

Pretty church, prepping for Christmas

There are many burials just like this dotted around.

Don't be fooled guys, this is not the route to the waterfall

Toba is pretty small and you can drive around the island pretty quickly, so we hired a driver (who turned out to be a hotel staff member) to show us Toba. 

View stops along the way

We stopped to see the Ambarita stone chair in a Batak village where rulers would gather and decide whether to eat their captors or not. 

More Batak housing

The rulers meeting point where they would decide the fate of any captors

captor/victim

Wall carving

My attempt at playing brunette Rapunzel

sorry Amy but this shot is priceless!

no idea why this pose...but it's funny.

Next stop was a local swimming, bathing and everything area.

We then stopped at some sulphur springs which took me back to secondary school.

Tony the driver

Some stones from the springs

Next stop was Tomb Tomok http://northsumatratravel.net/north_tapanuli/sidabutar.htm

We then visited some local weavers hard at work.

The structure under a Batak house

traditional weaving

Weaving in progress

kids playing

no need for elves Santa it's all about doggy power

We made another stop at the museum which had some very quirky stuff.

After an amazing stay, it was time to head onwards. Goodbye Toba, you were good to me!