Mount Rinjani.....making it to the top

Bali

We arrived at Kuta, Bali at midnight and find ourselves combing the streets for somewhere to sleep. The great thing about Asia is 9 times out of 10 there's no need to book accommodation in advance. You can just pick up some random man on the street who you think you might trust and he'll take you to the dodgiest room he can find. Thankfully, we only had 5 hours sleep before we were up at 5.30am to make our way to Lombok.

Lombok

We took a ferry ride over to Lombok to reach our hotel in Sengigi where we met up with Chris (our friend from the UK office) and his girlfriend Kate.

Mount Rinjani

Day 1 -

We were up once again at 6am to begin our next 3 day volcano adventure. Our hike started at 601 meters (nearly 2000 feet) at the National Park Entrance where Abdul (our wonderful guide) registered our hike for 3 days. The first part of the walking started off easy, hot and uphil and carrying our backpacks for 3 days worth of clothes. We huffed and puffed up the hill whilst gently being over taken by our 4 porters in flip flops carrying ALL our camping equipment and food as they flew effortlessly up the hill. Abdul told us one of the porters as actually 40 years old. Oh the shame.
We had a couple of rest stops up where the porters would literally whip up a gourmet noodle dish with eggs and vegetables by practically rubbing sticks together. They would find the wood in the jungle bring it back chop it up and then use it to cook our meal. That night we made it up to about 2000 meters (6500 feet) and our porters set up camp for us.

Day 2 -

We reach the craters edge, which is a HUGE crater right in the middle of the volcano which blew some hundred years ago. And left a much smaller"child volcano" which had actually blown just in May and was still smoking!!! Also within the crater was a beautiful blue lake and hot springs. We hiked our way down to the hot springs for a dip and take in the spectacular views. That night we made our way to the summit edge to camp and get ready for our 3am summit!!

Day 3 -

So up we get at 3am (!!!!!) to head out up the summit. Luckily we had to leave the tents and gear at back the camp so we werent weighed down with backpacks. It was pitch black and all you can see on the way up are lines of headlamps slowly hiking upwards. At camp we were at roughly 2700 meters, so we needed to go hike another 1000 meters to reach the top. The summit was nearly completely Volcanic sand which meant 2 steps up and 1 slide down....and its cold. really really cold. The coldest ive been in the 11 weeks ive been in Singapore. Sadly, we were not well equipped. Summer shorts and socks were a bad fashion choice that day.
I can't empahsise enough how hard that last summit really was. I cried once, and threatened to give up 1000 times. It was the most physically challenging thing I have ever done and when you throw the cold into it, you just want to give up. Thankfully our fantastic guide wouldnt allow me to just give up so pretty much dragged me by my hair to the top. I was the first girl to reach the top that day, and Kate and another girl followed. Once we reached the top i realised the reason we were there....Breathtaking, Absolutely incredible to see across all of Lombok at sunrise. I didn't regret any of it for a single second.
We slowly made our way down the mountain right back down to sea level (so basically we had to come down the whole 3746 metres down. It was the first time I actually felt old. My knees ached, my back ached and my feet were crippled. Luckily we had our helpful porters carrying mine and Kate's backpacks down (much to Chris and Brian's jealousy). We got back to our hotel that night barely being able to walk, but feeling pretty proud of ourselves and suitably exhausted.

The next day Brian and I headed back to Bali for our last night before heading back to Singapore. After our Kuta experience we decided to try somewhere new in Bali in the hope that we would experience the exotic beaches everyone had been talking about. We stayed in a sleepy town called Sanur and once again just wondered around to find a decent resort to sleep. Brian treated us to a lovely hotel with bungalow style rooms and a gorgeous pool where we could relax and swim.

Mount Rinjani for one, was absolutely breathtaking. And Lombok was pretty beautiful. Bali on the other hand was sadly disappointing. There were lots and lots of Aussie tourists, and you just find yourself harassed at every corner by "yes, taxi" and "you wan massage"....highly annoying. My overall impression of Indonesia is good food, and friendly locals...but avoid the tourist traps!!