Next stop was the main market in the village of Tomohon. Tomohon is a much larger village than the previous ones and is quite charming - it's considered the capital of the Minahasa highland region. Driving through it, I was a little jealous that we didn't stay there instead of Manado! Unfortunately, since the Kali waterfall took much longer than expected, our guide started racing a bit. Even though we had told him that if we run out of time, we can just see fewer waterfalls, he was very proud of his region and insisted that he wanted to show us everything.
So we raced through the market. On the outer perimeter of the market were many fruit vendors selling mangoes and mangosteen! I was dying to stop and kept trying to tell him, but nope... no time - the purpose of the market trip is to see the "exotic meat" section which is quite famous. As I wrote previously, the Minahasa highland people have traditionally eaten practically anything they could get - dog, monkey, bats, python snakes, etc. Personally, while I understand that different cultures have different tastes, etc., it wasn't a huge priority of mine to gawk at the exotic meats. I would have much rather spent a little less time in that section and more actually picking up some fruit and looking through the rest of the market. Oh well.... We were able to get some shots on the fly...
Some leafy greens and around there I swear I saw kencur, which I had been looking to bring home.
More greens and cinnamon on the left.
A vendor selling cakes - on the left are baked and the right are fried. I don't know about the baked ones (we were walking and talking fast) but she was frying the ones on the right at the market. We bought one of each. Very tasty, although I have little idea of what it was. I definitely tasted palm sugar and cinnamon. I would love to have them again or have talked more with the vendor.
Green tomatoes, chillies, shallots, onions, potatoes
Some exotic meats.... in the middle are two types of bats. When we got to this section, our guide was disappointed that many of the vendors weren't there - he said there are tons of vendors selling various stuff on Saturdays.
And here is probably why every place we have been cooks the crap out of all the fish:
Fish, fish, everywhere and not a cube of ice.
After racing through the market, I started getting a bit more intestinal distress. But no time for that, back to the car! As we were headed out of Tomohon, our guide stopped and picked up a couple Chinese style buns filled with pork. My wife said the chilli sauce made a big difference, but my stomach definitely was not up for it at the moment.
The next couple of waterfalls were really disappointing. We'd get halfway down the trail only to find the result of some kind of mudslide, the rest being completely impassable. It was frustrating to be able to hear it but not go the extra few hundred yards to turn the corner to see it.
More moss and wet leaf covered stairs
Look at this giant bamboo! Oh and it had also started raining.....
This is the end of the line. You could hear teh waterfall off to our right. By the way, without those handrails, we never would have gotten that far!!!!
Back up the trail to the car to go to the next waterfall.... or not....
There's a trail under there somewhere!!!! We should have brought a machete.
Neither my wife nor I even bothered taking any photos of the next one. For this, the waterfall and trail to it was basically in some guy's backyard and in order to get to see it, you need to rent him as a guide. I should have been wary since our guide was lauding him as the town superhero - he white water rafts, goes hang-gliding and parachute jumps, etc. We are not THAT athletic, contrary to what it may look like above. So when he tells us that there is a small stream crossing to get to the trail to the waterfall, I should have stopped us right there. Surely, his idea of a small stream crossing would not be the same as mine. It wasn't. I thought it was going to be a few inches of water, and mostly lots of rocks you can walk on. It was a fast moving stream that was about knee deep with a few slippery rocks spread around. We originally attempted it - we were able to cross the first section (I also didn't realize that this was only the FIRST "crossing") relatively unscathed. I made it across with my heart beating out of my chest as I almost slipped on those damn rocks 5 times and broke my neck. My wife's foot slipped off of one rock and she wound up knee deep with her hiking shoes on midway through the crossing. At that point, I should have insisted that we just turn around and head back, but our guide and our superman guide both insisted that it wasn't much further. So when we turned the corner and I saw that we'd basically have to wade in the quickly moving river up to our crotches I said I wasn't going any further. Many years ago I took a nasty fall walking in a similar situation in upstate NY (Ithaca is Gorges!!). I almost broke my neck when I was 18... there's no way I'd risk it 30 years later! So I categorically refused to go any further, but atypically, my wife was more adventurous than me, considering she was already wet, she said she'd continue on. So I sat down on a slippery rock to wait for them, confident that she'd be safe having both guides there. After they had been gone about 10 minutes, I started having visions of them carrying her back after she twisted an ankle (at the very least). Luckily, nothing like that happened, but when they did come back I was told they never even made it to the waterfalls because it just became too much and my wife refused to go any further.
Once we got back to the car I was really feeling like crap so I told our guide I just wanted to go back to the hotel. My wife's shoes were dripping wet and my intestinal distress was intensifying. He understood but was a bit sad. As we were driving back, I spotted a small waterfall off the side of the road, so we stopped for a minute.
By the time we got back to the hotel, it was around 7:30 PM and pitch dark. There was a ton of traffic getting back into Manado. Like completely standstill. By the time we got back, we were exhausted and annoyed. I started my wife's shoes in the process of drying out (yay! the room had a hair dryer!) and we stayed in the hotel for dinner. My stomach wasn't doing so great but I thought I could handle some chicken soup.
My wife got the sour fish soup:
