TREKKING BALI'S VOLCANOS AND SWIMMIMG WITH HER MANTA RAYS

Stuffing our day-pack with water and snacks, we leave our hotel at 2am. Our climb to the top of the volcano at Mt. Batur starts in the pitch black. Our ascent is steep and slow going in the dark. We stop a few times to gaze at the stars and listen to nocturnal birds hunting in the night. We pass over lava fields where old Balinese villages were buried during the last eruption.

At the summit an old man who lives alone with his dog in a lean-to hut is building a fire. He offers us hot coffee as we sit and watch the sunrise over Bali's other two volcanoes. The view is riveting, making us homesick for the Cascades and Olympics. We stay warm by putting our hands inside giant steam vents in the crater.

Our guide tells us his memories of taking part in animal sacrifice rituals with his village. Their Hindu custom is an effort to make the gods happy, whereby they chuck animals over the edge of the volcano such as ducks, pigs and cows. Our guide reminds us that this ritual is still practiced even today. Thankfully, there is no sacrifice ritual happening this morning. So everyone at the top gets to return home unscathed.

After we've recovered from the volcano trek, we board a boat for Bali's best dive sites in hopes of finding some rare marine life. Indeed we do find two manta sting rays, one black and one white, each a little more than six feet from wing tip to wing tip. We encounter them in a lagoon near a cliff, in about 25 feet of water which is very shallow for divers.

They swim circles around us and play in our air bubbles. At one point, one ray swims right over us and we literally have to bend over backwards to avoid it's belly from skimming over the tops of our heads. Katie cries into her mask from the beauty of it all while Travis nearly sh*ts his wet suit from the surprise and amazement of the encounter. Soon our air tanks are getting low and we must go back to the surface. We slowly pull ourselves away from what is clearly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We'll never forget the two rays that swam with us in a lagoon in Bali.