Ubud and end of intrepid tour

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After spending a semi-sleepless night in Tirta Gangga, with the suicidal fan which spent the night attempting to self destruct, we jumped into the minibusses and headed for Ubud in the rain! I think this was the first time I had seen rain since arriving in Indonesia.
On the way, Nyoman had planned for us to stop at White sands beach but, due to the rain, I didn't expect this to happen.
I was reminded that this is Indonesia, not England, and my expectations for rain and how long it lasted needed reallignment as it stopped not long after we set off.
An hour later we arrived at white sands with the minibus heading down a road which would have been challenging for a 4x4. To the drivers credit, we arrived with us and the minibus in one piece.
White sands, as the name hints at, was a white coral sandy beach in a bay with a few restaurants and sunbeds. It was surrounded by rocky cliff faces with ample vegetation growing from every possible crack and crevice.
Once we got there, some of the group opted for the sunbeds and some opted for some snorkling in the beautiful looking azure ocean.
After the first local attempting to sell me just a snorkle mask with no fins, I went into the warang (cafe restaurant thingy) next door and started talking to the guy running it to see if he had any gear for rent.......not only did he have snorkle gear for me but he also had a good story from only a few months ago so I think i'll share it with you.....
One morning he had arrived at the warung to start his normal days work to find that a turtle had dug a hole in the middle of the covered seating area and had burried it's eggs in his warung. Knowing that the hatched turtles have something like a 1 in 50 chance of survival, he cordoned off the area and waited for the turtles to hatch.
When the hatching began, he gathered the locals and any willing and available tourists to help the baby turtles to the sea.
It would have been pretty cool to have been there when that happened. Anyway, I got my snorkling gear on and was quite excited about the quality of the snorkling in this bay.
NOTE: Always ask for the snorkel without the purge valve as these almost always leak.
Half an hour later I returned to the cafe after snorkling in what was, compared to other places I've been, a little disappointing. The beautiful coral was littered with plastic bags, old t-shirts and other various rubbish items. Excluding that, the water was warm, clear and had other wildlife such as angel fish and sea lice (which you only know are there due to the slight biting you can feel in parts of the water).
After a brief drink and a dry in the sun, we headed off again in the minibus to stop for lunch at Leyring Agung. This was an open sided restuarant overlooking a valley full of lush green rice paddies. Not a new sight but beautiful all the same!
The food was a good standard buffet but this was topped by my first experience of black rice pudding which was a mixture of black rice with coconut and honey - This was very good!!
This restaurant had a surprising addition to it's guest list which I spotted as I was leaving.......... they had a small tree outside with something hanging from it that looked like a dog with wings and a mouse's face.....this bat had a foot long body with roughly a 4 ft wingspan and it was just hanging there wrapped in it's wings like a banana leaf around a mouse. This bat was obviously tame enough because, after a few minutes of us photographing the bat, one of the restaurant worker brought out, of all things, a chewy sweet for the bat to eat. I didn't expect bats to be partial to sweets but obviously this one was.
5 minutes away from Lering Agung we stopped again. This time at a coffee plantation...... this wasn't just any coffee plantation..... it was a coffee plantation which also produced the most expensive coffee in the world - Coffee Luwak!!!!
For those who have not heard of it; Coffee Luwak is a type of coffee which has had a rather interesting production method..... once the coffee beans are ready for picking, they are picked and then fed to a Civet cat (yes, a cat) and, once the cat has excreted said coffee beans, the beans are then washed, roasted and ground....... sounds delicious, eh?
Well I was there and this was a relatively cheap opportunity to drink what I never thought I would.......when in Rome, eh?
Okay....to some up the experience; It was a nice coffee but I've had better and the mind still boggles on who and how this coffee discovery was made!
After another rubber time hour (time estimates in Indonesia are stretchy so an hour could mean anything between 1 and 3) we arrived at our final hotel - Nicks Pension.
It rained again that evening and we all went for dinner with a few of us staying out for a while to have a few beers and watch some local music. On that note, the band said that it would be playing it's last track about 5 minutes after we arrived but with a small amount of tipping, ended up playing for an extra hour plus they came and sat with us until we left. It still amazes me the friendliness of Indonesian people.
On the following day, the group had voted to take a trip to see a fortune teller called Ketut - Some of you may know him from the book and film called "eat pray love".
I opted out of having my fortune read as I am in control of my future (or at least I hope I am :-D) so I wandered his grounds and listened to the prediction he made for the groups future.... In my opinion all he did was complement the girls and tell them vague things that may happen.....I was very glad not to have forked out the money to be flattered and told I would live to 100 plus or minus 2.
After Ketut we visited a batik factory (which was closed for the day) and a silver jewelry shop which was situated around a pond full of what looked like a type of carp which, as a male, was more interesting then the jewelry but, I was happy just to chill and reflect on the trip so far while the girls shopped.
That night we went to watch the Balinese traditional dance called "Kechak". We arrived late but what we saw was pretty impressive - there were topless men sitting in a circle doing what sounded like a group traditional beatboxing with dancing women in the middle where Anoman Obong (the white monkey) helped the Prince Rama defeat the evil King Ravana. This was followed by a man on a bamboo horse occasionally kicking the burning embers of a pile of coconut shells at the crowd while some other guys would then sweep it up before he kicked it again - I didn't really know what this bit was on about but it was entertaining nonetheless.
Dinner was held at "the Dirty Duck" where (unsurprisingly) I had duck.
After dinner most of the group retired back to the hotel while Nyoman, Kim and I decided to squeeze the last drop out of the last night. Although the previous night had been relatively quiet, we managed to find a bar with a live reggae band which was packed to the brim with locals and foreign people alike so we had a drink and a dance. The atmosphere of this place was really good and it made for a great final night to my trip.
So then, this was the end of the tour....... I feel that this is a good time to thank my tour family for being such cool and interesting people and Nyoman for the organisation.
I don't remember one falling out or occasion where there was any animosity between any of the group.
What a cool couple of weeks and that's enough sentimentality for one blog! :-D ..................... Onto Canggu for some solo travelling.

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