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Published: April 19th 2013
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Alarm set for a wake up call at 6.45 as Luke and I were off on a white water rafting adventure on the Ayung River. Our guide was a guy called Salenko which sounded more like a Lithuanian Basketball player than a Balinese Rafting Guide. Our bus picked us up and we travelled around 30 minutes to get to the place where the rafting starts.
We were given our helmets and life jackets and an oar to paddle with and the guy said to Luke off you go down those steps. We were about to venture down the side of a cliff face about 100 metre drop to the river floor. These were no ropes or handrails and most of the steps were pretty big by normal standards. However they were made with concrete and were quite stable. You just had to use common sense and go slowly (I did mention that Luke was leading us off didn’t I !!).
When we got to the river floor we had a quick safety instruction and soon we were off. There was two rafts in our tour group and only 4 of us in our raft plus
Salenko. Our first rapid was a grade 3 and the steepest drop of about 2 metres. Survived with no no-one falling out !!
We would continue on the river for the next 2 hours traveling on grade 2,3 rapids over 10 km of the river with lots of places to slow down and take it easy, looking at the amazing rock carvings and Luke had a chance to jump in to the river and float downstream as well as do some jumping off a rock doing backflips in a deep water section.
When we go to the end I found out there was about 10 different companies that use the river (we saw quite a lot of them along the way) and ours started the furthest upstream and finished the last downstream so we had made a great choice. We had to climb back up the cliff again which was a real test of the hammies and made worst for me as my Colorado sandals had gotten so soggy from rafting the leather stitching came apart from the sole.
They then took us to a place where we had a sort
of communal shower (quite a strange experience but I will say no more on this blog !!) and they had a buffet lunch where we had some noodles and rice (quite hungry after the rafting). We met an Italian couple who had just spent 2 years travelling around Australia, and a Dutch girl who was doing a homestay in Ubud.
We then got back to Sri Bungalows to find the girls were not home. Tried calling on the phone but kept dropping out. I thought I heard the words “we have just ordered and we will be back in 40 minutes !”. That would not normally be a problem but we only had one room key and I was looking for a cold drink. Waited patiently by the pool and eventually they arrived along with some calamari (not knowing we had eaten already !)
We later organised our day trip for tomorrow and then off we headed to Dinner to a place Kerry had had heard about from her morning adventures. Whilst Luke & I were rafting they went to the Ubud Markets and they met a couple from Brisbane who raved about this
restaurant.
This was a much better experience than last night. Started off with some Vietnamese spring rolls and then Kerry and I both had the grilled seafood for mains. Washed it down with a Sauvignon Blanc from Chile which was almost as expensive as the 4 main meals ! Total price for dinner was just over 1 million ! (Indonesian Rupiah that is). The restaurant name was Ibu Rai on Monkey Forest Road with white lanterns hanging out the front and across the road from Crocs shop. Website is www.iburai .com if you want to check it out.
We then went to look at the DVD shop. Only $1.50 each so we bought a few (70 to be precise !). Well they did have a special deal being one free for every five so we got 11 free DVD’s. Most of these were TV series that Elise watches like Greys Anatomy.
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