MT BATUR KINTAMANI, BALI - OCT 23, 2012

KINTAMANI, BALI - Mt Batur volcano Monday Oct 23, 2012

After a good rest I was up early and on the beach, and walking out to the small pagoda at the end of the water break, for the amazing sunrise over the island of Nusa Penida and the Indian Ocean - purples, blues, pinks and golds - glorious!  Breakfast was in the Casablanca restaurant on the main floor with two air conditioned rooms and an outdoor patio overlooking the busy  street out front with the locals heading to work on their motorbikes, although there are lots of cars and vans as well.  Breakfast was excellent, lots of fresh fruits, cheese, cold meats, pastries, croissants, toast, bacon, eggs, beans but I loved the fresh mango yoghurt and the freshly made muesli.

Our guide, Nick who owns and operates Nick's Tours, arrived at 8am and by 815am there were 12 of us boarding the 20 passenger bus, new, clean and air conditioned.  Brenda was not well enough to come along which was a real shame, and Jenn decided to spend the day relaxing.  The population of Bali is 3.55 million and the traffic is very busy in Southern Bali, with lots of motorbikes and the objective was to ensure we made the traditional Barong & Kris dance performance which started at 9am.

We managed to get there before 9am, along with all the other tourists and their taxis and buses, and we went inside to get good viewing with seats about half way up the bleachers where we could sit and watch, and listen to the orchestra playing their ?? gong music before the performance started,  As each tourist arrived they were given a ? flower - the national flower of Bali.  The Barong and Kris dance performance lasted for 1 hour - fabulous costumes and masks, very precise dancing and movements - especially the feet and hands - the very long finger nails!  I just loved the tiger with amazing long hair and complex costume.  There is a story being told and fortunately the printed hand out (in English!) that we were each given as we entered helped us follow the story along with the dance.

After the performance was over  (the good guys won), our bus was just a few feet away  from the exit parked on the side of the street, and welcome cold bottles of water were waiting for us, especially after sitting in the warm theatre.  As we drove through Kuta and headed North Nick told us that the highest hotel in Bali is 10 floors, the building code does not allow any building to be higher than a coconut palm - there is one hotel ( Paradise Plaza in Sanur) which has managed to stretch this a little and is the highest building in all of Bali.

Today we are heading North to see the volcano but the towns that we pass through are full of artists - usually each town or village being famous for one specific type of art or craft.  The Balinese are very community oriented and everything they do, they do as a family and community which has resulted in a very gentle and caring people who support each other and where everything revolves around their family temple, their community temple, and then the larger family that they belong to within Bali.  This has also meant that each community has developed skills and techniques that are passed down through their own generations for one particular skill or craft.   We are touring later in the week when we will stop to shop in a couple of these villages.  

The first town we pass through is Batubulan - a center for stone carving - the skills having been passed down from generation to generation.  Several substrates are used for carving including limestone (softer), sandstone (softer than limestone requiring special chisels), and volcanic stone which is very hard and heavy.  The completed carvings for sale that we saw in each store and front yard along the roads as we drove along were truly amazing - how we wanted to stop and shop!

The next town that we drove through was Seluk - the centre for silver jewellry.  The most phenomenal buildings and frontages were by UC Silver www.ucsilverbali.com and apparently U C Silver sells very unique and beautiful designs, but a lot more expensive than other stores.  We were told that the man who owns UC Silver is the richest man in Bali. The density of buildings started to open a little after Seluk.  Next was Kemenuh village known for wood carvings where we visited a local wood carver.  This huge workshop and studio was amazing - very   intricate with perhaps 5,000 square feet of showroom containing beautiful carvings in several different woods (the multi coloured crocodile wood  was beautiful) - including many which had come from the forests of Borneo!!  Oh dear!  The carvings ranged from 6 inches to 20 feet and the prices ranged about that much as well - from a few dollars to many thousands!  It was wonderful to wander through and just appreciate, and even watch a couple of carvers working on pieces as we walked by.   

Nick continued as we drove answering our questions and teaching us about daily life in Bali. Each village has its' own meeting hall and each family sends 1 representative to the village meetings.   At these meetings they discuss issues and problems and come to a consensus in what to do for the best benefit to the community. The Balinese make offerings every day at their temples, and these include food - the poorer the family then the smaller the offering like rice grains, also included are flowers and often the figurines at the temples are wrapped in black and white checkered cloth called poleng.  Black is considered evil and white is considered good - but black and white live together and Nick explained that everyone's job is to control the two forces of good and evil and become a good wise person. If you do not control the forces then you become a bad force.  Interestingly grey is the symbol of a human being - influenced by both good and evil.

We stopped in Ceking and Tegalalang village to get out and walk along the trails through the rice fields - it was beautiful and has become such a tourist attraction that on the hill sides overlooking the rice fields (functioning as they always have) there are now open air restaurants built so that you enjoy your lunch overlooking the breath taking beautiful scenery.  It was very difficult to even drive through the narrow one lane street here, and there is even traffic parked along the sides- and our 19 passenger bus had lots of problems!

We continued on to the town of UBUD, which is very well known for its' market, shopping and large number of guest houses and hotels and resorts, with rates from very reasonable to hugely expensive at over $400 USD per night.  Ubud has become very popular on the tourism circuit and its' prices have increased correspondingly but still the pricing for Spa treatments are very economical in comparison with elsewhere in the world, especially Europe and North America.  In Ubud there is a very old komaneka monkey forest tree.  There are volcanoes to the North and East in Bali and these areas receive lots of rain, whereas the Western side of Bali is very dry and the Bali National Park even has tigers.  Volcanoes erupted in 1917, and 1926 and in 1963 two volcanoes erupted in Indonesia and nothing would grow because of the large amount of residual ash.  Since the farming community were devastated at being unable to grow crops, the Indonesian government developed a relocation program where they moved population away from Sumatra and  Bali to Borneo - we had heard about this translocation project a few days previously while in Kumai.  Each family that was translocated was given 2 hectares of land to farm.  

The Botanical Gardens are close to the town of Bedugai and are quite an attraction according to Nick.  The type of trees that we could see from the bus were changing to fruit trees as the altitude increased and we got closer to the volcano.  There are 9 types of banana trees in Bali, and more than 40 banana tree types within Indonesia.  As far as snakes go there are no cobra or python, just small green snakes.

The road to the volcano gains altitude continuously and you realise that the road is actually along a ridge which is the edge of the volcanic caldera, with a huge and deep valley on both sides.  We were lucky enough to arrive at the volcano in time to see the summit before it clouded over which it does every day - so we managed to see the massive volcano and large valley with lake at the bottom and take photos of course!  You can trek to the top of the volcano should you wish, but Nick did tell us it gets very cold at the top!  It is still active and you can frequently see smoke still coming from its' summit.

After enjoying the view outside we went into the Grand Puncak Sari restaurant for a very good buffet lunch - all local Indonesian dishes which were excellent. Bali is known for its' very tasty but spicy food and everyone enjoyed lunch - I think there must have been at least 30 different dishes available - my favourite being the pork and fish satay with fresh peanut sauce - mmm  good!  Mind you - they also had onion rings which were amazing - the onions were sweet and the batter was so light, almost like tempura - I think most of us would have had more given the chance!  The fried rice and noodles were excellent, and Linda confirmed that the hot sauce was REALLY hot!

After lunch around 245pm we headed back down the caldera ridge and enjoying the colourful fruit and vegetable stands set up along both sides of the road - the owners take great pride in their goods and arrange everything in small vertical piles arranged meticulously to look appetising and get you to stop and buy.  We saw lots of Durian (tastes wonderful and smells awful we were told time and again) and Jackfruit - which looks similar to Durian large (about the size of a watermelon) with a bumpy green skin.  The jackfruit is bright yellow inside and cut into sections , the pith is removed and it tastes good but quite sticky. 

After a 45 minute drive, our next 30 minute stop (unscheduled but a nice bonus) was at a coffee plantation, where we all tried a small glass of many types of coffee including ????? but I think the biggest novelty was the coffee made from the beans which are eaten by a cat but not absorbed - so when the beans are retrieved from the cat's output!! it is made into very expensive coffee which costs about $5 a small glass!  There was also a small store which carried a wide variety of gift items: coffee, essential soaps and oils, chocolate, tea - beautifully packaged and lovely gifts to take home (if you had room left in your suitcase!)

By now we were all getting tired but enjoyed the Tampaksiring Temple which had apparently only been discovered in recent years.  It is an amazing temple built down at the bottom of a small but steep ravine, which required us to walk down all these steep steps - and climb back up again afterwards!  We arrived after closing time but they allowed us to enter (you have to pay to enter every temple as a tourist, the fee here was 15,000 rupiah about $1.50 each) and we wrapped a sarong around our waists, which we also had to do at every temple as a sign of respect no uncovered legs or shoulders.  I really loved this temple, it had a very spiritual feel to it - there was a large concrete pool at the bottom where everyone would wash themselves prior to praying.  There was an amazing cave cut out of the cliff side for worshipping inside, and the carvings on the outside of the cave face were spectacular.  Then at the very bottom of the ravine (steps all the way to the bottom) was a small stream surrounded by huge trees and vines, with large carved broken rocks lying on their sides - it made me think of a movie set, it looked staged, but was obviously so very old. 

This was our last stop, and very rewarding it was, before the slow drive back to the Aston Bali hotel in Tangung Benoa through busy traffic.  We left Tampaksiring around 530pm and arrived back at Aston Bali, very tired, just after 730pm.  Our driver and his helper had done an amazing job - he must have nerves of steel to drive that bus through the streets and traffic we had encountered today!

We immediately made our way to the bar overlooking the gardens, pool and beach and shared a cold G&T before freshening up for dinner at the ? restaurant.  Another very busy and successful day in Bali!