We saved the best for last, and with the fresh of 8 am headed north toward Batur caldera. Again we had a beautiful drive up the mountain, but this time without the Sunday throng.
Batur is a very young caldera that went through two major phases of eruption, 30,000 and 20,000 years ago respectively. In a rare display of symmetry, the second, slightly smaller caldera is neatly nested inside the first one, and the rims of both calderas are very neatly preserved. The caldera forming eruptions ejected rhyodacitic and dacite magma. Afterward, leakage from the magma chamber led to the formation of the rather large Batur andesitic volcano inside the second caldera, and over the last two hundred years the volcano has fed several lava flows that have spilled into the moat to the east and the south (1849, 1888, 1904, 1905, 1921, 1926, 1963, and 1968). Irvan and I hiked to the 1963 flow and ascertained that it was a basaltic andesite with about 20% of phenocrysts of plagioclase and clinopyroxene. So the whole system has gone from rhyodacite through dacite through andesite through basaltic andesite as eruptions had followed each other, which suggests to me that the eruption rate has been much greater than the rate of magma regeneration.
If you are wondering about my encyclopedic knowledge of Batur caldera, let me tell you that there is a geologic museum on site, which is a very fine specimen of good museography and audiovisual displays. Unfortunately we were the only visitors so far, since the number of tourists, both national and international, is much smaller than it was at Beratan (for which I am particularly grateful). If you ask me, Batur is much prettier than Beratan (although the latter is no slouch when it comes to scenic beauty), and I recommend that you don't miss it when you come to Bali.
We had lunch by the lakeside, at a particularly lovely spot that was only marred by the presence of abundant lalat (moscas)! I had a tasty dish of curried fish that had a wonderful flavor of roasted coriander.
Since Bali is dominantly Hindu, roasted babi (pronounced bah-bee) is a very popular meal. Unfortunately Muslims are not cool eating babi so I have not been able to taste it. Please don't call your date "Babi", because it would be equivalent to lovingly calling her/him "my little pig".
In the afternoon we walked along the beach (check!), and went shopping for a gift for Irvan's Auntie. Hard to believe but my time in Indonesia is coming to an end :(
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