My mom, my sisters and myself were staying in Hyatt Bandung for 3 days. Kawah Putih (White Crater) at South of Bandung was our main destination as I saw my friend’s pictures were very beautiful. My sister was brave enough to drive there, it took around 3 hours from Bandung as we had a bad traffic jam at the busy road through the town of Soreang. We left Bandung too late, around 07:00 in the morning, so the road was already crowded with people who went to work or school. The road was winding and inclining, we had to be careful. The signage to Kawah Putih gate was quite obvious, visitors won’t miss it.
Arriving at Kawah Putih gate, actually we could leave the car at the main carpark then taking the public transportation cost IDR 28.000/person including the entrance fee and vice versa transportation. Anyway we preferred to drive our car up to the top, we had to pay entrance fee @IDR15.000,-/person and IDR 150.000,- for the car. It took another 5 km more driving to reach the parking area near to the crater. The road was narrower, winding & steeper, your car must be in good condition to climb this mountain road. Some areas of the road were broken, we had to be slowly if there was another car from the other direction as we drove on the cliff with beautiful view of the village down there.
Reaching the top of Mt. Patuha, our natural obligation has called, we rushed to go to the toilet, cost IDR 2.000,-/person. The water was cold and fresh, it’s natural water from the mountain. So many sellers near the stairs to the crater. We didn’t buy it as we thought that could use our pashmina or scarf to protect our nose if needed later. The infrastructure is good enough, visitor could go down easier using the stairs which was not too far from the crater. The weather is nice, it’s mild as it’s 2430 meters above the sea level, the scenery was stunning with its bluish water of the lake. As it’s highly acid lake with 0.5-1.3 ph, it made the sand and rocks surrounding leached into whitish colours. The volcano is relatively stable, the last explosion was around 1600.
As the left side was very crowded, we decided to take the right side from the stairs. We had to walk through narrow footpath such as a bridge to the other side. There were many branches of trees without leaves. It made the scenery more beautiful, the bluish lake as background of the black branches. We passed by a cave, there was a note saying "don't stand too long in front of this cave". Maybe it's still contained high Some sellers offered the mineral powder from the crater, they said it's good for skin. I kept taking pictures, we also asked other visitor to help taking our picture together.
The north of the crater was a limestone cliff, while the other side was a forest with some trees such as pines, eucalyptus, etc, not too many animal live there. The land counter was sloping and hilly, the weather was around 8-22 degrees Celcius. The water colour could be changed to green, brown or white as the impact of lime and sulfur soil blend, depending on temperature and weather
Some amateur photographers kept following us to offer their service. It cost IDR 10.000,-/picture, they used digital camera and brought a printer to print it right away. As my sister felt sorry with them, so we agreed to take 3 photos of us. The result was quite good, we loved it, especially the one which was shown us looking at the lake with the trees and lake as the background.
While waiting for the printing photos, I took some more pictures, unfortunately the sun was so shiny, no more cloud to cover the mountain and lake. I heard it's very beautiful when the cloud covering the lake, such as we live in heaven walking in the cloud. On the other lake side we could see the white smoke sulfur, it's not too smelly, so we didn't need any mask.
As the time was ticking, we started feeling hungry. No food seller around the crater, reluctantly we had to say goodbye to Kawah Putih to go down to find food. Although the journey was quite challenging, it's worthy to visit it. Many people went there to take pre-wedding photos.
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