Bali: Mountains

Have I mentioned yet that Bali has mountains? Specifically, volcanic mountains.

Gunung Agung (Mount Batur) is the tallest and located on the eastern side of the island. It last erupted in 1963-64 and is still considered active. We didn’t drive to that part of the island, but if we had, we could have seen fresh lava flows on the eastern flank going all the way down to the sea.

We were able to explore Gunung Batur (Mount Batur) a bit, though, and it was just lovely. Mount Batur is an active volcano located beside a large lake and the whole shebang is located inside a huge caldera.

We visited the village of Kintamani, which is on the western edge of the caldera and offers stunning views.

One thing I haven’t mentioned in my posts is that Bali isn’t all that far from the equator, so the weather is the same all year. Down in the lowlands, highs were in the 80s/low 90s, with jungle-like humidity. Up in the mountains, however, things were delightfully cool and crisp. Given that we had spent the earlier part of the day wringing wet while exploring temples, you can imagine how happy we were to spend some time at a higher elevation.

Kintamani itself wasn’t overly noteworthy. Lovely, yes, but completely over-run with merchants trying to sell, sell, sell, which made it hard to just walk around and appreciate the town. That was actually a problem most places we went, with people harassing us to buy, buy, buy. We learned to just tune them out, but it was a constant process.

So that’s the mountains. Would you all be interested in a post on the house we rented and/or Balinese homes?