Anahm Rather than hike Mount Batur, we decided to enjoy the views of it from Lake Batur, which we thought may give us a better per a perspective to take in the beauty of the Volcano 🌋 rather than being on it.
We found a company that offers kayak and bicycle rentals to allow people to explore the area, but it was over an hour hike and enroute we found a little pontoon with a restaurant and some boats so we thought we’d check if we could hire from there instead. They confirmed we could hire one of their boats, great right 😀 well in hindsight, maybe not 🤷🏻♂️.
So the first problem was that the boat they had left was full of water, red flag number one 🚩, but they confirmed it was just rainwater and they would tip it out, we could have escaped at that point but we continued to pursue this boat. Now, the boat was not a kayak. It was a few flimsy pieces of wood put together to create a boat. As we got on, we were handed just the one oar to row the boat we did insist on 2, but they checked and only had the one, red flag number 2🚩, it was either abandon ship before getting on or just go with the 1 oar 🤔. Our craving to get out and explore got the better of us, and off we went. The oar was a short and heavy wooden oar, but we were soon off exploring this huge lake in this tiny wet boat. Full of energy excitement, we rowed into the middle of the lake and headed towards Mount Batur 🌋, enjoying the views as we went. There was what felt like quite strong current against us. We persisted for about an hour, at which point the effort required to get past the current and keep moving with this single heavy oar lost its novelty factor.We agreed to head back, but sometimes when you’re on a boat and there’s lots of pontoons near land they all start to look the same, especially on a wide lake 🤷🏻♂️, so without realizing it and with the current on our side this time, quickly floated way past the our pontoon 🤦🏻♂️. We carried on in the wrong direction until we floated past some unfamiliar monuments. The pin had finally dropped, and we had to U-Turn and head back into the current towards our pontoon. After a slow and numbing journey back, we spotted some buildings and managed to get back to the pontoon.
Conclusion: When you are rowing with the current rather than against it, the distance you travel in a given amount of time can be considerably different, so if we’d been more observant earlier into the return journey we probably wouldn’t have missed our stop.
