Day 8: Ubud, Bali

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Today's Highlights:

-Volcano hike

-Spa life

Robbie here again! Well today saw us get up in the morning at 2:00... Did you even know there was a 2:00 in the morning? Well it's very real. We woke up, hopped into a van, snacked on some fried banana, shuttled to the base of Mt Batur--the same volcano that we biked around yesterday--but this time we chose to hike up this doozy, while half asleep. 

-This is actually on our way down the volcano, since photos of us hiking up would just be a black rectangle. 

Hiking up this thing in the dark was no easy task. I felt like a nerd because I wore my glasses on this excursion and the more I sweated the foggier my glasses got, so I'd take them off but then I couldn't see a dang thing! There were a couple times where I'd slam right into the back of Angie because I was trying to see where my next step was rather than look up at what was in front of me. 

After 2 hours of hiking in the dark, we finally made it to the summit. We were soaking wet with sweat. And when I say soaking, I mean it. We couldn't find a dry spot on our shirts--I tried wiping off my glasses but I couldn't clean them because it would just leave streaks of sweat on them. Woof.  And now that we were sitting still at the top we instantly got super cold and had to sneakily get our soaking wet shirts off and our jackets on. PLUS, we got to pack in a breakfast with, you guessed it, more banana. We really can't get enough of them so no complaints here. 

-Breakfast at the peak. We also had hard boiled eggs that, legend says, were cooked in the volcano's steam geysers 

Before getting there Angie and I assumed we would be a handful of people hiking up the volcano. Boy were we wrong. 

-Probably 10% of the hikers on Mt Batur. Our guide guessed there were about 500 hikers on a daily basis. 

There were a steady stream of hikers the entire way up the volcano. It was actually kinda neat seeing the string of head lamps zig zag all the way to the top. It made the volcano look like a Christmas tree. 

Anyway, the sun finally rose but due to cloud cover there was no colorful sunrise. That was a small bummer but the views were still breath taking.

We hiked back down and got to our hotel--all before 11 am! We showered and instantly booked a Balinese full body massage at a spa close by. It. Was. Awesome. 

They greeted us with moist towels, cool drinks, a foot scrub and wash, then ushered us into a couples massage room. I am having a hard time describing this experience without it sounding inappropriate. Nothing sketchy went down, but dang, it felt so relaxing and amazing. It was so amazing it made me regret all the times we turned down all the offers for spa treatment we have gotten walking down the street up to this point. We should've cancelled all other activities and just had 10 days of spa. Anyway... It was sweet.  We were in such a state of euphoria that we forgot to take any photos. Hah!  So... I'll just paste this picture of a stray dog sleeping on the sidewalk instead. 

-After our massages we could've easily slept on the sidewalk like this pooch.

Once we got to our hotel Angie's cold (that's been coming on for a few days now) hit full force, so while we were deciding whether we should take it easy or go out for our last night in Ubud, we fell asleep. 

Well we woke up 3 hours later, cursed our comfortable bed, planned the next day and then went to sleep at 8 pm.