Next Stop: Unknown

Ulu Watu – sounds exotic doesn’t it?  All we’d heard about the place was that it was world known for excellent surfing waves, and that the fire dance was a must see.  I can verify both of these facts! 

We tried to get a room at several places going into the Ulu Watu area, only to find everything was full up.  Hmm… Of course, Jenn started getting excited because she knew of a really expensive place on the beach that had availability.  Tired from traveling, we checked into Blue Point Resort.  It was pretty awesome.  The rooms had AC, and nice televisions.  Yeah, we got to catch up on international BBC news.  I think we’re going to make the switch when we get home. They have amusing accents and cover things more interesting than new mall openings and the latest bank robbery.

Scott and I attempted to catch some of the waves at Ulu Watu, but this place is not for the newbies.  Both of us nearly died!  (ok, not really, but it was scary).  After we rented our boards, we paddled out into the surf.  It was so shallow on the reef, and after paddling for 20 minutes we would still stand up with water only to our knees.  The waves just kept pushing us back towards land.  Eventually I made it out into the deeper water, but turned around and Scott was missing.  Oh well, I needed to keep going to the still water so I would be able to rest before trying to catch my first Ulu Wave.  I watched people for a few minutes, then decided to give it a go.  I picked a small wave, and got up the first time… for about 2 seconds… before promptly falling back into the water… evidently, my wave wasn’t big enough to keep me going!  On the second try, I paddled out to the deeper waves, trying to catch one that I could really sink my teeth into.  As I paddled out, I realized that the waves started getting bigger and bigger.  In fact, what looked to be a 4’ wave from the shore, was now about 8’… And was quickly coming at me.  The first wave passed under me (or I over it) no problem.  I decided I’d try to catch the next one.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get my board turned around perpendicular to the wave, and this one decided to crest and crash right on top of me.  For what seemed like eternity, I was underwater being pulled along by my surfboard.  I couldn’t get to the surface, and just kept being tossed around.  When I finally managed to get back up for air, I was only able to get one breath before the next wave pounded over me, tossing me in every direction.  I had one of those surreal moments when I seriously thought I wasn’t going to make it out alive…  Fortunately, I hit reef about half a second later and popped out of the water with only a cut toe.  All that paddling work, and there I was, back at the starting point again.  And I was exhausted.  So, I paddled to the shore and started looking for Scott.  About 2 minutes later, he came dragging his surfboard up the beach.  He was beaten too.  Score: Ulu Watu 2 – Lucas and Scott 0.

We went to the temple at Ulu Watu to watch the fire dance.  I think it was called the “kecak” fire dance, and it was very cool.  In fact, so cool I think we’ll go watch it again when Tara comes to visit.  We got there a bit late, so we had to sit on the floor.  That put us right into the action though, as the chanters and players in the show were right on top of us!  We talked to a local later about the people in the dance.  There are around 80 locals who perform.  It’s a second job for most of them, but they only get paid once every 6 months!  Can you imagine having to wait 6 months to get paid?!?!?  After thinking about it, and interacting with some of the locals, I can understand why they do this.  Most Indonesians only work when they need money.  So, if they got paid more often, it’s likely they wouldn’t show up for the next week’s show.  This way, it’s more of a commitment to the troupe, and thus the quality and attendance of the performers is likely more consistent.

Infinity pool at the hotel.  The water was warm, which felt pretty good after being beat up in the cold ocean surf.

Ring of fire dancers and chanters. These guys make the coolest sounds as they dance and chant.  Cha-ka, cha-ka, cha-ka, cha-ka… It’s quite hypnotic.

All of the dancers seemed to be into the dance.  In fact, the handout said that this is actually a dance of trance.  Many of the chanters put themselves into a state of trance as they sing and dance. 

Scott’s new girlfriend… Just kidding.  I think from reading the very poor English translation, she was one of the dueling lovers of the fire dancer king.  The seduction dance was pretty hot… But wait, it gets hotter!

Near the end, they put a ring of very flammable seaweed around the stage (another use for the Lembongan export!), and the set fire to it.  The man in the middle was supposed to be burned alive…but he escaped.  (Would hard to be a repeating show if the main actor didn’t survive!)

After much cajoling, Lucas and I were finally able to convince Scott to tear himself away from the trappings of Kuta. Namely, posh bars, bikini clad women and miles of surfable waves. Not bad really, but Bali has so much more to offer!

Nusa Lembongan is a two hours by slow boat off the southeastern corner of Bali. One of the islands main attractions is surfing which got Scott excited – famous breaks there include ‘Playground’, ‘Ship Wreck’ and ‘Lacerations’. ‘Playground’ sounded manageable to me, but really – who seeks out ‘Lacerations’ for fun?!? The second biggest island attraction is the underwater life – namely Mola Mola and Manta Rays. Sweet!

Bali is King of the racket as far as I’m concerned. Prices for the boat trip ranged from $40 per person, to what we thought was the best deal at $12 per person through Perama. Come to find out there is a local boat that takes exactly the same route as Perama, with the same lack of comfort for only $6. Now we know.

I should really just feel lucky that the three of us made it there at all, as we all went our own way shortly before we were supposed to board the bus that would take us to the marina and eventually the Perama boat. We all had last minute errands to run. Lucas made it to Perama first and was yelled at for a good fifteen minutes, by some tourists who hadn’t quite made it on Asia-time yet, before I showed up. Then I got yelled at and the bus wanted to take off without waiting for Scott… A few hard feelings later, we were on the bus, then on the boat and off to Lembongan for surfing and scuba.

After the miles of white sand in Kuta, and the black volcanic rock of Tulamben, we were surprised by how much the beach at Lembongan really sucked. Broken, scratchy coral and trash everywhere. And then piles and piles of seaweed drying along the coast. Not deal for walking, enjoying the few or really any beach activity. But, the water was an amazing color of turquoise and once you got out of the main Lembongan harbor the island was truly breathtaking.

We rented two scooters and took off along the windy dirt roads to explore. One of our favorite spots was called ‘Devil’s Tears’. Appropriately named because rocky coast line, and hidden sandy beaches, are so gorgeous, even the devil would cry.

And then we saw the actual namesake – freakin’ massively unbelievable waves that pulverize the coastline. The devil isn’t crying, he is tearing it up (i.e. shredding) and laughing while he does it! These waves were incredible, none of us had ever seen anything like it in our entire lives. And it wasn’t like there was a storm brewing that made them such temptrists. This was just another typical day sort of stuff.

Check out these suckers out. Wow!

Did I mention that they are unpredictable? Scott thought he had a safe vantage point from which to photograph the waves grandeur. And he did – for about five minutes – then the waves got the last laugh.

Here is a photo of just one of the hundreds of seaweed drying areas laid out around the island. This is the islands biggest income producer, after tourism. Lonely Planet says they use the seaweed as a filler in ice cream. I can’t say that sounds delicious, though I’ve had plenty of ice cream here and never been disappointed. So maybe it’s better than it looks.

On another exploratory trip we took the scooters across Nusa Lembongan to Nusa Cenigan, an island connected by one-lane suspension bridge. This was more rope swing than Narrows Bridge in design, but it seemed to hold our weight no problem. I guess not a lot of tourists travel to Nusa Cenigan – maybe the rickety bridge keeps them away – because soon we had a venerable troupe of youngsters following us around and laughing.

I don’t know how it happened exactly, but soon a teenage girl scooted up to us and said we should follow her to a great place to see blue water. Was she a tout? Someone who wanted to practice English? Going that way anyway? We weren’t sure, but since we were on a dead end road we followed her along. The road ended at a cliff line similar to the Devil’s Tears. A few locals were fishing from high up on the cliffs and we could look out towards the sunset. The view was quite incredible, but not more than two minutes after we arrived the teenager we’d followed summoned a local who began to try to sell us experiences in a round about way. Our warning buttons were raised, so our cameras stayed in their bags.

Turns out, this local earns his living by chatting up rouge tourists like us and encouraging them to cliff jump. Um, no thank you! We listened to his stories and watched his knockoff i-phone video of silly Australians making the jumps. The local probably only makes $5 a day, max but he can afford an i-phone. It’s ridiculous.

On our way back to Lembongan we stopped to photograph the seaweed harvesting boats, parked for the night. I also got a cute photo of Lucas parked on our rig. See the ghost in the bottom left hand corner? A local sped by during the longish shutter.

So now did night life in Lembongan compare to Kuta? Eh, we were THE ONLY night life. We took a couple of shots to entertain ourselves one evening at the local happening spot. I think there were five people total, including us three.

On our last day, we’d planned two morning diving adventures and an afternoon of surfing. Scott was going to do a Discovery Scuba Course and we were going Manta and Mola Mola hunting! Well, Scott woke up bright and early because Bali’s cuisine had finally caught up with him. He didn’t think it would be safe to distance himself from the bathroom for any length of time, so we were off to the waters without him.

Picking out our dive gear should have given us our first indication that the waters here were drastically different than anything else we’d seen. They were using 5mm wet suits. No shorties. Perhaps the water will be cold? But silly us, we insisted on two of their few 3mm suits. Well, if the water temperature when diving typically feels like a warm summer day, this was like forgetting your jacket and walking home during the first snow storm of the year. We’d been used to 28 degrees Celsius. This was 22 degrees at it’s coldest. Brrr! Lucas and I both found ourselves wrapping our arms around our body trying to conserve body heat through the entire dive.

But you can’t complain too much when you see Manta Rays (plural)! We saw perhaps seven Manta rays, but they kept circling around us over the course of the hour so it could have been more or less. These guys are huge! If you could open your mouth and gawk underwater, they would be gawk worthy. We also saw octopus changing colors and darting around – cool – sting ray, nudibranch and hawkfish, among many others. But the Manta Ray are obviously the most noteworthy.

This guy wore an insulated hoodie with his wetsuit; we should have done that!

More dramatic Nusa Lembongan coastline!

A new variety of nudibranch, our most photogenic underwater friends.

We decided to escape the Kuta area and see some of the Bali countryside.  So, we minimized our gear into one bag, and hit the road on our little scooter.  The getting out of Kuta was somewhat difficult, as we couldn’t make sense out of road signs.  But, we eventually prevailed by asking people along the way to point us in the right direction.  It was amazing how quickly English disappeared outside the touristy areas.  Fortunately, city names and directions seem to be somewhat universal.  The scenery was phenomenal.  I’ve never seen such a dramatic change in landscape in just a few hours of driving.  We went from a sandy beach costal area to the foothills of the mountains with banana trees in every direction.  Further up the mountains it progressed into incredibly green lush farming with rice paddies and terraced gardens.  Once passing over the mountains, the landscape turned to an almost barren desert, dry and cracked earth, right up to the edge of the sea where  volcanic black rocks turned into aqua blue water.  We’d chosen Tulamben as our destination because it is well known for diving.  A US navy cargo ship called the Liberty sank there in the 1940s, and is home to tons of coral and exotic macro life.

Finding a hotel was pretty easy, the first place we looked into was full, and they recommended another place right down the road.  We checked in, only to find out that the place was entirely empty.  We had the whole hotel and pool to ourselves… sweet!  The hotel had a dive shop, which made diving even easier.  The wreck was awesome, and we are looking forward to going back to do it again when Tara comes to visit.  For the next two days, we pretty much relaxed around the area, taking the scooter for a drive around the countryside, eating good food, and enjoying a little time away from the busy city.

Terraced gardens heading up into the mountains.  Everything was so green and vibrant.  The people here seemed very happy… with a view like this, how could you not be?

Lucas hanging out on the deck of our hotel. Check out his raccoon-like tan line for wearing his sunglasses on the bike all day.

View from our hotel deck… nice! You can’t really tell from this photo, but the lounge chairs on the left were ‘floating’ on a manmade lotus pond. Very atmospheric!

Another view from our hotel… the clouds rolling in over the mountains was mesmerizing.  They just kept on rolling over the top, an would disappear magically before they made it to the end.  I set watching them until dark trying to figure out where they went!

This may be my favorite picture yet.  The sun was setting behind the volcano, and was casting shadows through the clouds at the top.  Little streaks of light shooting out of the top, almost like the volcano was erupting blue smoke.

This picture rocks a high resolution… in the reflection of Jenn’s glasses you can see the sunset, and the volcano.  Of course, Jenn is amazing too

Lucas chilling out while watching the sunset.  You can see how barren the ground is here.  It would be awesome for dirt biking… as there were paths all over leading into the distance, over huge mounds that I can imagine you could take pretty fast and get some serious air time.

Hanging out at the beach.

Ghost Pipefish… these guys are supposed to be pretty rare, and on this trip we saw two.  This one looks just like a seaweed leaf.  (It’s the brownish green colored thing, and he is pointing mouth down)

An awesome giant clam… doesn’t it look like an ice cream sandwich or moon pie?  These guys snap shut so fast that it’s a bit scary… you could have your entire arm in there!

Jenn taking the USS Liberty for a test drive. (ok, maybe it was just a hatch, but it’s still cool)

My first successful capture of a Peacock Mantis shrimp out of it’s hiding place.  These guys are incredibly shy, and I only got one photo snapped before he scurried back home.

It was a bit interesting getting into Bali!  Our flight from the Philippines to Kuala Lumpur took off without a problem, but had a slight hiccup on landing!  As we were coming in for the landing, about to touchdown, I’d guess maybe 15 feet from the ground, bells went off in the cockpit and the pilot gave full power, and pulled us up away from landing strip.  WTF?  I could have jumped out of the plane we were so close.  But, evidently there was a massive “storm” ahead of us on the runway so we got the signal to abort the landing.  Strange they didn’t see that one coming and tell us to wait a few minutes before starting our landing procedure.  Anyway, we circled around the airport twice and then made another attempt, this time successful. 

One thing I don’t like about Air Asia, is they won’t check your baggage through to your final destination for you.  It’s all point to point flying.  So, instead of just transiting through the airport to the next gate, you have to go all around and spend a lot of time waiting.  A brief run through Malaysian immigrations, grabbed our bags, passed by customs, out of the airport, and then back into the airport to find the ticket line for our connecting flight to Bali.  Then, check our bags to Bali, run through Malaysian exit immigrations, back through the x-ray security guys, and finally through the airport to the departure gate…  Sigh, the price we pay for cheap flights!

On arrival at Bali we had a LOOOONG wait at immigrations.  I am notoriously good at picking slow lines.  This innate ability has proved itself time and time again, so much that I really try to avoid picking a line anywhere.  Sometimes I’ll pick a line, and then choose the one next to it just to ‘trick’ myself out of picking the slow one.  But, it never fails.  Hopefully I make up for this in some other skill yet unknown to me.  There must be balance in this equation somewhere. 

Anyway, we picked a hotel in the Lonely Planet called Blue Ocean, and jumped in a taxi to take us there.  Only to find out it’s full.  In fact, EVERY single place in Bali is full. We went door to door for a couple hours looking for a place to stay, and finally found a room in a run down hotel.  It was their last room, and only available for one night.  So, we could at least rest a bit, but we’d have to spend the next day looking for a place to call home.  Of course, we were woken up at 7:06 am to my 2nd earthquake.  It was so brief, I wasn’t even sure it was a quake.  The bed shaked for about 2 seconds, and I heard someone screaming outside.  I ran to the balcony and someone was waving at me to come downstairs.  I looked at Jenn who was wisely positioning herself in the doorframe of the bathroom.  For about a minute we waited for something to happen… but nothing did.  No aftershocks, nothing broken, just a quick bump in the morning to wake us up.  So, we did what any tired tourist would do… went back to sleep! 

After breakfast went to a little diner across from the beach which advertised free wi-fi and tried to find a place online.  While Jenn looked online, I walked around, and found that our original place, Blue Ocean, now had vacancies.  So, I checked us in, and proceeded to come down with a fairly miserable flu.

So, not a lot really happened over the next couple of days, until Scott arrived and joined up with us.  We decided to try a day of surfing lessons, which was pretty cool… I managed to stand up on my first try.  Jenn and Scott were awesome as well.  By the end of the day, we were all riding the waves, looking forward to some bigger swells!

Jenn at the beach, next to the “no swimming” sign.  Either people blatantly disregard these… or it doesn’t apply to surfers… I haven’t figured it out yet.

One of Scott’s attempts at a bigger wave.  I think it took him for a ride!  You can just see his head poking out from the top of the surf.

Lucas, chilling out on the beach, trying to recover from the Flu.  Not a bad place to spend your time recovering!

Scott with his long board, and his new surf outfit.  Nice rashvest, it makes you look buff!

Jenn looks like a pro surfer girl… She didn’t even really need lessons, she’s a natural at everything involving water!

Of course, the surf board was bigger than she was, and nearly impossible for her to carry around.  But she makes it look fun. 

Here is one of Scott standing up on the wave.  Proof positive that he can now call himself a surfer!

Well, it sounds like Lucas told you all about the hassles of settling in at Bukit Lawang, but what he’s left out is that all of those frustrations disappeared immediately once we actually got into the jungle. We ended up successfully booking a two-day jungle trek with our recommended guide and left the same day for our adventure. It was just Lucas, one small day pack and our guide as we set out along a narrow jungle path. The sounds from the village died away quickly and were replaced with the rustle of tree leaves, chirping of geckos and howling of monkeys. We hadn’t been walking more than an hour before we came upon our first grouping of Orangutans! Two teenagers, a male and a female, were relaxing in the upper branches of some trees. They are such a sight! Everyone knows what an Orangutan looks like of course, but until you stumble upon them in the wild, you aren’t really prepared for how ‘unwild’ they actually look. First off, they are a brilliant shade of orange. In my limited jungle experience, most animals strive to blend in to their surroundings – not so with these guys. They practically shout, “Hey, I’m the most interesting thing in these parts, look up here!” And then, they have extremely human facial expressions and movements. I know the surest way to get in to trouble with wild animals, is to assign human-esque emotions to them, but man do they have the biggest sad eyes you’ve ever seen. And they cradle and hug and coo their babies, just like we do. It’s quite a sight.

After we’d invaded this particular teenage couple for long enough, we headed deeper into the jungle where we ran into “Meana”. An aptly named Orangutan as she is apparently the grisliest girl in the neighborhood. Several of the local guides had been bitten by her in the past, and our guide was carrying food to pacify her in case of just such a Meana sighting. Generally the guides shy away from physical contact with the Orangutans, as the animals are similar enough to human beings in genetic makeup that they can catch colds from us and such. But he’d made an exception for Meana. Our guide fed her a few bananas (which she didn’t like and threw back at him) then fed her some pineapple. Meana actually chased our little group a fair bit up the path before heading back to her nest. Did you know that Orangutans make a new nest every night?

Later when we paused for lunch, a mother Orangutan and her tiny little baby wandered over to us and spent a good thirty minutes posing for photos. It was the cutest thing! She’d hold her baby out for us to see, then the baby would climb all over its mother and check us out. You could tell the baby was super curious about us!

That evening we camped on edge of a river and ate curry made over a campfire. Not that anyone actually got much sleep as our only bed cushion was a tarp laid out over the sodden earth. That and we were cramped side by side like sardines in a tin! Luckily another traveler had warned us about the uncomfortable quarters and I’d thought to pack ear plugs!!!

Other highlights included a pack of about 40 pig-tailed monkeys that stormed our camp right around dusk looking for tidbits we might have left behind from dinner. And a huge monitor lizard that decided to have a swim with us!

The next morning we made a quick pick-up of camp, enjoyed the nice weather for a tad and then piled onto inner tubes for a float down the river and back to Bukit Lawang. We saw more monkeys and Orangutans along the way, and got a splendid little massage for all of the river stones we bumped up against. In total we saw one millipede, one bearcat, two monitor lizards, forty pig-tailed monkeys, six adult Orangutans and two baby Orangutans.

My very own millipede!

It’s a Michael Jackson look alike!

He’s sticking his tongue out at us!

Dinner!