We had a few hours kip in a ragged little hotel in the village of Cemoro Lawang, some 1700 meters above sea level, and rose at 2.30am to meet with a couple of people for a torch-lit hike up to a high viewpoint. As the sun came up, the view was astonishing - not just for the sunrise, but for the early morning clouds which form a strange lake within the giant caldera from which Mt. Bromo protudes smoking away. Mt. Semeru sits in the background occasionally spitting out gas. A few hundred other people had taken jeeps another way up to the viewpoint, but that's cheating really - and on the hike back down we watched the cloud lake evaporate slowly as the day grew brighter, even if we were a bit surprised in daylight by how dangerous the hiking route actually was.
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| Cloudy Caldera |
As we got back to the village, passing Tengger tribe-people who make a difficult living from farming in the uneven landscape of a volcano, we made our way down a path on the steep-sided caldera and crossed the fantastical "sea of sand" - now free of clouds - to the steaming Bromo crater. The sea is a little spaghetti-western with poncho-garbed tribesmen on horseback offering lifts, and becomes surreal as you pass a blocky Hindu temple and take a path enscribed into a lava flow. The crater of Mt. Bromo sounds more impressive than it looks; sounding like an enthusiastic kettle and looking like a sauna - but the sulphur is a veritable assault on the old nose.
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| The Sandy Sea of Sand |
We took the afternoon bus out to Surabaya airport, but our plans went a little awry as the flight we wanted to Flores island was fully booked - so we instead had to get another few hours sleep in a nearby hotel and be up for a 6am flight east to the famous island of Bali, which gave us an aerial view of the ring-of-fire, a landscape of active volcanoes which make the tiny towns and cities that sit on them look a little silly.
Next stop was Ubud, the "cultural capital" of Bali, a town (or really; a series of villages) where homes look like tiny temples, full of carvings and decorative architecture and many with family shrines. Each morning the streets are dotted with banana leaf trays of rice and burning incence to avoid while walking. The island of Java was predominantly Islamic with amped up daily prayers from mosques at all times of day and night, but Bali is Hindu - which seems to mean less beef, more pork and nearly everything is the cause for a ceremony or celebration.
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| Java from on high and Ubud passing by |
The home stay we stopped at for a few days was like lodging in a palace. It was nice to start the day there with fruit and jaja giling-giling (mini rice crepes with coconut shavings). The gentleman owner was, like most residents of Ubud, a musician - and we were invited to see him play in a 30-strong gamelan orchestra for a series of dances. The dances were a kind of shaking paranoid shuffle, with elaborate costumes and masks, and the music was a riptide of percussion and strong pentatonic tones with looping melodies. Many of the timbres were unusual, with some bells sounding like guitars and ringing bamboo instruments giving warmth. It was so wonderful. So much so we actually had a little lesson on Balinese percussion elsewhere in town - not that they will be letting us join the orchestra anytime soon.
Another great show is the Kecak fire dance. It looks as tribal as things get but was only actually created in the 1930s by a German painter to tell a story from the Ramayana to the groovy tune of a ritual trance chant. No instruments, the first two acts are just 80 voices in complex patterns of chanting, singing and shouting. The fire dance comes in the third act and features a guy with a broom kicking around some embers. Still fun - but a little worrying on the front row.
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| Music! |
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| Around Ubud |
To the south of the town area is the Sacred Monkey Forest, which is a forest with lots of monkeys who may or may not be sacred. They are very naughty. One minute in and a monkey had stolen my water bottle - failing to grab it he just stuck his teeth in and drank! The forest is full of broken temples and ancient carved bridges - all of which are a big violent playground for the critters... monkey babies were stolen and new baby monkeys probably conceived without even the semblance of shame. A couple of lady monkeys took a liking to Kath, and climbed over her dress to look for tasty morsels in her hair. I tried to persuade them off but one bared her teeth, and neither of us fancied rabies so we just pretended to calm down. The monkey must have found few morsels as she did jump off, thankfully, and we scampered out of the forest sharpish.
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| Little furry balls of evil |
A short bike ride to the north of Ubud is the less violent phenomenon of "The White Herons of Petulu" where every sunset thousands of herons fly back to roost in a tiny village called Petulu. We got there with a little time to spare, and watched wave after wave of birds returning home. It's not so much spectacular as just strange how many birds try and fit in so few trees when there are plenty of other trees outside the village. Anyway, if you do visit then take an umbrella as things get a bit messy under those trees.
For an adrenaline fix we thought we'd try something new - white water rafting! It's a little like teamwork kayaking in unsuitable water, and for this the cascading river Agung around Ubud was perfect. There were more than a few meter high drops and our guide kept 'accidently' leading us under waterfalls. Great stuff! To remind us we're in Asia, the porters then carried all the gear and deflated rafts upon their heads to the van.
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| Herds of birds and daft rafters |
Still needing a tad more adrenaline we booked a day of mountain biking with Bali Bikes, and ended up on an epic ride. It turns out that much of northern Bali is in a giant caldera. We were given a lift up to the rim and then rode around the edge for a little while, the sound of a joyous ceremony drifting up from a town below, the ocean to our left and the giant Mount Batur in roughly the middle of the caldera to our right. Soon, we were on gnarly single-track and I realised how rusty I was with technical riding as I skidded down on my knees. I took it a bit slower after that as we passed chilli, choko and coffee plantations. As the ground flattened out the surface became slippy with volcanic dust and ash, and then we were riding over lava flows from 50 years ago. The ride was only about 35km but was pretty rough and finished beneath the mountain at Lake Batur.
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| Bicycle! |
And then it was time to move on, so we took a flight east again to Flores island. The plane was small and the airport at the little fishing town of Labuan Bajo wasn't much bigger. The town is a gateway to the Komodo national park, famous for it's dragons, and we stopped one night before shipping out to a nearby island to see how jurassic things could really get...
- Jon
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| Labuan Bajo |
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