Bali is one big sculpture. Every earthen step is manicured and polished, every field and niche carved by hand. Once a geographic extension of Java, Bali still resembles it, mountains and all, sharing much the same climate, flora, and fauna as the mother island. There are few flat areas; hills and mountains are everywhere.

The surface of the island is marked by deep ravines, fast-flowing rivers, and, in northern Bali, a west-to-east volcanic chain 1,500-3,000 meters high, an extension of Java's central range. On the plains of southern Bali you see rice fields exquisitely carved out of hills and valleys, sparkling with water or vividly green. All seasons are one: in fields side by side there is rice that's just been planted, rice that's still growing, rice that's ripened. Balinese terracing and irrigation practices are even more sophisticated than on Java, employing a remarkable system of aqueducts, small dams, underground canals, and tunnels through rock hillsides. A village organization, the subak, controls the distribution of water from a reservoir or main pipeline.

In southern Bali, besides rice, crops of tea, cacao, groundnuts, and tropical fruits flourish. As you head north, the landscape changes from tiers of rice fields to gardens of onions, cabbages, and papayas. Thatched palm huts give way to sturdy cottages made of wood, tile, stone, and volcanic rock. In the higher altitudes you find mountain streams, prehistoric ferns, wildflowers, creepers, orchids, leeches, butterflies, birds, and screaming monkeys. Bali's western tip, Pulaki, is the island's unspoiled, uninhabited wilderness. Legend has it Bali's first inhabitants originated here in a lost, invisible city.

CLIMATE

Bali lies only eight degrees south of the equator and has an eternal summer, warm sea breezes, and high humidity. Tropical showers can quickly give way to blinding sunshine. Rainfall, which usually is not heavy and continuous, arrives mainly in the late afternoon and night. From November to April the rains really come; the wettest days are in December and January. The dry season is May to October. From June to the end of September, Bali is very pleasant