Next Stop: Unknown

Ok, so we had some of our pictures we hadn’t downloaded and edited yet, so these are in no particular order.  Just great shots we wanted to share with you! 

First off a HUGE congratulations to Tara and Justin!  Justin proposed to my sister, and she said yes!  So, we have a wedding in the future!  (Of course, everyone will ask when the date is… we don’t know, but I expect they are planning already!)

Tara’s new piece of jewelry… beautiful stone!  Justin did his homework!

This is a view from the hillside near Tulamben.  There was a giant wooden shipped that stopped in the harbor.  We think it was a live-aboard.  Man, we were jealous!

The water walkway at Tirta Ganga, the ancient king’s “water palace”.  The stones lead the way to the restaurant on the side of the hill that overlooked the entire palace gardens.

View from the restaurant!  Not bad eh?

A beautiful water lily that Jenn found at Tirta Ganga. 

These guys were so funny.  They would sit on the beach and wait for the waves to pummel into them.  The surf gets pretty big here at Ulu Watu, so some of the waves would push them 10 meters backwards on the beach!

A tired surfer trying to get back to safety.  And the beautiful sunset doesn’t hurt either.  Such awesome conditions.  Did I mention that I love Indonesia?

This was a rope swing that overhung a “freezing ass” cold pool below a waterfall.  You can’t see much, just specks of water reflecting the flash.  But, Justin and I both did a swing out over it, trying not to fall into the pool in our dry clothes.

 
Fortunately, we both made it, even though the rope cut into our hands.

Even Jenn gave it a go!

Here you can see the waterfall in the background, with the rope swing hanging  in the middle of the pool.  It was quite a beautiful place.  I think it was called the GitGit waterfall, in the mountains between Ubud and Lovina.

Tara and Justin posing on one of the lower waterfalls. 

This was the Air Panas hot springs.  (I think??).  It was super fun, although the water smelled a bit like sulphur.  All the locals come here to play in the warm waters and relax.  The pools are filled by water coming out of the mouths of Naga (snakes).  You can sit under the snakes and get a nice water massage on your back!

Jenn quickly made friends with the girls… they LOVE blonde hair.  They all wanted their picture taken, even flashing the peace sign.  (I didn’t have to teach them that one, someone had already done my job for me!)

Me, posing with one of many kids.  They were super fun.  They all wanted to practice their English.  They would say “What is your name”, “How are you today sir”.  Then they tried to teach us to count in Bahasa, which they found hilarious as we couldn’t get the pronunciation right!

Tara enjoying a little mini massage from one of the Naga water spouts.

Massive bumphead parrot fish.  This family let me get pretty close to them.  If I didn’t kick madly, and just let the current drift me towards them, I could pretty much reach out and touch them.

FINALLY, after waiting for 7 months, we find a Pygmy Seahorse.  Holy crap, are these guys impossible to find.  Actually, they are impossible to see too!  He blends in so well with the coral he’s attached to.  The little guy is probably only about 1/2” long..  Even the nubs on his body mimic the coral fan he attaches to.  Evidently however, these guys are territorial.  So, once a family attaches to a reef, they tend to stick around.  So, our guide knew where to find this one.

Massive Attack!  Ok, he didn’t attack, but this is one seriously large Barracuda.  Probably the biggest we’ve ever seen by double!  That’s Jenn behind him.  She’s close enough to reach out and touch him, so that’s how big he was.  The camera makes it look a little bigger than reality, but still, it was HUGE.

A new Nudibranch!  This one is freaking cool, and it was pretty large too!  The first we’ve seen in this coloring.  The ribbon of black around his topside are unique to this species.

Another new find!  This is a Squirrel crab.  I love the spiky hairs coming out of him… Jenn says he looks related to me.    Ha!  They are pretty tiny too, about the size of a quarter.  The red eyes make him look devil-like.

And yet another new Nudi!  This was taken in a new dive site, near Amed.  This was by a Japanese Wreck, which was situated in only 10 meters of water.  At low tide, the top of the wreck sticks out of the water.  The wreck isn’t impressive by any means, but it’s cool that it’s in such shallow water.  We only snorkeled here, no scuba.

After doing the ‘cultural’ thing in Ubud, it was time to head to the northern coast of Bali to get more beach time.  We’d heard that the area of Lovina was very popular, had nice beaches, and most importantly, dolphins!  Seeing the dolphins was high on Tara’s list, so we thought we’d try to schedule a tour the next morning.  Well, no sooner had we been escorted to our villas when a tout came up and asked us if we wanted to take a morning dolphin tour.  It was pretty late in the evening, maybe 8 or 9, so we didn’t figure we’d be able to find someone until the next day.  When he told us the tour left at 6am, we started hesitating, as we hadn’t really slept, and getting up that early after such a long day didn’t sound very appealing.  Lonely Planet (our bible) said the dolphin tours should be about $25 a person.  The tout quoted us $50 for the boat (for all four of us), including 2 hours or snorkeling.  Sweet!  We told him that we wanted to wait until the next day after, since we were too tired and wanted to relax a bit first.  He dropped the price to $40, only $10 each.  At that price, we couldn’t refuse.  The dolphin guy said he would come to our door to pick us up in the morning.  We set our alarms for 5:30 AM, figuring it wouldn’t take long to hop out of bed and into the car to leave at 6.  No sooner had I fallen asleep when I heard a knock at the door.  WTF?  I looked at my watch and it was about 4:30 AM.  The guy was there already to pick us up.  It was so freaking early, ridiculous!  Somehow we made it out of bed and to the boat by around 5:15, and were on the water well before 6am.  I was super tired and a bit grumpy, until I looked back to see the sunrise.  It was a beautiful pink color… the entire sky was just filled with it.  That made the whole lack of sleep seem not quite so bad.

As we rode out into the bay, I snapped a few photos… in this one you can see just how pink everything was.  You can barely tell where the water meets the sky, almost like a pink fog surrounded us… but there was no fog!  It was absolutely clear.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it.

Looking to the front of the boat, it’s like we were sailing into nothing, just pink sky, pink water… calm water, barely a ripple on the surface.

After the sun crested over the ‘mountains’ it started to take on normal colors, and a few other boats joined us for the dolphin hunt.  We were lucky to be one of the first into the water… and the first to spot dolphins!

The sky went from pink to golden as we spotted our first pod of the majestic creatures.  No,they aren’t sharks… but the do look a bit like it!

Tara and Justin (pre engagement).  They look so happy, getting to see the dolphins right away. 

Here flipper!  Getting pictures of these guys when they are out of the water was nearly impossible.  I think I took around 300 snaps trying to capture a moment like this.  In their normal surfacing, the blowhole just barely breaches the air, the body stays mostly under water.

After an hour or so, there were quite a few boats on the water.  The boats “corralled” the dolphins and pushed them into the bay.  I felt a little sorry for them, but they seemed to enjoy showing off for us, and surfacing near the bows.  I think they made a game out of it!

One parting shot to make you want to come to Bali!

Before Tara and Justin arrived, we’d send them a long list of potential things we could try to do while they were in Bali. On the top of their list were the Monkey Forest and River Rafting – both in the city of Ubud.  Lucas and I weren’t too keen to do either of those things. We’ve seen so many monkeys during our six months in Asia, and we didn’t imagine that river rafting on a small tropical island could be nearly as good as the raging waters we’d explored back home in the Cascade Mountains. But oh, were we in for some treats!

The night before we were to go rafting the skies opened up and poured like we hadn’t experienced since the flooding we saw a few months back in Sumatra. It rained and rained, even woke us up with the noise. When we woke up that morning we though “Maybe we should cancel, maybe the weather will be bad.” What we didn’t realize until later was that the volume of rain we had that night made the trip for us, bringing the waters just high enough to give us some nice little waterfalls to explore.

River Rafting in Bali isn’t about adrenaline thrills so much as lush amazing scenery. For two and a half hours we floated past rice paddies, waterfalls, banana plantations, and intricate rock carvings. One of our first stops was this huge waterfall. Romantic little snapshot huh? Moments after this we tried to swim underneath the falls. Won’t try that again, it was quite strong water pressure!

Our rafting guide was trying to be a little sneaky and backed our boat up under one of the smaller falls along the river. It was a pleasant surprise for Lucas – he’s always too hot anyway.

The little rapids we went over were pretty fun. There was one ‘Big Boom’ where we had to tuck into the boat and hold on. It was probably a three foot waterfall or so. Hard to take photos when you’re hiding on the bottom of the boat though

Tara & Justin’s highlight of Ubud was definitely the Monkey Forest. It’s a series of a few small temples, tons of trees and two harems of monkeys each with about 300 in their ‘tribe’. The monkeys are a little territorial, we saw a few monkeys with serious bite wounds, likely from when they’d encroached on each others territorial. They are also excellent on sniffing goodies out of unsuspecting tourists bags. One nibbled on Justin’s bag for a while. Another stole some bug repellant out of Tara’s purse. Doubt he liked the taste of that much!

And why are there so many Monkey’s in Monkey Forest? Lots of Monkey Love! Check out the express on this guy… about two seconds later the smaller monkey in the bottom of the frame got his turn. The lady didn’t seem to care too much. At one point she even breast feed while she was being double teamed. Now that’s a working woman!

Dancing, fighting, patty cake? Who knows – but they sure are cute.

Lucas and Jenn posing near the Bathing Pools in the Monkey Forest.

This guy was chewing on something, but the expression is priceless. 
Pop Quiz: name the actor he looks like in this pose!

This guy didn’t like being in front of the lens.  You’d think he’d naturally grow used to the paparazzi.  I mean… they come bearing bananas!

We went to one of the Kecak performances in Ubud.  This one was significantly different from the one we saw in Ulu Watu.  It consisted of three different types of dances.  So, we got a little sampler of some of the different style.

Kecak chanters harmonizing and the grand finale fire dance.  This guy walked over red-hot coconut husk coals, and then would kick them around.  I imagine his feet were pretty tough!  (or melted)

It was back to Southern Bali for us, specifically Legian, where we were going to meet Tara and Justin. Lucas and I had been out of a Western frame of mind for so long though, that we got a little confused by their flight itinerary and showed up at the airport a whole day early. Oops! Did you know that America is a full day behind Asia? Yeah, we forgot too. So, that meant that we had one more evening to enjoy that absolute beauty of Legian’s beaches. We took a three hour long walk up the coastline from Kuta, through Legian and Seminyak and north to where the mega beach resorts are finally replaced with local homes and families head out to the shore at night to relax. The lighting was beautiful and it was one of the best quiet evenings we’d had in some time.

Look at me walk on water! Ok, not really – but the reflection of the sky in the shallows is pretty cool, huh?

It’s hard to get tired of the sun setting over the Indian Ocean.

Tara and Justin arrived safely the next day and after introducing them to the beauty of the beaches, we drove north through rice paddies to Tannah Lot, the most photographed place in Bali. Getting there was quite the scene! There is a 1/2 kilometer path that you walk through down to the temple and it’s lined with vendors selling “I Love Bali” shirts, offering temporary tattoos, giving massages, there was even a Starbucks. So much for religious tranquility! The most ingenuous vendor had a massive fruit bat outside his stall to attract foot traffic.

Lucas loved this guy, and tried to feed it.  The owner had set out little toothpicks of fruit on a donation box.  When he tried to feed it, the bat reached over and grabbed his hair, giving him a bit of a scare.  I guess bats like red-heads!  The wingspan on our little friend here was as long as my arm, probably 2.5 to 3 feet.  I wonder if fruit bats make good pets? 

While taking pictures of the sunset, we ran into this local crew.  They must have been part of a local photography club, as they all were excited to take pictures, meet travelers, and admire our camera gear.  They had lots of fun asking us to pose for photos for them, and then they wanted to take “wedding” photos of Justin and Tara.  (How prophetic)

Sunset over the beach in front of Tannah Lot.  The temple care barely been seen on the right hand side, but the water rushing over the tide pools is fantastic.

It’s a bit easier to make out the temple in this shot.  Fortunately, we managed to get someone to snap one of the two of us before it got too dark for photos.  We were there at pretty low tide… supposedly during high tide, the temple ‘floats’ on the water surrounding it.  Now we have a reason to go back and see it another time!

These beautiful islands lie off the most northwestern portion of the larger island of Lombok. Tons of boats with varying transit times offer service between Bali and the Gili Islands. The bikini clad, Bintang drinking, backpacker path pretty much leads directly there from Southern Bali. We choose the cheapest of the tourist boat services not realizing that what could be a two hour voyage would now take us three hours by bus (we wound around the island of Bali on our way to the harbor) and another six hours by slow ferry. Yikes! Typically we enjoy that sort of travel, you get to take in the sites. But the bus ride was plagued by heavy rain, and that same rain and accompanying wind made the boat passage completely nauseating – even with Dramamine. But what a reward for our troubles!

Gili is the antithesis of Southern Bali – there are no cars, no scooters. There is only one road and it’s crowded with locals and tourists strolling along, or taking leisurely bike ride. The only distraction is the occasional horse drawn carriage chauffeuring locals fresh off the boat, laden down with luggage, to their bungalow.

We’d come to Gili for the diving of course, but a walk around Trawagan, the largest of Gili’s three islands quite pleasant too. It’s an extremely small island – 8 km in circumference and the tourist areas occupy only about a fourth of it. Cows, horses and goats rule over the rest. Taking a walk on one of our first nights we snapped this photograph of a cow. I think she was mid-bite!

We took a nondescript path from the beach into the interior of the island, just to poke around and explore what we might find.  This area is mostly locals, with huts ranging from one room, tin sides homes up to elevated houses that looked like a kid’s tree house.  Pretty basic all around, quite the opposite of some of the places along the beachfront area. 

Pretty much every night we walked to the northwest side of the island to play in the tidal pools and watch the sunset over Bali’s Mount Agung.  The one night we missed happened to be the most spetactular pink sunset we’d ever ‘not’ seen.  We happened to be on the wrong side of the island eating when we looked up and saw a perfectly full moon rising into a pink glowing sky.  It was something else, and I only wish we had a camera to prove it’s awesomeness.

But, some of the other sunsets were pretty dramatic and amazing too.  The colors ranged from light pink to orange, deep reds, purples, and everything in between.  In this picture you can see the twin mountains on Bali in the distance. 

While in the Gili’s we decided to up our scuba skills by taking some specialty courses.  We’ve been wanting to do deeper dives for a while, so we talked to a guy who taught a special course.   It’s called the “Deep Diving Nitrox Computer Specialty” course.  Woo… sounds impressive eh?  By the end, we were certified to dive down to 40 meters (130 feet), and use Nitrox, which is an air mixture with higher levels of oxygen, which allow you to stay at depth for a longer time.  Conversely to what we previously thought… Nitrox does not allow you to dive deeper than on air… It just allows you to stay at a ‘calculcated’ depth for an extended period of time without exposing yourself to nitrogen toxicity.  (technical jargon for more fun for Lucas and Jenn). 

This is a frog fish.. and it was the biggest we’d ever seen. These fish are quite cool really.  They are usually camouflaged to match the coral they call home.  Then, they stay perfectly still, and hang a piece of enticing food in front of their mouths.  When hungry fish come along and try to eat the bait, the frogfish gulps it down… sometimes the prey is as big as the fish itself!  These guys must be able to open up pretty wide! This one was so big, Jenn didn’t actually think it was a fish… so she poked it to make sure… it did move…but just barely, mostly ignoring her.  I guess it decided she was too big to swallow whole.

Evidence of sea spiders are all around… but this is the first time we’ve actually seen the creature itself… and it was making it’s web. 

Our instructor, Andy, snapped this picture for us. Such a patient turtle…he most have been full from eating all of the sponge coral around, and was content to have a nap on the floor and pose for us.

Look, it’s Nemo!  He staked out some pretty nice real estate… such a large anenome for such a small little fish.  However, he did defend it with fervor.  It’s not the size of the fish in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the fish. This little guy attacked my camera over and over trying to scare me away.  I think this is a false clownfish, but am not positive.

A new type of nudi!  Black with yellow/green stripes and blue spots.

A snapshot of Jenn’s dive computer at almost maximum depth.  Using Nitrox of 27%, we had 8 minutes of bottom time at 39.5 meters.  Not much time really.. but, 40 meters is pretty deep! 

We surfaced from all the diving to check out the other 2 Gili Island nearby.  (Gili Air and Gili Meno).  These two islands were much smaller, but beautiful in their own ways.  All the time of the beach sure is helping gout our tans… However, I look like  a total farm boy with my wetsuit tan… I think I could signal airplanes at 30,000 feet just by laying on the beach.