No wonder Johnny Weismuller, Christophe Lambert and the other Lords of Greystoke Manor never crashed... these "vines" which I always assumed were thin and stringy, if tough, are MASSIVE... can't even close my fist around it.

No wonder Johnny Weismuller, Christophe Lambert and the other Lords of Greystoke Manor never crashed... these "vines" which I always assumed were thin and stringy, if tough, are MASSIVE... can't even close my fist around it.

Hiding along the path among the Tarzan vines... every nook and cranny contained a couple like this -- some in full religiously mandated dress, others a little more liberal. Really reminded me of a certain nation's "parking" tradition... the Mountain of Love's Lover's Lane...

Welcome to the monkeyhouse...

Don't forget to click...

Unlike the fun "monkey forest" in Ubud on Bali, there is nothing "staged" about the monkeys everywhere here in the forests and jungles on these mountains. These monkeys, hanging out around the paths to the mountaintops in the park, are not the same ones that treaterd us to spectacular performances in the jungle across from our phenomenal $30/night terrace seats... We watched them tiptoe through the treetops behind our hotel, over our heads, and across the ravine our room is perched on... we watched a mother WITH BABY just like the one in these pictures... launch herself Evel Knievel style over Snake River 20 meters from one flimsy branch to a flimsier one in another tree...looked like she was bungee jumping with her child in tow... Who needs movies and TVs? We got two shows on a giant screen with excellent surround sound, and beer, books, appetizers and each other that ran for over an hour each... utterly relaxing, fasinating, and entertaining...

After the travelling monkey theater show had exited stage left the way they had come, the curtain came down, slowly but steadily, until the jungle stage was removed from our view. I took this shot right after the actors left. Not to worry, though, the curtain was back up by sunrise, and at noon just before checkout we caught a matinee performance from a different, much larger, monkey company...

And here she is (why is she a "she")... our motivation for coming... what I discovered to be the mountain of love herself... the steaming, never dormant Mount Merapi!

Another view of the Mountain of Love, the great giver...

"I think I'm a train." Complete with amplified train noises one can hear from the mountaintops, like the mosques. Purpose the same, I guess: attract customers... Pity.

Little White Riding Hood and the big red wolf guide? 

This jungle even featured a crawlspace tunnel in the mountainside that was none too short! No wonder I came home and got the wart excised! 

There's a dog on the waterworks, and a human dwafed by the size of the world that sustains her... 

Here's one of the folks who never litters... can you see her? She's bent over two-thirds of the way up the riverbank, collecting feed for her livestock, no doubt, and maybe for her family. 

Don't you just think King Kong and ther dinosaurs are gonna come stampeding around the bend? Better tell my friends to run for cover. 

Mother and child from who knows how far away, Sunday morning washing. 

More on this particular labor later, but that bushel of grass is as large as the man himself. So many people live off this volcano and jungle... 

I believe our guide told us this lava bed dates from the most recent eruption, six years ago. Gave me pause, for a bit, that did, what with the smoke billowing out of Merapi I'd just observed...  

From a distance and without squinting this looks like a pleasant if somehwat inclined Sunday morning strolling exercise group... 

Zoom in a little closer and we see bent bodies crawling up the steep slope under sandbags... Merapi's gift of excellent-grade concrete mix.. 

Picture looks simple enough... it's 9:00 AM Sunday, and those little white dots are already filled with sand gifted to the people that live off the Mountain of Love. Each laborer can haul about 30 bags in a day, stage by stage, and each bag nets about 30 cents. 

Lava has never been better displayed, me thinks... and Julia too. 

Although this TOO is pretty impressive. We climbed up and around this wall -- trust me, we were tiny in comparison... 

Though mostly green, our guide pointed out a whole bunch of brightly-colored flora and vegetation he said was used for a great many malarial-like cures. He even ate some fruit... I've learned... I passed. 

A clash of civilizations: Our child of the jungle Guide, our javanese tourist, and a Sunday morning worker collecting food for the area water buffalo... he was one of the few men doing this work that we saw -- most were women, and they looked like they'd been spending Sunday mornings this way for a long time... 

Must end on a sad note. The last contact we had with the folks that live off the jungle, before rejoining the "litterati" tourist crowd under the mountain love: Sundays collecting water buffalo food begin very early in life. This boy isn't ten, and he isn't standing straight, and he isn't wearing shoes... and we wonder why some peole grow up to be short and bent...