what around me is around you: Sempu Island

I had this trip in the long holiday of Lebaran 2010. Among many beaches, I picked Sempu Island into my vacation list.

Sempu Island is a small island in the south of Java Island. This island is in Malang District, East Java province. From city of Malang, we stay for one night in Turen. Early in the morning we packed and drove through around 1 and half hour to Sendang Biru, place where we had to take the small boat to get to Sempu Island.

It has its wide around 877 hectare and formally becomes a sanctuary under the government since 1928. Based on finding in 2000, there are 223 kinds of plants, 144 more kinds of birds’ species, mammals, and others. Just for your info, the guide told me that they recently just released 700 hundreds of snakes in that island.

The most exotic destination in Sempu Island is the Segara Anakan Lagoon. It is a lake with a salty water behind a huge reef of Hindian Ocean. There are two gates to get into Sempu Island, depends on your destination. If you want to visit Segara Anakan Lagoon, you have to choose Ant Bay (Teluk Semut) gate. If you want to visit Lele Lake (Telaga Lele), you have to choose Waru Waru gate. The guide also told me that there’s another good spot, called Pasir Kembar (Twin Sand), but too bad we didn't have enough time to get there, so we passed this time.

Just sharing a bit of my experiences, frankly speaking getting into Segara Anakan is not very easy as I thought. You have to trek for almost 3 hours through the juggle with tarnish all over the regular trek, so all over my body was almost covered with mud. I was hoping for God 's mercy to rescue me and hoping that He could send a helicopter to get me back to Sendang Biru. My foot was bleeding and I got so many scars, especially under my foot step. So many people gave up on the quarter or half way and choose to return to the start line, so I could be a little bit snobby since I could make it in my way (screaming, yelling, almost crying, bleeding, so sloppy ^^). Somehow, I was amazed and very proud of my mom, aunt, and my two sisters because they are really strong and spirited, two thumps up guys! So the total of trekking is around 6 hours… but side of that, this is what I've got there: