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In the Path
of a Volcano
After driving around Australia
and New Zealand for a year, working in Darwin after cyclone
Tracey it was time to do some more travelling. I had already
visited Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Luxemburg, Austria, Germany,
France, Holland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Now I was on my way to Bali before travelling through Indonesia,
Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Finland, Sweden,
Denmark and England.
Arriving in Bali and after the usual sight-seeing around Kuta
Beach, I moved up to relax in Ubud, where artists and wood
carvers are famous and where the tropical jungle and rice
paddy fields surround this beautiful place. From Ubud I moved
further up the mountain on the back of a truck and found a
cheap hotel on the edge of the Mount Batur crater rim. The
hotel had a tremendous view of Bali's largest crater lake
and the active volcano which was erupting at the time. The
view at night, watching the volcano spew red hot lava high
into the sky was just amazing. I couldn't wait for a closer
look so I soon planned to walk up to it with two English guys
who I met at the hotel. We were all excited about our venture,
but we really didn't know what to expect.
The volcano at night from the hotel
At 7.30am the next day
Terry, Chris and I trekked down into the crater and walked
across a lava field to find some hot springs before climbing
up to the summit of a non-active volcano to look down into
the active one, which was on a lower level.
The volcano in the day
time from the crater rim
Loose shale and sharp
volcanic rock made it a pretty hard climb. Eventually we reached
the higher non-active volcano summit where we were able to
peer into the erupting volcano below us. I was over the moon.
I had never ever imagined visiting a volcano on this trip,
now I was looking straight down into one.
The closer we walked to the eruptions the more excited we
felt
It was cool on top of
the mountain crater but the cold did little to dampen my joy
of peering into a crater full of red molten lava. Every few
minutes the volcano erupted giving out a very loud bang ,
followed by a huge cloud of smoke and number of burning rocks
which flew in all directions. It was just amazing. We couldn't
believe what we were seeing. We were literally jumping with
joy.
Boulders started to
fly but we haven't reached our best viewing point
We watched for several
minutes and then out of the blue the next explosion sent several
huge burning rocks, which were straight towards us, all of
the rocks were trailing smoke trails. Luckily, all but the
odd rock failed to make our position and dropped back into
the crater.
Now we had a good view
down inside the exploding crater. Red hot rocks flew in all
directions
If felt like a close call
and this scared Chris who already was a little nervous about
being so close to a volcano, so he moved back away from the
edge to where it was safer. Terry and I were in hysterics.
We were like kids in a lolly shop, even worse. I couldn't
think of anything at that time that had made me so excited.
We listened to the thunder crack and then watched the red
hot rocks fly through the air, often in our direction. When
the boulders stop flying and the smoke moved away we waited
and looked into the crater to watch the whole process start
again.
The red lava could be clearly seen
At the bottom of the crater
we could see a red hot spot. It grew wider and wider like
the petals of a flower opening. Eventually the red hot lava
expanded until it could no longer hang on and it just burst
and exploded, spewing the hot burning boulders high into the
air. The sense of joy in seeing such an amazing sight was
mind-boggling. We were just staggered at the whole eruption
process and that we were actually witnessing one of the most
astonishing and breath-taking sights you would ever come across.
We were overwhelmed with emotion and joy. You would be hard
pressed to find two people being more excited than us at that
time.
Chris was still staying
well away from the edge of the crater but we continued to
watch the spectacular eruptions time after time. We just couldn't
leave it. How could we, it was something we would probably
never see in our life ever again and what a grand firework
display it was.
I felt that nothing could drag us away from such an amazing,
joyous spectacle, then suddenly our joy turned to concern
when we saw a red hot smouldering boulder headed straight
towards us. This time it didn't look as if it was going to
drop short. We fixed our eyes onto the boulder wondering which
way to run, we stood readying ourselves to move at the right
moment. Like a burning missile it propelled itself through
the air in a slight arch as it honed in on our position. Boulders
from other earlier eruptions had landed 50 to 100 metres away
but this one was still headed towards us. This boulder had
purpose, it was red hot and leaving a long smoke trail. As
it propelled itself to within a hundred metres or so, we could
then see it was going to fall a little to the right of us.
As we watched it hit our shaly mountain top only metres away,
we were ecstatic and relieved.
Over an hour had passed, but with that near miss we thought
it was wise to leave the mountain and return to the hotel.
On the way down we were still on a high and memories of the
moment will never leave me. It was one of the most exciting
things that I have done in my life.
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