So out of all of the places in the world you wouldn't think that one of your close friends from when you were living in Washington, D.C. would be in the same country as you thousands of miles away from home. My friend Yuri was one of my 5 other roommates that I had when I was living in the East Coast and I can still remember all of the awesome memories we had exploring all over the district. We haven't seen each other in almost a year and a half besides social media ofcourse and it was really amazing catching up here in Yogyakarta. Yuri is currently volunteering for Habitat for Humanity for two weeks helping build homes for local villages in the area and I happen to be a 20 minute drive away from where she's staying. Since we had some free time this weekend we decided to go caving and cave tubing a few hours away from the city. We went to Goa Jomblang (Jomblang cave) and were descended into one of the biggest caves i've ever seen in person. It was muddy, Jurassic Park style, and I almost ate it a few times because of how slippery it was down there. The tunnel itself is 250 meters long. The fact that it was pitch black was pretty normal and what was cool was that there were actual man made stone steps to lead you to the end of the cave. Once you get to the end you know you're there because there is this beautiful beaming light coming from the ceiling. It was absolutely breathtaking. We walked around, got our pictures and just explored for a bit. Afterwards we got a free meal. I mean for Rp. 450.000 (About $37) it better come with something. It was delicious and Yuri and I made some new friends from Singapore on the way to our next stop, Kalisuci. This is the place where we went cave tubing. It's a minimum of five people per group or you have to pay for five people anyways and we were lucky to join our new friends. The water was a lot lower than normal so there sadly weren't any rapids and so we constantly were walking over rocks to keep moving through the caves. Overall, it was still a blast. After getting cleaned up and another free meal we actually headed to Bukit Bintang (Star Hill), a famous area to see the city lights at night and it was definitely a sight to see. We had dinner with our new friends and enjoyed some surprise fireworks. Another beautiful weekend crossed off the list here in Indonesia.
