Life is a Beach!

Howdy everyone!

I must say that I have fallen in love with Indonesia even though I have only been here for under 2 weeks. Everyone is super friendly, food and drinks are cheap, and the scenery is absolutely beautiful. Especially after hanging out on the beach for a few days now its definitely going to be hard to leave. But until August 4th comes around, I'm trying to keep the thoughts of not being here out of my head.

Our Indonesian adventure began when we flew into Bandung which is located in western Java. We were planning on staying there just for one night, but when we discovered that the train to Yogyakarta was only available that evening and then 3 days later we decided to leave right away. Nine hours later on a hot and sweaty train we arrived at our next destination. After walking around for about an hour at 1am we finally tracked down a home stay that was both affordable and not full.

Our stay in Yogyakarta was nice and laid back. The place that we chose to bunk was located in a tiny community full of hostels, restaurants, tour guides, and art shops. I think that all of the locals there were somehow related to each other so it was a pretty tight knit place. One of the highlights was going to see Borobudur which is the largest Buddha temple in the world. It was supposedly founded in 800AD so much of the architecture was worn down and damaged but was under construction in an attempt to restore it. There were hundreds of Buddha statues all over the temple which really provided a holy feeling. Every wall panel was intricately carefully carved too depicting different pictures and scenes. It was quite a sight.

In the area where we were staying I befriended a local artist named Edy. He was a painting instructor and worked in an art gallery 20 steps from our place relaxing and selling art all day long. Batik painting is a traditional Indonesian style involving layers of wax that would be put on in various stages and later melted away to reveal the underlying paint colours. A little complicated to say the least. I spent a fair bit of time in his gallery just hanging out and talking about art and life. Every time I went in there he insisted that I have at least 2 cups of real Java coffee. This coffee is special because the coffee beans are extracted from an animal's poop after it has eaten the plant. It sounds gross but it was probably the richest and best cup of joe I've had!

After spending 3 nights in Yogyakarta and partying to an Indonesian Rolling Stones cover band on our last night which was absolutely amazing, we continued our journey east to Solo. Here we planned to do a night hike in the jungle up a 3200m tall mountain named Mt.Lawu. On the top of mountain is a Hindu temple that thousands of people make pilgrimages to every year and is supposed to be an very spiritual experience. The trek started from a village high in the mountains which began at 10pm and was scheduled to take about 5 hours just in time to see the sunrise. We were slightly unprepared as we underestimated how chilly the temperature would be expecting it to be similar to the hot climate below. We purchased our toques and began to climb. According to our Lonely Planet book this climb was supposed to be the easiest on Java...but as we discovered this definitely needs to be updated. It was very exhausting and after going up for about 3.5 hours we unfortunately did not quite make it because Niki got a little sick and we had stop. We cuddled up inside a hut on a makeshift bed of hay and dirt with our blankets and body heat to stay warm and await the morning sunrise. Although we did not reach the summit the sights were definitely worth it.

The following day after recovering all of our lost sleep our next destination was Mt.Bromo to see some volcanoes and craters. The tour that we signed up for to see this involved another early 4am wake up. We were picked up in an old Toyota Landcruiser and drove for about an hour in the dark to a peak that stood 2800m. As we rolled up we saw that nearly everyone else (there must have been 300 people)
had also made the morning journey in the same truck as we did. It was a Toyota lover's dream as these vehicles are fairly rare back at home and there were probably 100 different vehicles to look at (Blake Hurdle would have loved this!). As the sun rose the view was incredible. We were able to get pictures of a couple different volcanoes surrounded with thick fluffy clouds and a beautiful blazing sun in the background. From there we descended and drove to the Bromo crater. Once we climbed a few hundred stairs to the top we were able to peer into the active crater and see smoke and steam billowing out which was very cool.

One the same day we ventured to Bali. After an 8 hour combined bus and ferry ride we arrived in Depansar and immediately went west to Kuta where we decided to stay for 4 nights. All I can say is paradise! We basically just lived on the beach for the days that we were there and loved every minute of it. Niki, Jeff, and I spent some time surfing and trying to shred some of the waves. There were some amazing surfers there and they always made it look much easier than it actually is, but we had a blast regardless. All of our tans are coming in quite nicely although there is a bit of peeling happening. It's nothing that a lot of moisturizer can't fix! From Kuta we made our way to the east coast to a city named Sanur which is much less busy and touristy. We arrived here yesterday and are planning on doing some snorkeling possibly today and continuing to relax on the beach. Life is good!

And that's all! In a couple days we will be heading further east to the island of Lombok to see what kind of tropical paradise we can discover there. Until then, chow for now and I will talk to you all again soon!

Love and miss you guys!

---

---