Bali Day 2 - Sunrise on another mountain top

This isn't the first sunrise we saw on a mountain top. The first was in Alishan back in Taiwan. This time it's Mount Bartu, and a volcanic mountain at that.

So we woke up 2am in the morning and spent 2 hours on the road. Through the darkness of the night, we sped towards a small village at the foot of the mountain. You have to (and you should) pay the locals to guide you up the mountain. The base of the mountain is dotted with tomato and onion farms, and it's wise to bring along a windbreaker even though you won't need it after the sunrise and descend.

The climb itself - there isn't much of a climb until the last half an hour, was cooling. Mostly you had to trek, and it's a relatively straight path. There are so many tourists climbing the mountain, and with the torches lighting up, it seemed like a mini milkyway on the path up the mountain. As the slopes were steep - very steep -, and it was dark, we did not take photos.

So after a tiring 3 hours and many 5 min breaks, we finally reached the top.

Waiting for the clouds to disperse and the Sun to pop out into the sky.

Then we grabbed some breakfast (which is a hard boiled egg, banana and some bread), and started exploring the top, together with the monkeys.

Got smoked by the steam from the vents.. After all, the volcano is ACTIVE. The last eruption was about 50 years ago, and urban legend states the mountain erupts about once every 100 years. We'll see about that.

Tablet showing the height of Mount Bartu, which is about 1,171m above sea level. Monkeys bear testament to the height~

Down we go, and over looking Lake Bartu. It's an inland lake where farming activities were carried out.

Looking back at the mountain, it reminded me of Scotland. Didn't seem it was Indonesia.

We did spa after the descend, with the intent to remove fatigue from our bodies. But we chose lymphatic massage. This video shows, roughly I suppose.

So you can imagine us being touched for an hour and a half, and I got touched by a male masseur @.@.. It did not even relieve me of fatigue, but made me enter a healing crisis the next day, imagine 5 toilet trips of diarrhoea.

Then next we went to a coffee plantation, where they also make Luwak coffee. Luwak is the cat in the picture below.

Luwak is a nocturnal cat and it only feeds on coffee beans and some vegetables. The poo (with the beans) is washed, roasted, washed and roasted twice more, before being grounded into powder. I gave it a try and it's acidic. If you're a fan of Vietnamese coffee, you'll like Luwak coffee. Otherwise, don't bother.

So after the coffee plantation trip we passed by some rice fields, had dunch (dinner + lunch), and a bit of street shopping, before returning to the hotel. Needed to rest for another day of early rise (3am departure).

To be continued...