Tour in Northeastern Bali

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Life in Candidasa has been quite pleasant. The hotel that Joan found for his the Rama Candidasa has been very good except for the 21% tax on EVERYTHING....
Yesterday we hired a driver for $40.00 for an 8 hour day and we went to:
Ajung: a water palace built by the last raja of Karangasem. The buildings were destroyed in an earthquake in 1974 and rebuilt in 2004. It had quite beautiful views from some of the balconies, which had MANY steps up (today we are feeling the affects of) We could see the sea and the sailing ships and it appeared to be a place where the natives would bring their families for picnics etc. Not far from here we saw the native people along the side of road sorting out the days fish catch which was significant.
Amalpura - royal palace no longer inhabitated by royalty but inhabits it by ?
Amed - promoted for snorkelling opportunities. The place is a fishing village and the beach is rock. The snorkelling was quite nice but we had to swim through plastic bags to get back to shore and it cost $5.00 to rent snorkelling equipment here instead of the $2.50 at Gili. Saw laundry drying on the highway guard rails.
Tulamben - another snorkelling/diving site. Joan snorkelled here as the waves appeared a little too rough for me. This is the location of the sunken ship Liberty an American cargo ship that was torpedoed during WWII - QUITE far off the shore - 44 yards many colorful fish. Beautiful mountain views on the way back - our pictures will never do it justice.
Tirtagangga - most magnificant water place we have seen. We had planned to hike there which would have been about a 4 mile hike but it turned out we could include it in our driving tour so that's what we did. It was so beautiful! This place also has a cold spring fed pool which looked very refreshing; beautifully landscaped pounds, decorated bridges. Price of admission $1.00 each.
White Sand Beach - the road was like a cow path at home - very rutty, narrow and I don't know what you would do if you met another vehicle. No rocks on this beach, it was clean and there is snorkelling although we did not snorkel here. We had a nice refreshing Bingtang.
It was a very worthwhile tour and we arrived home ready for a nice shower. We revisited Vincent's a local restaurant and had the catch of the day, salad and Bingtang for $8.00 each - and of course we got picked up and dropped off again....
Joan did such a great job of booking us this hotel but we are off to Ubud in about an hour.

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