Goa Jepang

Visited a series of caves up in the mountains near Jogjakarta, called Goa Jepang Kaliurang, where Japanese military was hiding during the World War II, after they occupied Indonesia and after things didn't quite turned out well for them :). The sign at the foot of the mountain said that the caves are only 800 meters away. Ah, only 800 meters, should be an easy walk. Right, only if you are walking down the street, not in the mountains, as it became obvious later. :)

The weather is cloudy, the sun is hiding, and there's some weird fog all around. The track starts off easy...


... and slowly goes up. The good thing is that it's paved with large stones all the way up, so it's not too scary, even though you are walking on the edge. The air in Indonesia is very humid and you'd think that in the mountains it'd be fresh, but no, at least not on this mountain. The air gets extremely humid, but fortunately there are no mosquitoes or any other bugs around, which is good.


Going higher you can see the surrounding area. Walked a lot already, did it really say 800 meters? It seems like 3 times 800 was already covered and no sign of any caves in sight. Oh well.


Some interesting trees and plants along the way. Uff, tired already. Did we miss the cave by any chance? Really tired, maybe we should just go back.


Anyways, already climbed so high, so let's continue, maybe it's just a few steps away. Climbing even higher. No caves anywhere. Oh my, are we there yet? At this point you start thinking that nobody in his right mind would climb this high to look for some Japanese soldiers hiding somewhere in the mountains. :)


And just when you'd think there's no point in continuing -- Ta-da! Here's the cave! Supposedly, there are 24 of such caves, but only 3 of them were here at this point, not sure where other 21 of them were (probably somewhere even higher).


Going down was super fast and easy. Saw other tourists going up. Even though the caves weren't so impressive, nevertheless, it was a great exercise. :)

Down there there's a museum of Jogjakarta's city rulers, with lots of photographs of modern rulers and portraits of earlier ones. One of the rooms is dedicated to the history of batik, the traditional Indonesian clothes material with curious ornaments and motifs. However, taking pictures inside was forbidden, so here are only a few shots of the outside yard.



And here's the exit with plants forming a curious "curtain".