Exploring Jogjakarta in A Four Day Three Night Tour : On the Slope of Mount Merapi

Mount Merapi with Offroad Jeeps.

After nearly a half an hour of queued landing, at last our one and half flight touched down in the international airport of Adi Sucipto Jogjakarta on  Friday,14th February. Overshadowed by the eruption of Mount Merapi  a day before (13/2/20), I felt a bit worried the next blast might stop us from taking on the challenge of  off-road ride in the Merapi Lava Tour on the day of our arrival.

Before embarking on our journey around Mount Merapi, considered the most active volcano in the World, we had our lunch at Griya Sekar Aji Resto in Wukirsari, a traditional food of Jogjakarta.

According our itinerary, we had a four day three night stay in Jogjakarta, arrived on 14 February and returned on 17 February 2020 to Palembang. We were lucky to be there in the early 2020 after the peak season of holiday was over. The first day we went up after having lunch in the mid day to Sleman area where we had "selfie session" the World's Landmarks Merapi Park, and finally explored the badly affected area on the slope of Mt. Merapi with Merapi Lava Tour before the evening came.

The World's Landmark Merapi Park is a new tourism spot in Jogjakarta. In the park, we found many famous landmarks in miniature such as Pisa Tower, Eiffel Tower, Big Ben London, Pagoda, the Dutch's Windmill and many others.

The activities  here were to have had a number of selfies with the landmarks of the world and sitting on the benches to feel the cool air as the park is still within the slope of Mt Merapi.The Merapi Park  is located in Pakem Village and within the radius of five kilometers from the point of eruption center of Mt Merapi.

We moved on further to explore the badly affected area on the slope of Mt. Merapi with Merapi Lava Tour.We rented five Toyota Offroad-Jeeps and started off by visiting Musium Mini Sisa Hartaku, which is within the radius of 10 km from Mount Merapi Peak. In this museum, Visitors would have the idea how badly were the families in the villages in the red areas affected by the blast of Merapi eruption on November 5th 2010. We, then, moved on to the tourism site of Alien Stone and had photo session with all members on the Jeeps taking Mount Merapi as the background.

Alien stone is a large rock carried by hot lava due to the eruption of Merapi in 2010 ago and found by a local resident. The residents who discovered the large stone thought it to resemble the face of a creature called Aliens.

The large rock, at first only looks like a lump of ordinary volcanic rock, but when you come close and pay attention to it from a certain angle you will see a face texture on the stone. The large stone, has a complete facial texture when viewed up close, such as both eyes, nose, mouth and ears. 

We round up our ride to the Merapi Summit on the offroad-jeeps at the last area permitted by the authority  for tourism purposes : Kaliadem Bunker.  As the name suggests, the Kaliadem Bunker is a shelter when Merapi goes berserk. It is located in Kepuharjo Village, Cangkringan District. Located in the ground, this bunker is built with a sturdy concrete structure. The spacious round room the size of a classroom in the depths of the ground was designed as a shelter from hot clouds also called Wedhus gembel that slid down from the top of the mountain.