Bali Volcanoes Helicopter Tour

Bali island in Indonesia is renowned for its natural beauty and as a fabulous tourist attraction. However, the island is also known for its terrorist attacks in recent years. Since then, the people of Bali have recovered and the island is now a hotspot for tourists from all over the world once again, especially for its beach resorts and volcano helicopter tours.
The island’s ecology and geography are greatly influenced by the towering mountain range of volcanoes that dominate the island. These majestic volcanoes created Bali’s stunning mountainous landscape and they occasionally regenerate its soils and help produce heavy rains that provide this resort island with precious fresh water.
The Balinese considered the island’s many volcanoes, lakes and spring as sacred and treat them with respect and awe. If you are a tourist traveling to Bali for your holiday vacation, you will be awestruck with the sheer majesty of the volcanoes. These natural landscapes are major tourist attractions and many tourist go sightseeing the volcanoes on helicopter tours so that they can view the volcanoes in all its splendor and take awesome pictures. The island is still continually being formed by volcanic activities.
Bali is located over a major fault zone where the Indo-Australian plate collides with the Sunda plate. In 1963, a violent eruption on Mount Agung killed thousands of people and utterly destroyed many rice fields and irrigation network.
The dramatic lava flows on the north eastern faces of Mt Agung is the newest landforms, showing what the island may look like in ancient pre-historic time. It is a fascinating sightseeing experience, almost like a scene out of Jurassic Park.
Perhaps, the most popular volcano for tourists to visit and go sightseeing is Mount Batur. This grand old dame of a volcano sits in a giant caldera that contains a lake that is a few miles long and over a mile wide. Mount Batur is actually a very active volcano and can erupt moment as it erupted with great frequency but the eruptions are less violent these days except in a giant eruption in 1917 which claimed thousands of lives and destroyed hundreds of temples and villages.
Hiking up Mount Batur in the wee small hours of the the morning has become something of a “must do” thing for many tourists in Bali. You will need to bring along a sweater as it can get a little chilly at the volcano summit.
There is also a little coffee shop at the rim selling drinks for thirsty hikers and many children and women in flip flops balancing buckets of soft drinks on their heads scampering around trying to earn your tourist dollar. As the sun rises, you will get a picturesque view of Lombok and other surrounding islands.
One very interesting hike on Mt Batur is the climb down the inside of the crater from Penelokan to Kedisan. There are boats at Toya Bungkah Lake to take you across the lake to a village called Trunyan. This village is notorious for its mortuary traditions because instead of cremating or burying their deceased, the Trunyan villagers leave dead human bodies to decompose naturally in a designated cemetery.
Although Bali is known for rice cultivation, its volcanic soil is actually not well suited for such activities. The soil is finely textured and well drained, so water soaks through the soil rapidly and thus precious water is wasted. The solution therefore lies in repeated and vigorous ploughing which make the soil less permeable.
So if you are visiting Bali for your holiday vacations, do not miss out a sightseeing trip to view Bali’s majestic volcanoes, better yet, take a helicopter tour of this spectacular tourist attraction.

Bali Travel Guide and Review – Part 1

Bali Introduction: The Geography

Bali is a small volcanic island covering around 5000 square kilometers, just south of the equator. Central Bali is dominated by the island’s major volcanic peaks, from which the land steadily descends all the way down to sea level on the northern and eastern coasts; the southern Bali peninsula is largely flat. There are four major volcanoes in Bali, the highest being Mt Agung at 3124m. Agung erupted violently in 1963 and although many people died in the eruption it has since been a blessing to the Balinese in providing some of the richest soil in Indonesia. The next four highest mountains are no longer alive but the smaller Mt Batur (1717m) is one of the most active volcanoes in the region, puffing regular clouds of ash into the air. Bali, being such a small island, has little space to create rivers of any notable size. Rather it is riddled with small creeks that are channeled into the intricate irrigation system that feeds Balinese rice paddies. Nevertheless, some major rivers do flow, namely the Sungai Pakrisan (”Kris River”), the Sungai Petanu (”Cursed River”) and the Ayung, Bali’s longest river.

Bali Introduction : The History

Many years ago Bali was divided into eight Hindu kingdoms. These small kingdoms were powerful but prone to fighting each other, which weakened their resistance to foreign invasion. As early as the sixth century, Javanese kings conquered parts of Bali although Balinese princes often continued to rule as puppets with Javanese sovereignty pulling their strings. Nevertheless power continued to bounce between various kingdoms of Bali and Java. As links with Java strengthened, Javanese script, sculpture and temples began to appear on the island. Late in the tenth century, ties between the islands were solidified with the marital union of a Balinese Prince and a Javanese Princess. The Javanese Majapahit kingdom conquered Bali in the thirteenth century by vanquishing the semi-demonic king of Bali at the time, ‘Dalem Bedulu’, and attempting to eradicate the ‘vile’ Balinese princes and their ‘barbaric’ customs. Ironically, the supreme Majapahit ruler gave a Balinese the position of ‘King of Bali’, a position that gained little respect from the majority of Balinese who continued to refuse to recognize Javanese sovereignty. The Majapahit presence in Bali turned out to be short and turbulent and during the ensuing centuries, much of the unique Balinese Hindu culture and traditions that we see in Bali today were created. This was possibly a result of a community determined to protect their individuality and not be overcome by imported Javanese culture.

Contact with the west began when a Dutch fleet stumbled across Bali in 1597 and felt they had found ‘paradise’. Many of the crew refused to return home but stories of a magical place leaked back to their homeland. With Dutch royalty eager to establish relations, Dutch ships bearing gifts for the Balinese kings were dispatched. However, from a trading perspective, Bali had little to offer so the opportunity to develop international relations was restricted at first. Originally, its primary export was slaves but as the world slave trade was curtailed, the Balinese Kings turned to other commodities such as coconut oil, thereby putting Bali in a position to enter the world trading market.

Dutch interest in the Indonesian islands changed into the seventeenth century and the merchant ships gave way to war ships. The Dutch had overcome many Javanese kingdoms through ancient principles of divide and conquer and the same approach was taken in Bali. As the Balinese continued to resist, the Dutch became more and more aggressive. Stories of their barbaric tactics were not received well in their homeland and protests led them to complete their invasion more tactfully. Surprisingly, once the Dutch secured control, they protected the island from outside influences and encouraged them to maintain much of their culture and traditions. Grateful of this as we are today, their reasons were not purely benevolent: they considered the Balinese controllable with their peaceful religion but were wary should that religion change to a more fundamental variety.

World War 2 brought a new era as Japanese armies took over from the Dutch. The Japanese presence in Bali was short lived and they left without a trace as they lost the war. The Dutch tried to return to the Indonesian islands, but their desperate attempts to regain power in the colony were condemned all over the world. Together with the rest of the Dutch East Indies archipelago, Bali was handed over to a new independent Indonesian government that emerged in 1949. Bali had finally lost its liberty and fell to its destiny of economic and political dependence on neighboring Java.

Bali Introduction : The Population

Bali is bursting, with an estimated population of over three million people. Through the controversial transmigration program, Balinese communities have developed in the outer regions of Indonesia such as Sumatra and Sulawesi, in order to relieve the islands’ already stretched natural resources.

to be continued…..