Last updated July 17, 2017 at 2:55 pm
Just because you’re on holiday from daily life doesn’t mean you’re on holiday from being a geek. No matter where you’re travelling, there’s always some science to sight-see.
When your alarm goes off at 1:30am, just turn it back off again. Rude! You didn’t come to Bali to mess up your body clock like this.
Don’t get in the minibus with your mates. You won’t even talk to each other because you’ll be trying to fall back to sleep. Two hours is way too far to drive, even if it is to the slopes of Mount Batur, a geologically active volcano.
Don’t be friendly to the guide when you arrive. Even though he climbs this volcano literally every day, is ready and willing with bottled water, spare torches, jackets, and eruption factoids, you’ll probably never see him again so whatever.
You’ll be way too tired to be funny, so don’t joke around about falling off the mountain in the dark, or rolling back down at the end, or being carried up. You’re not being original.
Your head-torch is not actually a microscope, so ignore how much it’s making you focus in on the geology of the rocks under your feet. In fact, try to forget that this is your favourite thing about volcanoes, the way that lava creates different shapes and forms as it erupts and then cools down. It’s not getting you up the slope any faster.
When you get closer to the top and smell the sulfur rising along with the steam from fissures in the surface, don’t make fart jokes. That’s just gross. Don’t gratefully accept coffee and hot chocolate when you’re sitting at the summit, or eat the eggs cooked in directly in volcano steam. It’s still too dark to see what you’re doing.
Don’t get out StarWalk on your phone to check what time sunrise is, or to do a little casual astronomy. Spotting Saturn and Jupiter is for nerds.
As the sun finally rises and you can see out over the ocean, don’t reflect on how something like 80% of the earth’s surface is made from volcanic eruptions. And ignore how obvious the bands of vegetation are in the fresh, fertile soil all the way back down to sea level. The volcano is just showing off now.
Just don’t even go outside ever.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get all the latest science.
