Last days in Bali: farniente and a nocturnal hike!

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We had three very relaxing days in Gili Meno, during which we cycled around the tiny island, spent time swimming and eating. I had the best pumpkin raviolis (although I never had any before so it doesn’t mean much!) in a posh restaurant on the beach and we had many cheap “nasi goreng” and “mie goreng” (fried rice and fried noodles). We left the island to go back to Bali’s mainland, in Amed. I was pretty ill then so I spent time sleeping while the boys went on a scooter ride. We visited the Water Palace, which was a nice place with many ponds where some kings used to live (as you can see, I didn’t read much about it hence the very unspecific information!).
We took a taxi to Kintamani, next to the active volcano Mount Batur. I was feeling terrible but when our host woke us up at 4am to climb the volcano, saying the weather was good, we decided to go. The sky was beautiful, we could see so many stars! We left quite late and the climb, which we were told was 45 minutes, ended up being an hour and twenty minutes at a fast pace. We missed sunrise and it was very cloudy at the top so we couldn’t see much.
After this disappointing experience, we continued our hike and had a breakfast cooked with volcanic steam, which was quite cool!! We walked down a very slippery path and all of us slipped at least once but thankfully, no one got hurt. We ended our seven hours hike by going down black sand dunes and walking on black lava.
After lunch, I had a rest as I was still quite ill and the boys went to visit some hot springs with our friend/bed neighbour Laura. Apparently, the water was really dirty and it ruined their experience.
On the next day, we left back to where we started: Sanur. We stayed one night at Semarandana, where Shaun and I had stayed the first time we went to Bali, a few months back. I went to the pharmacy to get some antibiotics as I was still feeling quite bad. We had a nice lunch and then spent a lazy afternoon relaxing.
On the next day, we changed hotels and came back to the one where I had left my swimsuit a week before that! We went to the Tegenungan waterfalls in the afternoon. It was a very touristy, very busy spot and was nothing really special.
The next day was spent walking at the beach.

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