Sunday, February 12, 2006

Gunung Batur




We headed towards Toya Bungah which is a small base camp for trekkers going up to Gunung Batur and other nearby mountains. First we headed north from Tulamben towards Singaraja and bought a charter bemo from north to the central mountains and Toya Bungah. The driver was a guy around our age and was driving a public bemo for his job.

We were stopped by the police. The driver was a long way away from his usual bemo route and was now scratching his head and explaining to the police where he was taking us. Well it is illegal to take the bemo out of your registered route but with 30k rupiah(~2.5euros) the police seemed to be happy and we got onwards. Things just seem to work a little bit different here than in Finland...

After usual hassle with touts we managed to find a nice place just under the volcano. We had to take a guide to go up to the volcano and it cost ridiculous ~20euros for us and included breakfast. We were trekking around 5-6 hours and the first one and half hours were the most exhausting with the climbing of 700m elevation to the summit which stands at 1717m. It was a little bit cloudy but later on the clouds vanished and we managed to enjoy the superb scenery. We left towards Kuta on the same day. Our first plan was to go to Bukit Peninsula in the southernmost Bali but after normal arguing started with the drivers we just couldn't stand it no more and decided just head to Kuta and spoil ourselves in luxury accomodation of Masa inn.

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