In mid-September, after I had booked the flight and accommodation, Bali's Mount Agung awoke from slumber and the alert level was raised. Its last major eruption was in 1963 and over a thousand people were killed by the flows. Bali is sizeable enough that the tourist areas are far enough away from Mount Agung to pose no threat, although villagers living with the exclusion zone had to be evacuated. However, ash from a volcano eruption is deleterious to jet engines and could cause flight delays or even cancellations.
As the departure day approached, I found myself wishing that the eruption would be over with before my travel. It was not to be. A fallout from the alert was that my flight with Virgin Australia made an additional stop in Darwin to take on more fuel in case the flight had to be diverted back to Darwin. The result was that I arrived close to midnight. With the timezone difference it felt like 3 am. I had booked a taxi to transport me to my lodgings in Sanur. It was a bit expensive but I didn't want to waste any time looking for transport on arrival. Fortunately Bali's notorious traffic had already subsided by that hour.
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