Bag Full of Rocks

When I heard about Mount Batur it wasn’t even a question whether we were going up there or not, I always wanted to have breakfast on an active volcano!

Let’s start from the beginning. We left Ubud in the morning and headed up north. The ride was absolutely fantastic – it wasn’t very long and mostly on quiet roads. We stopped in a random spot for a coffee with a view and met a very sweet host lady. Chatting to her was a pleasure that morning and I really wish I could remember where we found her!

The journey was great and very scenic, so we were really disappointed to arrive at our destination so quick. We stayed in Black Lava hostel between Mount Batur and Lake Batur, which was a beautiful and relaxing spot.

The hostel also arranged a guide for us for our hike next morning. You can’t do the sunrise hike without one and I wouldn’t recommend trying since you’ll be stopped on the way by one of the many locals hanging out on the hill at night (I know, sounds creepy!).

Anyway, we had some time to kill until our hike so decided to go to the village nearby to grab some food. We ordered a lot of fish and I had an unfortunate incident with the fish bone. I choked on one and it hurt my throat so bad that I could feel it for the next couple of days.

I was a bit traumatized so we decided to go back to Black Lava, which was a great decision.

The accommodation was superb – beautiful huts with hammocks and they also had an amazing hot spring pool. I have to say that sitting in the pool during the day was a bit too hot, but it was such a treat at night when the temperature dropped (and it dropped a lot!)’

Oh and for the first time, I saw how pineapples grow! I spotted one on the path to our hut and I could not be more excited. All these first times!

We tried to get a few hours of sleep before the 3am start. When the alarm rang I just wanted to stay in bed, but eventually managed to get out and I have to say it was worth it.

We met our guide (who turned out to be a good storyteller and an amazing photographer) and three of us set out in the dark. There were loads of people going up (judging from the amount of head torches) and it felt like everyone was quite excited about it. We soon were asked whether we wanted to take a hard or an easy path and of course we picked the easy one not realising that it was used by the motorbikes to get the lazy people up the hill. It was a bit of the shame that those motorbikes were allowed to go up and we later learned that the path was built for them a few months ago. Every time the bike went past, it would leave a cloud of dust for you to breathe. Not exactly an exciting experience, but the hike was over in no time and we arrived to the top just in time for a sunrise.

It really was spectacular. The colours were changing fast and with the smoke coming out from the ground (hey it’s an active volcano!), it felt quite a surreal. It was freezing and I didn’t I have enough layers on me, so had to jump around to warm up. We then had a breakfast with a coffee while enjoying the views. Once the sun went a bit higher, it got hot pretty quick and I had start losing some layers. Loads of people started leaving and the magic was over.

It was a nice and quick walk down and we got served some nice breakfast at Black Lava hostel. We couldn’t fall asleep after breakfast so decided to pack up and head to our next destination – Amed coast. We took a shortcut and I can say that it was the most stressful ride I ever did on the scooter and I nearly ran over a local lady! I’ll tell you more in the next post… 🙂