[De Tom]

My wife and i decided to 'take a hike' .. *cough.. into the Bali Mountains. It's been almost 2 years since we took a day trip into the mountains and we felt it was time to take a break from everything.

The road there was not so bad. Traffic is much better on Sundays since less people are in transit for work.
Didn't get any rain at all the way up into the mountains and it was generally quite clear. On the way back we had probably 30 cars overtaking us and 2-3 of them were dangerously reckless and speeding. At one time a car overtook us along a bend and was faced with a motorbike right in front of him. He could not break, he could not turn (mountain roads) so the motorbike drove right in between our two cars. Lucky him an angel sat on his shoulder that afternoon.

It always strikes me that the weather is very similar to that of autumn in Scandinavia up in the Bali mountains. Cool (almost cold), Hazy, abit of rain and lots of leaf trees and vegetation. Dawn was even better up in the mountains where we for some time could only see enchanting multicoloured clouds slowly drift by at the high-elevation horizon leaving us with the feeling of the land and us floating or hoovering above the clouds.

Here's a few photographs i took that afternoon. Enjoy!

Crater Lake from the mountain range


A beautiful tree in the haze along a rift


A huge old tree with a offering shrine at it's roots

[De Tom]

Thanks. Glad you enjoyed the photographs! We hiked around the central lakes in Bali. The crater lake in the top picture is Danau Tamblingan. Rain has been coming and going. Had lots of rain and stormy weather for about one week but it stopped about 3 days ago. Usually when you have a cyclone passing by northern Australia we get abit of the leftovers here in Bali with 'genteng crackers', sudden heavy rain and really strong winds pushing rain to fall go horizontal instead of vertical.