Climbing Gunung Batur

The alarms went off at 3am for our ascent of Mt Batur. Hamish looked incredulous when being woken in the middle of the night declaring "What's the point of walkin up the mountain if we can't see anything anyway!" 

We gobbled some mangoes and bananas we had brought with us ( opting for the cheaper price without the supplied food and drink - sulphur cooked eggs up the volcano - no thanks!) donned our head torches and arrived at the starting point at 4am of a fairly challenging (steep  gradient, some big step ups and loose gravelly path) 2 hour climb to the summit. Despite paying for 2 guides for our group (the 8 of us and a young French couple - poor things!) a local dude got chatting to us ( in the darkness it was difficult to know that we weren't chatting to one of our guides) with a sob story about his wife needing medicine and he couldn't get work and was keen for us to buy his overpriced coke at the top. He latched on to Hamish, dragging him up the climb by his hand. Needless to say we then felt obliged to purchase a few of his cans of coke at the top. 

We made it!

Steam rising from the side of the volcano behind Will

The end of the summit walk 

Hamish feeling the steam with his left hand as he walks the narrow ridge line down the other side of the summit

The steam seeping out of the mountain

Above the clouds!

Starting the descent with the darker black lava fields at the bottom left from when the volcano erupted in 1963 destroying the entire village (bar the "lucky temple")and to the right the lighter shade from the 1926 eruption.

The boys silhouetted

Warming hands, volcano style ( it's hot enough to cook eggs and banana in the holes)

You can hear the volcanic rock "snap, crackle and popping" just like a..................

And still we go down through some steamy damp sections 

And some dusty, gravelly sections where you could get some steam up!

Our second guide (the older quids son joined in with the fun with our boys)!

Steamy!

And still we go down (no wonder the track up was such hard work!)

Will in his element! Covered in dirt!

Hamish looking relieved to be almost down