Seven Days in Bali

Sometime in 2018, the text arrived: "Hey, want to climb a mountain in July 2019?". Of course, the answer is yes and the following vacation is laid out at the beginning of the year. What began as a simple few days on a mountain quickly escalated to include beaches, river tracing, scuba diving, and jungle terraces.

Day 1: Arrival and Seminyak 

We spent one night on Seminyak beach and to be honest, it was enough. This is a classic party beach with drinks starting early and continuing late into the evening. We enjoyed our alcohol with a sunset and then turned-in early to have a cheap massage before an early morning journey to Lombok.

Day 2: Lombok Waterfalls

Always on the move, we woke up around 6 or 7 to catch the ferry over to Lombok Island and meet up with friends. Two complimentary taxis and a "fast boat" later, we stepped into our mountain villa around 3 pm that afternoon. Dropping the bags in the door, we headed back out to squeeze in some late afternoon river tracing under the mountain.

Days 3 & 4: Rinjani

On day three, we began what we came here to do and started up the mountain. This adventure is outlined in its own blog here.

Days 5 & 6: Snorkeling and Scuba Diving

Arriving from the mountain the previous day, we were able to wake up early on Gili Trawangan and get in the water. We started this day by diving with baby sharks and blowing bubbles. Shortly after surfacing, we got back on another boat to enjoy a private snorkeling tour of the local islands.

This was the most touristy thing we'd done since stepping off the plane. Thankfully, the private boat helped us at least pretend to have some of this paradise to ourselves. We visited five different spots to swim with turtles, underwater sculpture gardens, blue coral and barnacle-covered bicycles.

At the fifth location, we stopped for lunch on one of the more resorty islands nearby where a seller convinced us all to buy matching turtle bracelets made from local volcanic rock and tiger's eye. They were custom made for us on the spot and subjected to the fire rest, so they must be real. Right?

We spent the afternoon exploring by bicycle and ended the day with drinks on the beach while watching the sun go down. The next morning, we did it all over again, but instead of snorkeling, we did a wreck dive instead. Everything else was basically the same: baby sharks, bicycles, drinks, and sunsets. It was perfect.

Day 7: Ubud

We had to get back to Bali to catch our flight out, so we decided to spend our last night in Ubud. This tourist-loved destination is all over Instagram because of the famous Bali Swing over the Teggalang Rice Terrace and I wanted to see what that was all about. Unsurprisingly, like most things on the internet, it's cool, but it's not "I just climbed a mountain and swam with sharks" cool.

The terrace is very pretty and there are swings EVERYWHERE for tourists to enjoy... for a price. It was here that a little girl selling postcards for "school" got me. Tracking us all over the field, she got her money and my family got their postcards.

In town, we tried civet coffee (look it up) and did some temple exploring. The jungle town had a very different feel from the other destinations on our trip. To our disappointment, we also learned that souvenirs were much cheaper here.

Conclusion

We made the most of our time. Rinjani is absolutely worth it. With more time and a bigger budget, I think I would have skipped Gili Tragawan and flown over to Komodo Island instead. Ubud and Seminyak were disappointments to me. However, choosing an out-of-town hotel in Ubud with a private jungle pool may have changed that.

Getting Around

Boats, boats and more boats. We took boats everywhere: private boats, fast boats, ferry boats, etc. They were economic, efficient and I think the complimentary hotel transfers in Seminyak and Ubud made them worth it for us. We went with Blue Ferry Express for the long journey from Bali Island to Lombok because they let us prebook online.

Mt. Rinjani: The Prettiest Climb in Indonesia

It went moderately steep, intensely steep, moderately steep, intensely steep, and so on in a repeating pattern... for 10-12 hours. Unfortunately for the men, it quickly became apparent that if we were all going to make it to the top, they were going to have to do most of the lifting. We're not weak, every single person in our little group has a history of over-night high-mountain climbing, but we all struggled with this one.



Don't get me started on the ascent to the campsite. That was just hiking uphill on loose ground that would literally give way and roll you backward. You had to dig the hiking sticks in before taking a step or run up. (Yes, we had to go back down the same way. Yes, everyone fell.) This was hard work that really pushed us and made us question our sanity for spending our precious few vacation days on this. What the hell were we thinking?



Then we saw it... a massive caldera filled with crystal blue water and a little smoking chimney. Suddenly, the hike didn't seem that bad anymore. It was perfect. Better than we could have hoped for. After six months of planning, we were looking at what had before just been an image on our computers, another name on our bucket list... and it was better than any of us imagined. It's not often that something actually looks better than the photographs.



So, was it worth it? Absolutely. We summited twice. Once for sunset and then again for sunrise.

The guys carried most of our gear (clothes). While the porters carried everything else and a little extra. They literally carried a watermelon up this volcano. Sitting in a circle, chowing down on fried bananas, noodles and watermelon on top of a f*ing 3,000 m mountain, it was decided that they were getting a massive tip. The porters were also nice enough to share other things with us, like some hand-rolled local cigarettes to celebrate with at the summit. It was a great time.



We were extremely lucky to have such a great team that took care of us. There were definitely some less fortunate groups on the mountain. We're experienced hikers who know to pack rain gear, but when it started to pour on the way down, they pulled out ponchos for us that they had packed just in case. I didn't see any other hikers getting free ponchos. One greedy lady came up and even asked for ours. Poor unfortunate thing. Luckily, the rain held off until we were almost off the mountain and through the trickiest climbs. We practically ran down the last few sections, jumping over roots and quickly expanding mud puddles.



On this trip, we hiked with Hajar Trekking and our guide's name was Oggy. Great guy. Highly recommend. We bonded over music, relationship problems and good tobacco. This is the kind of hike that resets the bar on what you think you can accomplish as well as on what you think mother nature is capable of. It's short, only two days and one night, but a game-changer. From here, we went on to do two days of diving at one of the nearby islands.

Images courtesy of Louis :)