I have been to a lot of places in this world and seen a lot of different sights and structures throughout my life but I’m not lying to you when I tell you that the views from the top of the mountain was one of the most breath taking views I have ever witnessed. Firstly I have to say that due to only having two hours of sleep the night before, a few people in our party woke up three minutes before the actual pick up time of 2:30 AM. However, the driver was kind enough to wait for us and we were only fifteen minutes late to leave our hotel. Our driver made up for our lost time and actually got us to the base of the mountain at the scheduled four AM, safely of course. We were then greeted by our mountain hiking guide, Bobby and Nyoman, I’m not sure about the second name but I believe I’m correct. We had two guides since their rule is one guide every five hikers and we had six people in our group. The guides were really nice and their English were really good. We started the trek and I gotta say, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be even with only two hours of sleep the night before. The guides were kind enough to stop for breaks whenever anybody in our party needed them. We made it up to the top just in time to see the sun rise and I have to say that I never even imagined how beautiful the views would be from the top of this volcano. In the back ground we can see smoke coming out of the active Mt. Agung but don’t worry, it is far enough that Mt. Batur is out of Mt. Agung’s danger zone. Our guides prepared us some simple breakfast, banana sandwiches and hard boiled eggs that were cooked by the steam coming off this volcano. The guides let us stay up on the top as long as we wanted and when we were all pictured out, we started making our way down. The way down is much easier than the way up but you do have to stay alert since a wrong step can still cause you to eat dirt.

We decided to skip the hot springs as all of my friends were pretty beat after the hike so the driver was kind enough to take us to restaurant Bebek Tapis Sawah instead before taking us back to our villa.

All in all, I have to say that this is a once in a life time experience and one that should be taken if you are ever in Bali. I cannot stop raving about our tour guides who were just excellent and are an integral part to us reaching the top of this volcano.