Jeff Versus the Volcano, and Other Balinese Tales

Well, I am now on the northern coast of Bali, relaxing at the town of Lovina, a somewhat sleepy resort that lines 8 km of beachfront. My 5 or 6 days in Bali have been all over the place. Getting from Lombok to Bali was a bit of an ordeal, as they loaded all the locals first into the sheltered section of the boat and put the foreigners (who probably paid 10x the ticket price) onto the top deck where they could swelter in the sun and sit on the metal floor and rails for the four hour ride. But I wasn't bitter. :) Anyway, I took refuge in the Bali port village of Padang Bai, where there is a nice clean guesthouse and a great restaurant with a veranda looking out onto the beach. Good food, a cold beer and Stevie Wonder playing on the sound system as the sun set. Couldn't have a more pleasant end to a hard day.

The next stop there was a Ubud, which is trumpeted as the cultural center of Bali. Well, there is a lot of nice art there and lots of dance performances to take in, but the town had the feel of a crowded and overgrown gift shop, so I didn't shed too many tears when we pulled up stakes the next day. Thence begins the epic where Jeff and Andy face the Elements, Inopportune Scheduling and a Balinese Schyster: Gunung Agung.

The volcano Gunung Agung, at over 3,100 meters, is Bali's highest mountain. Most people hike the mountain from a point two or three hours from the summit, on a route that takes them not to the summit, but rather a ledge 100 meters below. In the spirit of Kampot Motorbike Bravado, Rass and I decided upon another approach. One that our guidebook said takes 5 to 6 hours and starts at the foot of the most important temple complex in Bali. And it takes you to the top. How could we refuse? We hired a ride to the Besakih Temple complex, arrived and came in contact with a man who looked like Sadaam Hussein and said he could get us a guide and a room for a set price. It turned out we had to pay more for the room and that our English speaking guide 'hurt himself playing soccer' that night so his non-English speaking 'brother' would take us up. Fine, no problem. A few more bucks to pay and as long as the guides get us to the top, who cares if they are deafmutes, right?

So we roughed it that night. The town cleared out of tourists at five and, being the only foreigners in a town that seem to have as many stray, unfriendly dogs as it did people, we ate a quick dinner at a restaurant of questionable hygiene. And then we tried to grab some sleep, as we were supposed to leave with our guides at 11 at night if we were to make it up by sunrise. We rose at 11, took our daypacks of food and water and met our two teenage guides at our guesthouse. The air was a little nippy (say 65 degrees) because of the 1000 meter elevation of the base, and when I saw the guides in parkas, like the Yank I am in my thin pants and a coolmax longsleeve t-shirt, I thought to myself 'It's so cute how people from Bali dress up when it drops below 70 degrees!'

Anyway, going through a guantlet of barking dogs, we passed through the temple complex (which was beautiful in the daytime, by the way, with architecture resembling a cross between Japanese and Maori/Polynesian) and started to hike the path up the mountain. The first three and a half hours were excellent. The path went from a gentle incline to points where you literally had to pull yourself up by tree roots, but we were really breaking a sweat, getting our lungs going and making serious progress. Soon the incline was steep enough for us to see a good canopy of stars and the Balinese countryside spreading out below. I felt alive and quite happy. And a little bit more chilly.

Then somewhere around 2:30 or 3 am, things got tough. The terrain went from soil to volcanic rock and the wind picked up as the trees dropped away. It soon became extremely clear that we were underdressed AND ahead of schedule. So, about an hour's hike shy of the summit at 3 in the morning, our guides decided to stall, plopped down with us on an exposed rock face and went to sleep in their parkas. Andy and I, laughing nervously and giddily, sat up against the rock next to each other for body heat, ate some food and shivered for about 45 minutes. We all got up and hiked for another half an or so before stopping in a sheltered cleft in the mountain. By then the cold was really affecting me: the shivering was draining my already sapped energy and my body ached all over. We still had about two freezing hours to kill before sunrise. The guides tried to start a fire with grass and failed, but Andy was an allstar woodsman and found some dead sticks and got a blaze going. By then, as Andy saw it, I was in a state of mild hypothermia, shivering uncontrollably and basically hating life. I ached and tried to lay down on the rocks (using an empty water bottle as a pillow) but then I would get too cold, so I'd deal with the aches and warm myself by the fire. We did this for about an hour and a half and I have to give huge props to Andy for keeping the fire going and being chipper.

Needless to say, I was not having too much fun on the summit hike, as the summit always seemed 'just around the corner.' By the time we got there (we had one false peak where we celebreated with a Capri Sun, only to learn we had to go farther), I was beat and really didn't care too much. The view was awesome I suppose, and it is even better when I look back on it, but at that point I don't think I ever cared for so little about something so beautiful: the volcanic rock formations below, the woods of Bali and the ocean on the horizon, a mile and a half below. I took some pictures, tried to eat a cookie and then we began the descent. I started the descent a dead man walking, but perked up to mere stoicism as the air got warmer and thicker. The top of the descent was quite difficult, as veins of solid rock ran through a sea of loose volcanic scree that would slide from beneath your feet. A few falls on both our parts led to some brusied bottoms and roughed up hands. Of course, our guides were like Energizer Mountain Goats, and I think our slow, deliberate and sometimes clumsy pace amused them. The steep descent, which eased into steep, slippery dirt and then flat dirt took about 4 hours, and I can't remember feeling so beat as I did at the end. The trail went on like a petulent child, but it finally petered out into the town. But looking back on it, I am so glad I did it. I wish I had brought a fleece or something, but we are already at the point when we are laughing at the difficulties and happy we did it the hard way. It is the stuff great stories are made of, even if you wish you could chuck the book when you are living them out. So, in the final analysis, the match of Jeff v. Volcano is declared a draw. Jeff summitted, but the mountain defnitely got in its uppercuts.

So, after that long winded tail, we have collapsed into relaxation mode on Bali. Two days ago we rode up to Lovina. Yesterday we rented motorbikes (we had helmets this time and better bikes than in Cambodia) to explore the northern half of the island. We rode out to a national park and hired a boat and a guide to go snorkeling near an island off the coast of Bali with great coral and tons of fish. Our guide Wayon was also a real character, bouncing around like Josh Diehl and doing a surprisingly good job of wooing, or at least flirting with, one of the Belgian matrons we split the boat with. Today we had the bikes again and rode up to Danau Bayan and Danau Bratan, two lakes up in the mountains of central Bali. The lakes were set in gorgeous valleys, and the road was twisty and turny in a really fun, car commercial kind of way. On the drive back we rolled through gorgeous green valleys and beautiful little villages where the smell of the spices people were drying on the sidewalk filled your nose as you passed through. Definitely file it under idyllic.

So, the Dynamic Duo (Jeff and Rass) are preparing to split up in two days, as Andy heads home for a spell before going to do field work in Curacao and I continue on. I'll have a layover in Singapore of two days and then it is off to Kazakhstan for a week before returning to home, where the heart is. And where warm showers, clean bathroom floors and good American food also reside. Big picture wrap-ups will be forthcoming. Thank you again for your notes and have a wonderful time in your day's journey.