Day 9: Mount Batur and 😴

The 3am start was as bad as it sounds! After a quick bowl of cereal we met our guide at 3:30am and followed him from the hotel to ‘basecamp’. We were greeted with a hot drink (tea and coffee) whilst the guides sorted out the kit…kit being a handheld torch as we were on the cheap trip so weren’t privileged to a bamboo stick! There was already a lot of other groups here and as we began the trek you could see a line of torches making their way up the volcano.

It quickly became clear that we had in fact hired a mountain goat and not a guide as advertised. We were soon overtaking numerous groups much to the disapproval of my lungs! He did however graciously allow us to stop a few times along the way for a few snaps and to catch our breath. He had said if we were quick we would make it to the top in 1hr 30mins…we made it up in 1hr 13mins! Despite this achievement meaning we got a good seat, part of us wished we had been back with the slow coaches as we now had to wait for a whole hour before sunrise…FREEZING.

Our cheap tour didn’t include breakfast but our guide kindly got approval from his boss to make us some, winner! Egg sandwich for Sam and banana sandwich for myself, complete with some tangerines, caramel wafers and boiled eggs. The sky was so clear walking up, but in a typical fashion we were completely submerged by the clouds at the top in a howling gale! Sadly that meant we missed some of the beautiful sunrise colors but we were lucky enough for it to clear towards the end and got to see some amazing views.

What we had not realized in the dark was that we had been walking on sand the whole way up. This meant for a hilarious run/slide on the way down in a grand total of 39 minutes…a new record apparently! Sams face when the guide suggested “Little bit run?” was a picture…his favorite activity 😄.

The rest of the day was pretty relaxed as we were back at our hotel for 8am and had a good soak in the hot springs. We headed up to a coffee shop overlooking the lava field from the eruption back in 2000, where I had the most amazing hot chocolate 🍫 We then hit the gym (somehow still awake) and stopped for lunch on the way back down by which point we had crashed!

After a little siesta we had another evening of pot noodles…the last of the holiday I swore!もっと詳しく