After five days in Ubud we decided we needed a change of scenery. So we rented a motorbike loaded on two backpacks and headed to the mountains for a two day trip. It took a little getting used to riding again and driving on the left. We may have upset some locals with a few uncoordinated maneuvers on our way out of town. :-) Had a nice ride past small villages and rice paddies. We stopped in a lot to put on shirts as it got cooler and ended up on a torist tour of a coffee plantation that sells kopi luwac. You might rember it from "Bucket List". It's the expensive coffee extracted from rodent poop and sold to people with way too much money. We met the rodent, viewed the poop, and watched a woman roast a half pound of beans over an open fire and pulverize them by hand in a wooden pestle. We also saw all kinds of plants, peppercorn, ginger, turmeric, lemongrass, papaya, and kinds of other fruit and spice plants. It was vry in teresting. After a tasting we ended up in the store where you could buy the end product for 9 bucks an ounce!
We drove back to beutiful Ubud. It's such a fascinating town. Despite being very touristy it has a great charm. Ther are temples and shrines at ever step. Lots of homes are used as guest houses and when you step into the courtyards, it's like stepping into a different world. There are flowers, trees and lost of shirnes where people worship their ancesters.
Offerings are being made several times a day and are left all over the streets and around buildings. They are flowers and rice.
A week later? Hard to keep track of the time. By now we are on Flores island. The flight from Bali was beautiful especially at the end. We passed mountain ranges over couple of islands, the islands are totally different. They are savanna covered instead of jungles and some of them are pretty arid. Such a change from the rest of the cuntry. Easter you go, more arrid it gets from the winds oming up from Australia.
Quite few of the islands are corral frindged with white sand beaches. They were stuning and so inviting!
We got to the Komodo airport, it was so tiny and so pretty. It was surrounded by lush hills and one gate. We got to town in a few mintes. Even though the town was a ram shackle it had a lot of charm and the setting of the town was stunning. It's surrounded by lots of beautiful little islands and with the call of prayer it was magical.
We ended up going on a 2 day tour to Komodo island and Rinca island, both famous for the Komodo dragon. It's a reptile that looks like a huge lizzard. The boat was very basic and it was a total adventure. I wish we took pictures of the bathroom and the back of the boat. You have to be in a real advetnure mode to get a kick out of it and enjoy it but the scenery was magical. There were tons of islands, some coral frindged, and fishing villages. Rinca was beautiful, we took an hour hike with a guide and saw two dragons in the wild, it was pretty cool but the hike was much more beautiful. It was so different from anything we have seen, savanna covered with some palm trees and the bays and ocean was stunning from the top.
Another highlight of the boat trip was the snorkelling, I persuaded the boat captain to stop at 2 deserted islands on the way as the official snorkelling spots are very dirty and crowded from all the tourist boats. The boats let the affluant water into the ocean. Plastic bottles are thrown into the water!
So we stoped at a couple of deserted islands. It was what you can picture from the movies, pink sand beaches with lots of corral and lots of fish. The water was delicious! We swam out to the islands and found out why it's called pink sand beaches. The red corals washed out on the beach get pounded into tiny particles and get mixed with the white sand.
After the snorkeling we stopped at Manta Point. Every tourist office claims that there are lots of mantas but in reality when you talk to people they are only seen seldom but the captain made a great effort to look for them with the result. However I was very eager to get into the water, after the snorkeling I was all pumped up. So I jump in and within seconds the manta ray come. Oh my God, it was so AMAZING! I jump out of the water and start screeming, there is a manta, a manta! Everyone thought I went crazy but I have never seen such beautiful graceful creature. He was huge and was flyng on the bottom of the ocean, I was histerical, Kenny and the other guy on the boat jumped in too. The manta hand out for a while, he might have felt all the energy above him when he was leaving I swam and kept up the pace above him, it was such an amazing feeling!
Tuesday, April 23
We had a great day. Started early and got up on Kelimutu mountain. The mountain is famous for its three colored lakes. One is turquoise like the glacial lakes in the Canadian rockies, one is rusty brown and the other is dark blue/black. Its rather interesting that the blue and brown are right next to each h other. it was a beautiful cool warning, clear skies and barely any people around.it was great to feel Kenny's presence. We have been missing this, there are always people around which is no surprise the country is overpopulated, i believe it's the third most populated in the world.
We hiked around for a while and then we headed down on our scooter in a neutral mode. It was great, the scenery was just beautiful, rice paddies everywhere, tucked in the misty mountain ranges.
Got back to Moni and tried to get some fruit at the weekly market. In the whole market I counted 2 papayas, a few bananas and 5 avocados they treat the avocados as fruit. It was unbelievable, we are in a tropical country and we can barely find fruit! I ended up with on epapaya and a string of bananas. We headed back to negotiate on a new scooter. Prices have doubled in the last couple of years and the locals are constantly testing the tourist market, so this involves tIering Negotiations. we managed to get the scooter for 6 $ for a few hours. The one in the morning was an old wreck but they try to make money with everything.
We left around 1pm and started riding in the mountains, it was absolutely beautiful but we wanted more so we veared off at an intersection and took a side road. People as usual was so thirled to see us. Every time they would spot us whether from the fields, their own motorbikes or home and would yell out, hello mister, hello miss! They have been so curious about us, white people. We never experienced anything like this in any other countries. They keep coming up to us and use their few English words from their vocabulary. Kids try everything to get our attention, so adorable!
So we kept riding and soaking in the stunning views until we spotted the ocean, we got excited, maybe we can get down to a beach? Sure thing the rode was leading down to the coast to a musslim fishing village. The setting was stunning, turquoise water, surf pounding on the the big pebbles and fishing boats launched on the white pebbles with the village facing the ocean. Stunning! We rode down and t
