the roadtrip to Garut-Santolo begin

Our road trip starts late!! Frankly, I hate to start any trip after 10 am. It's just too late to start. It's like wasting precious times of the holiday. But, I guess it's inevitable this time, because we all slept at 3 am last night! (It another way too waste times). We haven't discuss our alternative destinations besides Jogjakarta before. Santolo was the destination on op of my head, but as always, because I don't plan to go alone, there are more than one head who have different opinions.

So, after some while, Garut-Santolo, Pangandaran, and Ciwidey was our top 3. We browse hotels and motels in those three destinations, we listed the pro's and con's, we even thought about flipping coins to decide where to go. Until, everybody just agreed to Garut-Santolo. I forget why, maybe because that's the most well-planned destination and we're just too tired to argue any more.

Anyway, we was preparing slowly in the morning (in addition of waking up NOT early at all), and because we're still sleepy we forgot things and have to go back to the house to take them. The highway was pretty crowded but there's no traffic. Not so for the way back. We laughed about it, how people still want to go to Bandung although it will be so crowded. We thanked God that we wont be there to see it. And, karma it was, when we hit the Cileunyi highway gate, we met the worst traffic.

Fortunately, it wasn't because the Rancaekek road didn't support the crowded cars, but because there were several shadow market on almost every factory on Rancaekek road. There was also road block of road maintanance. Besides that, the road was clear.

I wasn't going to look at the time on this journey (I planned not to because I don't want to know how many hours left until this vacation is over, heheu..). But, because I want to let you know how much time we need to reached Garut from Bandung, I force myself to see it. We were at Pasteur highway gate at 12.30 pm and reached Nagrek-Garut intersection at approx. 14.10 pm. (I didn't have the guts to see the time when we're on the traffic) and reached Garut city on 14.45 pm. We have several stops when there's bus in front of us just stop in the middle of the road to take or drop passengers.

When we get to the Cipanas Raya street (where there are a lot of hotels which have hot water springs) we started to look for a place to stay. Because we wanted to stay in a nice hotel to laid back and enjoy the place, we went to the 3 stars hotels. The first one is Tirtagangga. We were sent right away by the security guard because it's full booked. Then we tried Sumber Alam. We called them earlier, they said they're fully booked but we just wanted to know for sure. This time we can speak to the receptionist. But as a turn out, they're really are full.

So, we tried the melati hotels. Tirta Alam 1 and 2, Cipaganti, and finally there's Bayu Artha! There's 1 cancelation, but it was for the big bungalow. It's quite pricey and when we saw the room, it was spooky! So, we said that we'd think about it and get out of there. At last we found Tirta Merta 2. Before we weren't going to see it, because we'd seen the Tirta Merta 1 the last time we went here and it was horrible. But, as a turn out it was okay. The price fits just fine with the service. So we paid it right away (because when we were looking at the rooms for options, we lost 1 of the options!).

We had our late lunch at the hotel and now it's time to get a nap. My fellow road trip friend choose to laid back on the hotel first. Maybe we'll start to get around tonight. Tomorrow, hopefully we can go to Candi Cangkuang on our way to Santolo!

PS: I'll put hotel rates in here later.