Nov 23rd -27th
We embarked on a 4 hour journey to Ubud, the breeze as we rode was lovely but it was still hot and humid, and every bump in the road was felt. We checked into our pre-booked expedia hotel 'Kampung Ubud Hotel and Spa' at £20pn and we booked 2 nights.
Kampung Ubud Hotel and Spa, I even treated myself to a hair treatment at the spa as my hair is rather damaged and brittle at the moment, I don't know if the treatment will do much but it felt lovely to be pampered.
Had an exceptional meal at 'Laughing Buddha' restaurant which is at the top end of Jalan Monkey Forest (opposite end to Monkey Forest).
The Sacred Money Forest Sanctuary is a must do in Ubud, it is famous because there is a small rainforest dwelt by a group of around 200 monkeys and other tropical animals. It costs just 30,000 Rupiah (£2) to look around at the forest, temples and of course the monkeys, of which you can feed with bananas bought on site, then as you'll see below, you can hold the bananas up high and the monkeys will happily jump on you to eat them. Just be aware though, they are over fed and can get fed up with tourists poking bananas at them, one tried to lunge at me!
We had decided we wanted to scale Mount Batur for the sunrise trekking tour. Shaun and Jodie completed it last year and loved it, we had declined as we had just completed the trek around Mount Bromo in Java, but now we were up for it, at 450,000 Rupiah (£30) including air conditioned coach to and from hotel, water, snacks and breakfast it sounded good. Our tour was with 'Bali Uma Kutuh' but it's not an exaggeration when I say that there is tourist stalls back to back along Jalan Monkey Forest all competing for your custom and offering competitive rates which can be haggled down. You will need to wear hiking shoes (we wore trainers) bring a jumper/ jacket and wear long pants.
Our pick up was at 2am and we were driven 1 hour before stopping for ate fried banana and coffee in weird side alley in the darkness, then continued to Batur village in Kintamani for around 3.45am where we received a safety briefing and met our guide.
We trekked in the pitch blackness for a long time on flat ground which then turned steep and hard to climb up, we were literally clinging to the rocks to hold on. Then it just got steeper and steeper, we were pretty much in darkness the whole way, all you could see was a path of nodding lights from everyones torches. We couldn't see how far we had come nor how far left. We rarely stopped, it was humid and already feeling the sweat on our backs under our backpackers.
We continued until around 6am when the sky started to turn from black to inky blue, by the time we reached the top a glorious sunrise was already starting to turn the sky to a pinky orange, we got to the top of the summit at 1,717 metres and rested whilst marvelling at the sun rising behind Mount Agung the highest point on the island.
We made it! We had climbed another volcano! We aren't the most fittest so it goes to reason it can't be that hard to climb.
After admiring the tranquil settings we trekked around the crater, where we also had our packed breakfast of boiled eggs, or actually the resident monkeys ate ours as we weren't feeling it.
Around 8am we begin our decent it became apart that it was easier in the dark as you didn't see where you were going, in the light of day it looked so steep to climb down, others around us were visibly upset and took to crawling down on their bums, the rocks were crumbling but soon enough we were back on terra firma.
Back in the coach everyone fell into a deep, worthy sleep. We were soon awoken as we had reached one of the islands famous coffee plantations, where Luwak coffee is made, more on that later though, as we didn't sample any coffees this time around...
We arrived back at hotel for 1030 where we lay comotose for a while.
