I am in love....with Bali

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Ok, so I don't think that I have the writing skills to describe how truly beautiful Bali is. The Indian Ocean is so alive with energy that transfers into beautiful pealing waves as it meets with the coast of Bali. The waves here are the perfect waves that every surfer dreams of surfing. Winds blow slightly offshore all day and the swell is never ending. I only surfed one time since arriving. The breaks are fast here, and I am not used to surfing waves that break fast, or in a shallow reef (translation for non-surfers: big waves are breaking quickly in knee deep water on top of a razor sharp reef).

My favorite thing about my day of surfing was the trip to the surf break. Here in Bali, everyone rents scooters to get around. I strapped a surfboard to the side of my scooter and followed my two new friends from South Africa to the surf break. The road was paved at some points and dirt/rock covered at other points. I almost fell off of my scooter about 3 times...the drive there was more dangerous than the surfing itself. I surfed for about 2 hours and only caught a couple of good waves. Even though I didn't surf all that well, I had the time of my life.

September 14th was the full moon. For that evening, me and my friend from San Diego decided that we would go to the most expensive swanky hotel on the island for some cocktails and a nice view of the full moon and the ocean. The hotel is called Bulgari. You may know the name from the designer watches, cologne, etc. The rooms there are from $1000-$8000 USD per night. From our $3.50 bungalow, we took a taxi to this beautiful resort. When we arrived, there were about 5 security guards and attack dogs at the gate. We told them that we wanted to go to the bar for a drink and they opened the gates to the posh resort for us. Just as the gates behind us closed, a golf cart pulled up and drove us to the bar. We hung out there for a few hours and enjoyed the luxeries of a hotel finer than any that I have ever seen. It was such an interesting contrast of environments....to go from the cheapest accomodation to the most expensive and enjoy the beauty of both.

Yesterday I went scuba diving off the coast of Nusa Pendida ( a small island next to Bali). We saw three huge manta rays during our first dive!! The dive sites were beautiful, but crowded with a lot of divers.

Today we are going to go into Kuta to stay for my last night. I am going to splurge and get a nice room that has hot water, air conditioning, and a bed with a mattress that is thicker than three inches!! Yea! Tomorrow I leave Bali and begin my travels back to reality. I have had such an amazing time and I don't want the dream to be over, but I know that I will return to Bali someday.

I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to such beautiful places. I wish that I could upload more pictures so that you could see the amazing beauty as you read about it, but the pictures will have to wait until I get home to the US and can upload them to my Kodak Gallery page.

Thanks for following along on my journey. If you have extra time and money and don't know what to do with it, I would suggest traveling to Thailand or Bali. You won't regret it. I promise.

Adios.
Nikki

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