Bali: Gunung Batur

So after some simple public transport we arrived in freezing cold Kintamani on the crater rim to a raging wind, in our shorts of course...we didn't really think of the possiblilty of a drastic weather change. Oh well. After tons of hawkers offered us some of the lowest prices for their goods I've seen so far in Asia...never a good sign of their situation, we got in another Bemo (local bus), heading down into the crater to the tiny town of Toya Bunkah. We met some heavy pressure to pay 45$ USD each to climb the volanoe the next morning...as we were planning on doing it for free, alone, this was quite annoying. We settled into a nice Guesthouse, sharing a super kingsized bed between the three of us, Carla, myself, and our friend Paul to sleep for a few hours before our 4 am wake up call to start our climb. We ended up paying a guide about 10$ CAN each to lead us in the dark about 1.5 hours up to watch the sunrise. It was freezing when we started, but as we quickly found out, climbing straight up a mountain 1717 m high takes a bit of work, and sweat. And it was good we had a pack of guides too,because on the last 40 minute straight up part over the volcanic rock, even with our flashlights there was no clear path. Plus, one of the porters, who brings up drinks to sell at the top at an incredibly inflated price, practically hoisted me up the last leg, as I was having trouble breathing in the altitude and had to stop frequently. Meanwhile Carla found herself a bit behind with our guide struggling with her breathing as well. As it turns out, climbing a volcanoe is not the easy task we had thought it to be. ha. But so rewarding! The sunrise was not amazing due to cloud coverage, but as we explored the old craters and new crater, and saw the smoke rising from the active volcanoes, I felt on top of the world. They cooked us breakfast in the steam in the groud. Boiled eggs, and cooked bananas...a delicacy. It was a very cool experience. As we ran down the volcanic sand, full throttle in the early morning sun, I really felt like we accomplished something. Gunug Batur has errupted more than 20 times since 1800, the last time in 1994. The scene is left with it in the middle of a crater thought to be caused by a meteorite with a lake at the bottom, and natural hotsprings inside. A very cool scene. There were erruption warnings of the new crater at the time that we visisted, so we were not able to get too close to the new one, but did feel the heat of the steam of the active volcanoe in the older crater.