Indonesia: Siung Beach

Today we continue exploring Gunungkidul, Yogyakarta. We brought a set of tent and mattress as we planned to camp in Siung Beach tonight. It was kinda cloudy at that time, but we continued the trip anyway. On the way to the beach we can see the beautiful landscape of Yogyakarta. The beach is located right behind Gunungkidul hills. “Gunung” in Javanese means “mountain” and “kidul” means “south”. I’m sure you already catch the clue about it. Yes, this mountain is located in the south of Yogyakarta.

Gunungkidul is well-known for its large and potential karst region. Sixty percent of Gunungkidul area is karst region. People used to call the karst region in Gunungkidul as ‘Kawasan Karst Gunungsewu’ (Gunungsewu Karst Region). It has lots of caves. Unfortunately, we couldn’t visit one of the caves due to the limited time.

It took an hour to reach the beach from Nglanggeran Mountain. We arrived at the beach around 5 pm and it’s getting dark. Then we decided to start setting up the tent. We argued a lot about the spot and bonfire stuff though J. And finally the tent was built. In an hour, the rain was falling, but it was just sprinkles. After warming our bodies in the bonfire, we went to grab something for dinner. We ate nasi goreng (fried rice) and some chips that we bought from the local food seller around the beach. The sea was calm and the sky was surprisingly getting brighter a little bit. Ah, it was the moonlight.

Since today we had passed through a quite long trip, we rested. But in the early morning, around 3-4 AM, suddenly the wind blew so strong. Then the rain followed. It rained heavily. We packed our stuff and dragged the tent to one of one of the local people’s house. The one we bought dinner last night. The owner said that it was storm. He said we can rest in his place till the rain stopped.

However, the storm broke the tent’s frame and blew away the tent bag. And we spent the rest of the day in that house, because the rain didn’t stop till afternoon. But we managed to climbed up the hill and took some pictures of the beach from above.