Un-Bali-evable

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I wasn't too sure what to expect of Indonesia. I knew that Bali would be touristy but thought it would be easy enough to escape the crowds. I knew that we had a lot of ground to cover if we were to fit in everything we wanted to see plus the stuff we'd discover for ourselves/people telling us to do AND making it halfway back across Java to fly back to Singapore and onto Australia!

So we landed at Bali airport sometime in the afternoon expecting to find a few other tourists there with us but not the 150 or so trying to get through 5 immigration desks. An hour or so later and we'd begrudgingly agreed to what turned out to be an extortionate taxi fare into the nearest town, and the main tourist honeypot, Kuta Beach.

Quite possibly the worst place we have visited on our trip. A massively overdeveloped beach resort with hotels, shops and Hard Rock Cafes. Crazy amounts of people who must all be in some kind of trance if they think that they've found paradise here. It's the Aussie equivalent of Magaloof. On steroids. This is not what I had come to Bali for, neither did expect to find what I did. We equivocally agreed to hot-foot it out of Kuta and head towards Lombok via a stay in the ferry port of Padangbai on the east coast of Bali.

A swift speedboat across the azure blue waters between Bali and Lombok and we arrived on the paradise island of Gili Air. Only 1.5km across, this fairytale location became our sanctuary for 6 days, not one minute of which was wasted doing 'things' and 'stuff'. Sat in an open-sided beachside hut, with crystal clear waters lapping only feet away, it was a real escape from reality. I had my first snorkelling experience here, 15m off the beach, which was incredible; like swimming in a giant tropical fishtank. When I stopped and just floated, I had shoals of fish curiously swimming around me completely unafraid (as they should be of course) of this giant in their world.

Reluctantly we left Gili Air and hopped across to Lombok on a 20 minute boat ride, from where we got a bus to Sengiggi, Lombok's original tourist hotspot (mainly for it's beach which the Lonely Planet says is one of their favourites, I honestly couldn't see why..), where we were still trying to figure out our plans for the next 2 1/2 weeks.

Whilst sat in a cafe having lunch I was willingly coerced into trekking up Gunung Rinjani by the owner of the cafe in two day's time. I had mildly toyed with the idea but not given it too much thought until this guy really sold it to me. It worked out ideally as Rhian would use these 2 days of freedom to go for her first dive outside of schooling around the Gili Islands, which by all accounts (well one, hers) it was amazing!

It's 4am and I was sat waiting for my pickup to go the 90 minutes to base camp. I'm probably going to sound a bit dumb here but did anyone else know that chickens sleep in trees? No, well when you don't know this fact and a chicken comes flying out of a tree and collides with a stone wall not 2 feet from my face, you are somewhat surprised. Apologies if I woke anyone up with my loud profanities.

So, at 600m above sea level I met up with 4 other willing trekkers, 2 girls from Germany who were Geography teachers which I was happy about, and a French couple. We also had porters to carry the tents and cooking equipment etc which we obviously felt bad about but these guys climb this volcano twice a week so were suitably toned for the job. We knew it would take around 7 hours to reach the crater rim where we were to camp for the night, but we were innocently unaware of how steep this climb would be. We ascended 2100m/6500ft in those 7 hours and I could feel it by the last leg of the hike. Legs like jelly and the thinner air at altitude made every step that much harder but the good group dynamic we had meant that we urged each other on the whole way. When we got to the top of the crater rim, we could see why we'd just pushed ourselves so hard to get here.

A spectacular view of Gunung Rinjani as a backdrop to a caldera/crater lake with a myriad of colours lapping at it's edges formed by the different elements that have leaked from below the surface. And in the centre protrudes a smoking smaller cone formed from further volcanic activity following the massive explosion that blew 3000m off the top of the original volcano. A truly spectacular sight!!

Our tents were pitched 400m below the rim, out in the open on a ridge and we were kept awake most of the night by the howling winds and the rock-hard ground, as well as the freezing temperatures! 6am wake up call, with pancakes and hot tea preceeded a repeat climb to the rim to witness the sun rising over the peak of the volcano and casting blinding light into the caldera. A wonderous experience and it felt completely different to the previous evening's viewing.

4 of the 6 in the group (we had been joined by a 60 year old German woman, surely the world's fittest granny) were heading onwards to spend another night on the slopes of the volcano itself before climbing to it's summit the next morning. The German SuperGran and I, however, were going back down the way we came up. I thought the climb was difficult, but walking down naturally-formed steps of tree roots for 5 hours REALLY took it out of me. when we got to the last rest stop, 1.2km from the end my legs were struggling to support me, my achilles had swollen up, we were sufferring from mild dehydration, and as we were descending the temperature and hunidity was increasing causing us to become sweaty messes. Just to rub in how rubbish we were, we had a porter with us who was doing it all in flip-flops and cigarette in hand...

A few hours later I was back in our room in Sengiggi. A really cool place; just two rooms on one side of a square occupied by a small, friendly community and their vast hoard of noisy roosters and chickens. Only once I was here could I pause and stake stock of what I'd just done in the last 36 hours. The pain and struggle was all worth it to be able to witness that sight both at dusk and dawn, and one I won't forget in a hurry!

After a day's rest and recovery (I struggled to walk the day after returning!) we headed south on a bus to Mantaram, the island's main town and jumped on a slow ferry back across to Bali, and eventually arrived at the city of Ubud, Bali's cultural capital, in the centre of the island.

We found a small, quiet homestay down a backstreet away from the main roads where we felt immediately relaxed, surrounded by lush gardens and 2-room buildings that blended in well with their surroundings. We arrived quite late in the day so after freshening up, we headed down this same alley to a place called Devilicious for some LP-recommended food. A fantastic ever-changing menu, from which I picked chicken Jambalaya pizza and Rhian had a Caribbean-style stew, both were absolutely amazing dishes and we reckoned amongst the best food we'd eaten in 8 months!

The next day we walked around the town to get our bearings, including a large, two-storey market selling crafts including cool tin christmas decorations, and a Monkey Forest (avid readers will understand I did not want to go in here, no no no), and also arranged to go and watch some traditional Balinese Dance at the crumbling Palace in the centre of Ubud.

The dance comprised of 4 acts telling a traditional story from Balinese history, with a large gamelan band on either side of the stage. The backdrop was perfect for the dancing, up to 6 women and 2 men on stage in lavish, colourful costume, sometimes with masks, but always with bright, mesmerising eyes darting about like a chameleon on the defensive. It was a really enjoyable, and for me it was the start of our seeing the real Bali away from Kuta Beach.

From Ubud we headed back east to a tiny village called Amed, which forms part of a cluster of villages along the coastal road there. We managed to get a massive, really nice room for half or less the price you'd pay elsewhere on Bali, run by a nice family who owned the warung below. We were here to go snorkelling in the next town along of Tulamben, where mere feet from the beach is a shipwreck of the USS Liberty, broken in two and now home to an entire coral ecosystem! It was absolutely incredible to watch life down there from above, hundreds of species of corals and fish, including a huge underwater tornado of Bass fish that we swam through. We also visited another reef around the bay where we saw a large turtle swimming up to the surface for a gulp of air, and our guide skin-dived down to the sea bed to pick up a massive, discarded pearl shell which weighed a ton and I'm sure he'll do well out of selling it at the market!

Our guesthouse owner in Amed said he would take us to northern seaside town of Lovina in his air-conditioned car for the same fee as the local travel agents in a dodgy bus so we took him up on his offer, which obviously included him dropping us at his mate's hotel in Lovina.. The place wasn't actually that bad for once; great views inland across rice fields to the mountains in the near-distance, atop from which the sun rose each morning.

One of these mornings we found ourselves on a tiny catamaran a few kilometres out in the ocean having our breakfast looking for dolphins looking for their breakfast. There are huge shoals of tuna out here and the dolphins come to fill up each morning at 7am. The dolphins are Spinner Dolphins who jump out of the waves and spin on their axis like a spinning top, and it is a truly awesome sight! Some experts believe it's some kind of communication tool to dolphins further away. There must have been 100-150 dolphins in several different pods of 20 or so skipping through the surf. There were a lot of other boats out with tourists on them for the first 45 minutes or so, but our guy outlasted them and once the boats numbered 5 or 6 that's when the dolphins came out to play. Our boatman seemed to have a sixth sense of predicting where they would next surface as they often appeared 3 or 4 metres from our boat! Incredible sight! There is so much more to see in Bali than overdeveloped, congested beach resorts!
In a new feature to these blogs I have added a short video of the majestic dolphins!

Our next-door-neighbour in our hotel was a guy called Ken from Australia who we struck up conversation with and have been travelling with ever since all across Java...

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Comments

[Howard]

amazing again
Hi G and R Another set of amazing blogs. This will be the trip you never forget and in reality will never replace. It is truly a life changing experience I am sure for both of you. Take care and hopefully see you in 2012 safe and well. H