Life is slow here in Bali and craving some adventure, I convinced my parents to go white water rafting. We went on the Telagawaja river, the one with "big water" and a 4 metre waterfall drop at the end (more like the log jam at the PNE, but still fun). Something must have gotten lost in translation, as I think the locals confused "big water" with "big rocks" because we basically spent the afternoon playing bumper cars with giant boulders and/or being grounded on them, and our guide's role mostly involved wrestling awkwardly with our boat. The saving grace was the spectacular scenery; untouched jungles, pristine waterfalls, little kids running around and of course naked, bathing men (naturally, Mom mostly gawked rather than paddled).
Our education in Balinese culture continues and we took a Balinese cooking class in Ubud - the food is awesome here, I thought I'd lose some weight from all the sweating, but I doubt it, especially since they cook everything in a lot of oil - coconut oil! We started the day with a visit to the market in Ubud, always a favourite activity of mine. As far as markets in developing countries goes, this one was pretty typical: spices, crafts, vegetables, fly-covered meat hanging out in the open, mangy dogs sniffing around and eating stuff, discarded fruit peels and other garbage, people shouting, handling money, bagging goods, and of course yelling at you to buy their stuff, but this time with the added bonus of a half-dead eel writhing around on the floor. That was new.
There are some walks around Ubud mapped out in the Lonely Planet that sounded lovely and Mom was dying to do. One promised crossing rice fields, jungle trekking, an artisan village and vistas of the Ayung River. So, faces firmly glued to the LP map in our book, Mom & I headed out. After half an hour of walking past nothing pretty, or interesting, we found ourselves wondering where the hell these damn rice paddies were. Toot toot! Oh, here comes our new best friend, Made! He told us, "You're looking too closely at your Lonely Planet. Follow me." True, and how convenient that he showed up right at the precise spot we needed to cross a (mostly hidden) bamboo pole bridge and climb a hill through the jungle in order to find our coveted rice fields. We emerged onto a prairie of rice, 123 plots, through which we had to navigate along the 6-inch terraced walls of each individual plot. We zig-zagged through the plots, careful not to fall into the murky, muddy, eel and frog-filled fields. Made led us past laundry hanging on trees (no lines required!), waving above the irrigation ditch, "the back way" to the village of Sayan (a bit of a fixer-upper if you ask me). We followed him across a busy street and down the near vertical stairs of a privately-owned estate that overlooked the Ayung River valley, and it did feel like a little slice of paradise. We then had to billy goat our way uphill through dense jungle, which finally gave way to a huge pile of garbage, naturally (nowhere to put your refuse? throw it in the jungle!), and a family compound. Surprise, surprise, it was Made's house! We knew it was coming, that he would expect money but it was worth it. There's no way any foreigner, no matter how closely they were following their LP, could have ever navigated their way through that trail!
We've made our way to Lovina, a sleepy town on the north coast, where we're doing more of that lounging around. Mom & Dad are afraid to ride motorbikes so we rented some bicycles and tried to visit a waterfall, but abandoned ship when we were accosted by a dozen local guys trying to convince (or intimidate) us that we needed a guide to get to the top, when we could clearly see the staircase. I did however, when offered, take a swig of their back-alley local homebrew "coconut sake," which got me yelled at by Mom and tasted bad anyway. Our bike ride continued uphill (would've been way easier on those motorbikes!) to a hot spring filled with locals, most of whom were Muslim and wearing all of their clothes! (I was happy to flounced around in my bikini.)
Lovina is close-ish to Menjangan Island, one of Indonesia's best dive sites, so off we went. Mom freaked out when she saw the dive boat, somewhat comparable to a rescue raft. The boats were no problem with me, we were floating weren't we? I was paying more attention to the Slovenian guy that changed into his speedo in the boat and then sat across from me with his balls hanging out for the rest of the ride. They didn't advertise that! I had wanted to see the Eel Garden and since I was the only certified diver, I got to go on my own with the guide and we swam right over to it. We hovered in the middle of the eels and they popped back out of their holes, surrounding us in a field of eels. I felt just like a camera in Planet Earth, it was totally awesome! I also saw a turtle, my first one, and flailing along behind the turtle was Dad, attempting to get comfortable underwater on his intro dive! So far, so good!
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