14. Volcano -- Mount Batur

14.  Volcano -- Mount Batur

Rugged Slopes of Mt. Batur

Agung, our driver, took us next to Kintamani, a town near Mount Batur. This was our lunch stop on our all-day tour. We sat in a terraced restaurant overlooking the scenery. Did you think we would go hiking on this Volcano?  Those days are gone… and even years ago I am not sure I would have wanted to walk these rugged trails. But yes, young people in modern hiking gear loved the treks, I read.

The volcano, Mt. Batur, is still very active and the last lava flow from 2008 and its devastation could still be seen. The caldera is large, very large and most of it is filled with water now, forming a deep lake, Lake Batur. Since the year 1800, this volcano has erupted 24 times. So the area is unpredictable, at anytime a big boom could end the lives of a lot of people on Bali.

Lake Batur and Batur Village From the Restaurant Windoe

Bali is volcanic; between Mount Agung and Mt Batur one can easily see that Bali is still part of the ‘Ring of Fire’. Yet this Mountain, this Lake was for the ancients the source of all the water on the Island of Bali. Somehow on our tour with Agung we seem to follow the water. I am not sure Agung consciously knew it, but we went from water temple to water temple to find the source of the water here at Mt. Batur.

The climate here on top of the Mountain is cooler. It’s a haven for citrus fruit and large plantations are visible. From our adjacent mountain top view, Mt. Batur was like a sleeping giant.

We were lucky when we went to our lunch stop because the rain had stopped up in the mountains and the fog that encircles the top of Batur most of the time, was gone. We had an unobstructed view of it through the Restaurant windows.

Don't Remember What It Was But It Was Delicious

This tourist spot Restaurant Agung took us to serves a daily buffet. Price per person 150,000 Rupiah: US$ 10.50.  For locals, this is an expensive stop. Only foreigners would eat here. It was busy, the hostess was kind of rude and abrasive, insisting we use the buffet (more expensive) rather than ordering from the menu (takes longer). But then…not everybody is Canadian, right?

The food was good on the buffet; the three of us had the best of the best. 

Rambutan - Like Lychee

Salak

Peeled Salak - Very Good

Agung, because we took him out for lunch here, felt he needed to pay us back, somehow. He found some fruit we had not tried before and gave them to us as a gift: We had Rambutan, a kind of Indonesian Lychee.  And then he gave us each a Salak  and told us, peel the fruit, it tastes like an apple. YUMMY!  Salak has a large inedible pit similar to an avocado, but I loved the fruit. I never had one of those before and I am surprised it is not to be had in the American supermarket. YUM!

Here is a fruit (Salak) that could take over the world…why does nobody offer it to us?