Bali - Day 6

Latanya and I woke up at 3:30am. Geday had planned to pick us up at 4:30am and then we were going to be picking up Jess and Fran for our tour of Bali. Geday arrived promptly and we made our way to Jess and Fran's guest house. They were waiting on the curb when we arrived and so they jumped in and we headed toward Mt. Batur. Mt. Batur is a volcano on the northeast side of the island. The sunrise at Mt. Batur is claimed to be breathe taking. I guess since we saw the sunset on the west it was fitting to try and see the sunrise on the east, key word try.

As we made our way, once we began to gain altitude we noticed a think layer of fog surrounding us. After a long drive, two hours worth we finally stopped at a potential great view point. We all got out walked over to an early morning food market. It was pitch black still and everyone had been there and set up for awhile. Most every vendor looked at us in a surprised manner. Either they could not believe us foreigners were up this early or up this early and at their morning market. Anyways, after a quick look through we head back to the van to wait for the fog to clear.

While in the car Geday stood outside for some reason, Fran accidentally sat on a pastry in a plastic bag in the front passenger seat. It turns out that the pastry just so happened to be Geday's breakfast. Fran felt so bad. He would make it up to him later though, by buying him lunch on our drive home. So more time past by and the fog had still yet to clear. We knew it was getting to be that time for the sunrise now. We got out of the car and walked to the view point. The viewpoint was still covered with fog. We waited some more. Finally after some more waiting we began to see a little shimmer of light. It was below our vantage point, we of course thought it was the sunrise. It turns out the shimmer was not the sunrise but in fact the reflection of the sun already risen shining off the lake below. Though we did not see the actual act of the sunrising near Mt. Batur we still got to see an amazing sight. After more of the clouds lifted and burned off we were able to take in an amazing panoramic view of Mt. Batur and the surrounding valley.

After we took it all in enough we climbed back in the car and drove to Lovina. Lovina is at the north of Bali. It's home to chilled out beach lounging with black sand. Latanya really wanted to see the black sand and so did I, we had never seen it before. Black was not the exact color however. It was more of a charcoal color. Anyways the dark color is due to the volcanic nature of the area. It was pretty neat and interesting.

We all got a little breakfast and walked around for a little bit. At this point it was getting to midday and we knew we had to be back in the early evening. It was a heck of a long drive to make it there but well worth it. The windy trip back was exhausting but some of the scenery was just amazing. We stopped on the side of a cliff at a turnout and took in the beautiful tiered rice terraces. Absolutely gorgeous! We stopped again as mentioned before to have lunch. Fran and Geday had two full plates of Balinese dishes. It looked pretty darn good. It was suckling pig with an array of goodies. Everyone else were not hungry. The best part, apart from the great food was the price. I think Fran bought Geday's meal for like a dollar.

We all pilled back into the car and made our way back to Ubud. We dropped Jess and Fran off at their place. We were going to part with them for a little while. We weren't leaving them for good though. We had talked about meeting them once more before we left. Geday, again dropped us off. He was such a nice driver and very kind. We lucked out having him. We crashed out for sure after the long trip. The next day we were definitely taking advantage of the beach, all day. Oh, and we had to find another place to stay. Oh, boy what were we going to do!!! AHHHH!!!