A Very Bali Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

Days 3 and 4 were a blast.

I’ll start with today. Since it’s Christmas, we decided to do something special: we were up at 1:15am to get ready for our 2am departure for a sunrise trek (the hike was the special activity, not the hour of departure). At approximate 2:12 we were met outside our hotel by a very nice driver and two Australian girls who were the other half of our trekking group. They just graduated from high school, had been in Bali for 3 weeks, and were really nice. We drove for about an hour to a coffee plantation where we were served coffee and banana pancakes with chocolate. yum. Then off to the starting point where we met our guide, MyYoung. There were probably thirty other tourists with their guides as well..

It was also my first time using a hole-in-the-ground-toilet.

It took us about two hours to get up the active volcano. The hike reminded me a lot of Mt. Nkhoma in Malawi because it started off on a gradually inclining path that wasn’t hard at all. Then we hit a point and it got steep. When we started it was pitch black outside so we each carried a flashlight. The stars were great but not the best I’ve seen. Elena and I each saw a shooting star.

Then we started to climb up rocks. Eventually they turned to gravel which was tougher. I came my closest to falling, of course, when I was standing still and the rocks shifted under my feet. As it slowly got lighter, the sky turned red behind two huge mountains. Between the mountains and us was Bali’s biggest lake, with small fish farms scattered around its perimeter. Once the train turned to hairpin turns, the views got better with each curve.

Only once did we stop, and it was so our guide could put incense and a floral offering to a statue of the god of the mountain. There were at least ten sticks of incense burning and it smelled delicious.

We finally made it to “sunrise point” where we were offered soda and water from vendors. We took a ton of pictures and then went fifteen minutes further where MyYoung promised the view would be better. And it was. From above, you could still see the two mountains with the rising sun but the lake was much more visible. In addition, to the left there were green fields of rice.

We also had our breakfast cooked there: banana sandwiches and hardboiled eggs, all cooked in steam vents from the volcano. delicious.

Instead of heading back down the volcano, we hiked the rim. At its widest, the path was 2.5 feet; at its narrowest, less than 6 inches. And both sides went pretty much straight down. Last month there was a super poisonous snake at a certain point, so our guide made sure he went first so he could hit the grass with his walking stick. Luckily we didn’t run into it. He also only checked within ten feet of where it had been seen, so I’m not sure what we would have done had the snake moved.

We made it around the rim and then went down “the back way” by young crater. This trail had lots of volcanic sand which was both fun to try to slide down and also painful once it got into tennis shoes. So with many stops to dump piles of rocks out of our shoes, we made it down the volcano in about as long as it took us to get up. On the way, we saw three more craters that had each erupted within the last 100 years. One of the craters had spewed red lava, one had spewed black lava, and one had just released steam. The most recent eruption killed two Germans when they got too close the day after the major eruption and the heat killed them.

We walked through a village on our way back that we’d apparently walked through at 4am but hadn’t seen since we our lights had been so focused on the ground in front of us in the pitch black.

It took about 1.5 hours to drive back, which we all used to catch up on sleep.

We got back to the hotel at 11am exhausted but with the whole day ahead of us. So we packed a quick day bag and walked 20 minutes to our hotel’s sister but much, much nicer counterpart to relax by the pool. I enjoyed the pool and sun while Elena slept in the shade, and once it started to rain, we ran into the restaurant for lunch. Now, an hour later, it’s still raining too hard for us to walk back to our room. Tonight, we’re planning on a dinner at the Jazz Club and then heading to a traditional Balinese puppet show just down the road… never thought I’d say that on Christmas!!

So, that’s today. Yesterday was great too. We woke up early enough to get to our 9:30am Balinese cooking class only to realize at 9:10 that it had actually started at 9 and was a 20 minute walk away. oops. So we arrived a little late but met the rest of our group in the market where we saw every vegetable, fruit, and meat imaginable laid out for sale. We didn’t get to buy our own ingredients though, because they’d been prepared at the restaurant already.

Our group was both sweet and interesting. A nice woman from Germany who was travlieng on her own and seemed to be spending no more than 2 days anywhere she stopped – Thailand, the northern part of Bali, Ubud (where we were), and Australia for two days was her next stop. And there was a family of three from San Diego: a mother who lived in Korean and loved cooking and loved talking about it even more, and her two sons. The class itself was set up different than I’d expected as well. We were seated in the dining area of an open-air restaurant with one teacher. We prepared six dishes, so each one of us got to make a single dish that everyone ate. I decided to eat meat for the day and loved the pork dish. It had amazing spices and was balled up onto a stick and then pulled down to make a sort of meat-lollipop.

The chicken wasn’t so great though. But the rest of the food was delicious and the spices were incredible. One of the sons made Basa Gede, the staple spice dish that was used in everything else. Elena made seared tuna that was also incredible. And it’s the first fish she’s eaten and not gagged on! My dish was a peanut sauce with Basa Gede and cooked but still crunchy vegetables: sprouts, carrots, and spinach. The sprouts and peanuts were my favorite parts.

The meal was finished off with dessert: fresh fruit drizzled in Balinese honey. yum. We were sent home with a book of recipes and a black and white checkered apron.

Once the cooking class was over at 3pm (that’s right, 6 hours of straight cooking) we visited an old palace that’s been opened to the public. Parts were still marked as private and entry was forbidden, so I think what we saw was just the courtyard. The plants were overgrown but it gave the buildings a very real feel. The stonework was as ornate as anything we’ve seen so far. There was one doorway that was painted red with gold details that was absolutely beautiful. We spent a few minutes wandering around the market and went back to our room.

I went to bed at 4pm and slept through until 1am when we were up for our hike this morning. I’m still not sure if my sleeping schedule is out of whack from traveling or if I’m still recovering from finals & a long semester.

The rain has just about stopped so I think we’re going to slowly walk back to our hotel and get ready for our Christmas night full of jazz and puppets!

(and hopefully pictures will be up on facebook soon!)