This mood hold on for a while, but as always when I arrive in a new country I feel a little scared and alone..that I was deadly tired didn´t help here either. But I pumped myself up with positive energy and made friends with 2 girls to share a taxi into Kuta. The worst town on this island with millions of tourists, mostly speeding trough the narrow streets or very drunk after dark and Balinese that think your are a dollar machine. I organised myself as quickly as possible a motorbike,packed my backpack for 2 weeks and left the rest in my guest house before heading down to Uluwatu. The south of Bali has a wonderful relaxed charm with a beautiful warm energy coming from the people that come here to enjoy the surf, the beauty of the sea and the companion of new travel mates.
After 4 days of surfing, good conversations and cruising around with my scooter it was time to meet Scott again. The 3. time since I began my travels, our paths seem to cross for the purpose of sharing our experiences on our spiritual journeys and to point each other the right way. Ubud was the perfect location for that with its magical, cultural and spiritual mood. Only 3 hours together throw me miles further than i´ve been before and i´m sure we will meet again soon.
Another happy reunion took place in Ubud as I discovered on Facebook ( thank god for that!) that Joanna and Andrew, my travel companions for the Nullarbor stretch till Perth (Australia) were on the island. So after nearly one year we met again and as we had the same itinerary of what we wanted to see and do in Bali plans were sealed with a fresh mint-lemon drink from Dewa Warung.
Driving through Bali is very magical as you smell the incenses that are being burned to please the gods on nearly every corner and the beauty of the little shrines and the women passing with massive offerings on their heads fill you with a deep respect for their culture.
The little offerings are worked beautifully and filled with rice, cigarettes, gum, sometimes some money and placed either in the shrines that are high above the ground to please the gods or on the street to tell the demons to be less mean that day. To open the channel to the gods or demons the incenses are lid and as soon as the offering touched the ground or the shrine it is considered to already been accepted. So don´t worry if you step on them or fully destroy them by running them over with your bike, that happened despite al attention on where we were going.
Another reason to feel the magic is finally abandoning the busy streets and driving though the tiny roads that lead your to the rice fields surrounded by jungle with their mesmerizing and powerful colours of all types of green. It just makes me so happy to breath the fresh morning air, see the sun rise and feel the dew on my feet and hands walking through the rice fields.
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| Rice terraces |
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| offerings |
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| women bringing offerings to the temple |
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| reunited in Ubud |
On our way to Lovina in the north of the island we took one of the smaller roads, which brought us deep into the jungle and was beautiful to drive until we passed the highest point and the street downwards was full of holes and gravel. So it took us twice as long down that up, as we had to be really careful, change shoes ( better to put the sneakers on as driving around in flip-flops), Joanna had to walk half of the way and i sweated like crazy, especially after slipping twice with the motorbike and falling to the side. But we finally made it safely and rewarded ourselves with a nice bath in the nearby hot springs.
The next destination was Tulamben at the east coast, a perfect diving and snorkelling destination, and as we were tired and our bums hurt from the endless hours on the motorbike we stayed for 2 nights and dived and snorkelled the famous US Liberty Wreck that is accessible right from the shore. An amazing location with crystal clear water and colourful corals that I haven´t seen until then as the visibility in Koh Tao, where I did my open water was horrible due to the wet season.
Back to the mountains was the call the next morning though, and driving over the pass to Kintamani with its famous volcano Mt.Batur was surprisingly chilly because of the hight. I have no idea how I am gonna survive being back in Germany after nearly 7 months of high temperatures..but I guess I have really nice and warm clothes in one of my suitcases.
Well, we decided not to climb this volcano as we wanted to go to Mt. Bromo in Java, so we found ourselves a nice cottage near the Batur Lake to make friends with a pig, have a lazy movie afternoon, a bath in the local hot springs and a visit to a fish farm the next morning.
Heading back to Ubud was quit a mission as it began to rain out of buckets 10 minutes after starting the journey, so we stopped to wait, waited..drove a little, stopped again, waited..and so on...3 hours later we arrived wet and grumpy and hungry, but in our favourite guest house with the best hosts ever. Another treat after this rather exhausting day was an Italian baguz ( means good in Indonesian) pizza and salad..with real dressing!!! ( how exciting, I tell you! the Asians don´t really eat salad..and if..then with soy sauce..;-/ )
We still were discussing about going to Lombok, the Gilis or Nusa Penida...but after 2 days of thinking and reading and talking to people we went for the cheapest and less travelled route that promised to be a lot less touristy than the other places : Nusa Penida.
And here we go, another reunion, this time totally out of the blue, with Dan, that I have met in Thailand at Panya. The world is a town!He showed us his favourite Warung and Andrew organised a boat to take us to the Manta point and 2 other snorkel spots for the next morning. I can´t possibly describe how it felt to swim along with these amazing animals that cruised only finger widths away from us back and forth to filter the water through their gills. It was scary, mind blowing, exciting and fantastic at the same time. The snorkel spots later could despite all doubts for my part still astonish me even more with the underwater world as it presented us the most colourful corals and fishes of all sizes with a visibility of around 15 meters.
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| swimming with manta rays at manta point |
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| crystal bay |
This adventure was amazing and after the exhausting bike ride through the country we settled in Uluwatu for the last days. A wonderful guesthouse right at the cliffs was our new home for 4 nights and time was dedicated to surf, just sit and watch and have great conversations with our neighbours. I found myself surrounded by powerful and energetic people that opened my eyes yet in another direction. That is after all the best about travelling, to share the visions, thoughts and ideas of other human beings.
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| afternoon chill mood |
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| our guest house: Bali rocks! |
It was hard to leave this magical place, and even if I know nothing..one thing I know for sure, I will come back one day.
xoxo, j
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