Volcanic Sunrise

So yesterday morning Hannah and I hiked a volcano and watched the sunrise. Definitely the coolest most unbelievable thing we have done so far and possibly one of the top things I've done in life. We woke up at 2:30am after a night of tossing and turning and trying to sleep. The guide picked us up at 3am and then there was an hour drive to the mountain. We had two other people hiking with us, two cousins from France who turned out to be awesome. You hike the mountain which is bigger than mt. phylo (for those vermonters reading), but still not huge. It still kicked my butt on the way up and I have temporarily resolved to excercise more :) Anyway we there are pretty much two segments: one is just a steady walk upwards and then the second is a very steep straight up the mountain path on volcanic gravel that loves to slip out from under your feet when you are on the edge of a steep drop off. When we got to the top somehow the balinese built warungs (small shack like restaurants) on the top of the mountain. Our guide cooked us a breakfast of hardboiled eggs and fried banana sandwiches that we ate while sipping hot tea and watching the sunrise over Bali. It was breath taking. My pictures can even do it justice. There were huge fluffly clouds, a big pink sun, other volcanoes in the distance and a dense fog hovering over the land below making you feel like you are at mount olympus. I have to say it was also really nice to be a little cold for a bit on the top of the mountain, clearly I'm not meant for year round tropical climates. Our guy was a great guy always high fiving us and making awesome comments about how we are his "top guests" because our lack of complaining on the ascent. He liked us so much that he extended our hike to take us to see two more craters in the volcano. There were fissures that were hot and smoking and if you picked up a rock from them you could still here them crackling and hissing from the heat. Apparently you can also take and egg and bury it in the fissure and in 15 min. it will be hard boiled. We ate all of our eggs so we didn't have a chance to give it a whirl. The rest of the day was made up of naps and chilling, but i hope that we'll get to do some more hiking soon whether here or in china.

On a seperate note HAPPY early THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!!!!! Hannah and I are hosting a thanksgiving dinner for 8 of our friends at our house tomorrow. It will be an interesting american balinese fusion of food, but we're excited about it even though we only have 1 wok and 1 frying pan to cook with! More to come of our celebration later. I hope you all have great thanksgivings and wish you the best!
Also I am thankful for all of you, for your support and love while i'm on this trip as well as you being a part of my journey through reading my blog.

Much much love
sarah