Gunung Mas Tea Plantation

Another tour with the Explorer Group of the Indonesian Heritage Society.

This time to the Gunung Mas Tea Plantation.

It was an early start to make the drive out of Jakarta.  Leaving at 07:00 we hoped to miss most of the morning traffic but it still took just over 2 hours to drive the 80 km.

The Gunung Mas Tea Estate is in the hills in an area called Puncak, south of Jakarta.  It surrounds Mt. Gede-Pangrango.

The tour started with a visit to the local school on the plantation.

Normally the children are in school uniform, but on the day of our visit they were in national costumes.

Some of the girls in the class sang a song for us.

From the school we took a path up the hill into the tea plantation.

Only one or two at a time crossing this bridge

The tea plantation we visited is called Gunung Mas meaning Golden Mountain.
The plantation was established by the Dutch in the colonial era, but is now
a government-owned estate.

Here, due to the elevated altitude, the temperature is cooler than the city,
25 degrees, compared to 30+ of Jakarta.













The air is fresh and smog free, if a little grey and damp for our visit.

This is a beautiful mountainous area with tea and other crops covering the hillsides,
such as lemongrass and cinnamon trees.

Mounds of lemongrass

This is a popular place to bring the school children of Jakarta.

A busload of school children arriving for a visit 

You can just see some of the explorer group walking through the rows of tea plants

After about an hour of walking up the lush hills through the plantation,
we started the descent down into one of the villages where the plantation workers live.

The plantation workers village

Hydrangeas growing wild by the roadside

Bananas and a banana flower.
Both of which can be eaten.

Houses are provided for those working on the plantation and their families.

The plantation workers typically retire at 55 years old.
When they retire, they must leave their homes on the plantation.
They can only continue to live here if one of their children, living with them,
is working on the plantation.

Clothes drying on hedges in the garden

Rough stone roads with water pipes running
along the edges

Some amazing gardens in the village

Tea-pickers are mostly women.
Their normal working day is from between 07:00 and 14:00.

It is getting harder to find tea-pickers, so the work is becoming increasingly automated.

Some of the tea pickers.

The morning of exploring passed quickly and we left just as the rain started.

It was wonderful to escape the dirty city for a few hours and experience more of
what Java has to offer.