Bali: Tulamben and Padang Bai

After our great Volcanoe adventure we hopped on a shared charter to Tulamben, a town with nothing, and no one, where the only attraction is a US Cargo ship Liberty that was torpedoed in 1942 15kms south of Lombok. Attempts to tow her into the port failed as she filled with water and beached at Tulamben. Then an erruption of Gunung Batur shifted the hull into deeper water. This made for a very cool snorkelling site. Although accompanied by a strong current, and a dozen divers, the coral life on the ship was very cool, and the fish just as interesting. It took us two tries as we had to wait for the proper time of the tides to get in the water so we weren't swept past the ship and onto the wavy beach.

Then we went on to Padang Bai, the port town to Lombok, where we decided to give our super touring a rest and spend two nights. We got the coolest Bungalow, which was more like a barn with three big beds upstairs and the bathroom and a lounge area below with couches and chairs, where they brought our free breakfast in the morning. It almost felt like a real house with our own living room. And a bit of luxury is nice once in a while. The beach was so cool, composed of coral beads not completely ground down, so you sunk very deep into the earth, but like lying on a waterbed. We also arrived in time to see their annual festival which was a colourful parade through town.

Then we jumped on the ferry the next morning to head to Lombok and the Gili Islands. Gili Trawangan was great. And island free of police, filled with handsome young Indonesian men, fun bars, open pot smoking, "bloody mushrooms", beautiful beaches and a great bungallow. We could have stayed forever, but thought it best to keep going after 6 days seeing as we have a limited time to see all of Indonesia. In retrospect we should have just stayed.

We went back to the mainland and took the bemo to Senaru and hiked to the waterfalls, which obviously the locals told us we would never find by ourselves. The second and larger waterfall was gorgeous, like thundering water jetting out of the foliage of the mountain. It is belived that swimming in the pool at its base is a fountain of youth and grants you an extra year on your life. Well, we found out why: the water was freezing! The spray alone, when the sun went behind the clouds was enough to make me want to run. But it was also amazing, like standing in the middle of a hurricane.

The next morning we split from Paul as he was heading back to Bali to fly to NZ (we miss you!!), and Carla and I went east towards Sumbawa. We thought we would be able to take local transport as our cheapest option across Lombok and Sumbawa to Flores, which we read was amazing. Well the trip was a bit more difficult than we thought....

R

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.