Leaving for our journey at 2 AM wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be. We were pumped. Along the car ride everyone was silent as it was pitch black and we were all still half asleep. Sitting next to me was a Thai guy named Can. After chatting with him for a bit we found out he was a tour guide for taking small groups around southeast asia. It was pretty awesome meeting him. He was able to give us a lot of greta tips for our adventures. Our driver took us to a small house off a beaten road where a family cooked us breakfast. Once again we had our beloved banana pancakes and I had tea while jordan had coffee. One thing to note about balinese coffee is they DON’T use filters. They just pour the grounds right in with hot water and serve. So to put it into perspective when jordan received his coffee it was only 2 sips before the was chewing on black sludge, picking up spoonfuls of it as he stirred it around.
Arriving near the bottom of the volcano, each group was paired with a guide. Ours was a young 19 year old girl named Suarni. It still being pitch black we began our 2.5 hour trek up the volcano with our flashlights and jackets. Our group was powering through the others, as we wanted to make sure we secured ourselves a good spot to watch the sunrise.
Finally at the top we were soaked in sweat from the humid air and freezing because of the altitude, the wind and our wet bodies. We enjoyed ourselves and explored the seeping volcano steam while our guide went to make us from boiled eggs on the volcano steam as well as come banana sandwiches. We waited at the top for quite a while in the cold before the sunrise happened, but when it did it was totally worth it! The sun rose behind a beautiful lake and another volcano (one of the largest in Indonesia).
The decent was much quicker! Instead of walked down the way we came we just ran down through all the old volcano ash and dirt. It was SUPER FUN just sliding down loose gravel as fast as we could down the volcano. We were really glad to have closed toed shoes though or else it would not have felt great on our feet.
