Overview
The hill was the Dutch residential quarter and kept its villas, which is why the road reads as a series of garden houses converted into shops and coffee bars. Above Dago Pakar the forest park protects pine and rasamala woodland with two tunnel complexes cut into the ridge — one Dutch, dug for a radio station in 1918, the other Japanese, dug by forced labour in 1942. The Maribaya hot springs and the Omas waterfall are at the far end of the same trail.
Highlights
Walk the forest park trail from the Dago Pakar gate; it is about five kilometres to Maribaya, downhill for most of it, with the tunnels near the start. Bring a torch — the guides at the mouth rent them, and the Japanese tunnel is dark and wet. Weekends bring Jakarta traffic up this road, so a weekday is worth the difference.