Indonesia July 2026 Trip Notes:

Evy and I arrived in Bali on the 13th of July for Eva’s birthday. Stayed at the villa Domus. Rachel was living in Bali at the time so she was already there. Eva, Eric, Nenek, Maya, Erief, Cloe, Hugo, Sarah and Delma were all there.

I was not feeling well, got a flu just prior to leaving and I may have ended up giving it to Eric and Austin.

Went out to eat numerous times and had a barbecue on the roof top of Domus.

We did a couple of beach walks one with Eva and Eric and then repeated it with Evy. Ate at a restaurant at the halfway mark of the walk on the beach front.

We all took a boat to Nusa Penita where we went snorkeling and took family photos which annoyed Austin and me. I was feeling very unwell that day.

On the date…. Maya, Erief, Evy and I drove to Java in Erief’s car via the Bali-Java ferry. We ate lunch at an outdoor village style restaurant not far from Kalibaru where we stayed the night.

Next day we went to the base camp, which was a small village and ate breakfast. Then took ojeks up to post 1. Then did a 8hr hike up to post 7. Pitched our tent and were told to wake up at 23:00hrs to do a 12hr hike up and back to the summit. We went to bed at 19:00hrs and I only got 1hr of sleep as my legs kept twitching from the hike up. On the way up to camp 8 Evy started vomiting like she has in the past when we get to altitude. I carried on but waited for her at post 9 where we had a sleep. Then when started getting light we headed up to the challenging summit. We some tricky and some hairy sections requiring ropes and abseiling. We crossed a ridge with drops on both sides. At the end of the ridge I looked up at where we had to go next and said to Evy, ”I am not going up there”. She said, “so what do you want to do go back? Just give it a try and see how you go.” It was what looked like an almost vertical mountain face. We abseiled down from the end of the ridge and started climbing the mountain face. It appeared to be volcanic spew with rocks embedded in it, which provided good climbing foot holds. At the summit we could see clearly into the caldera smoking out of a mini volcano in the center.

Its the feeling which gets to me. Always feel unwell at altitude so it takes the enjoyment out of and just leaves the challenge and the views of cause which are always spectacular.

We climbed back down the mountain to post 7 and slept the night in our tent. The next day we returned to post 1 which had a coffee factory in a house roasting coffee beans. There was a funny old lady running it, she tried to rip off or guides facial burka, which I thought was hilarious.