September 06, 2009

Honeymoon in Bali Part Two

Saturday, September 5th

After I was awoken by a noisy gecko in our room, I went outside to explore the beautiful grounds at the Amertha Bali Villas. It was pretty dark when we'd checked in the previous night and getting to see the resort by daylight was breathtaking. This is the view of our bungalow...

...taken from the black sand beach a couple hundred feet away.

Our bungalow shared a porch and a small pool with the bungalow next door.

On either side of the pool were these cool little shaded beds.

Tiny bird on our thatch-roof.

Around 7:30 Mer woke up we walked over to the hotel's restaurant to get breakfast.

meredith — Haha.

Waking up.

I got my nasi goreng on. (I LOVE RICE FOR BREAKFAST!)

The rest of the ocean-front bungalows.

I made a reservation to go scuba diving when we checked into the hotel the previous night. A little after nine, we walked down the road from our hotel to the dive shop.

After getting outfitted with gear, we hopped into a van with a bunch of other divers and headed out!

Walking to the marina.

All the boats were beautiful wooden boats.

Rad.

We left a little before 10am. It was about a thirty-minute boat ride out to the first dive spot. The scenery was amazing. I love how the water turns from deep blue to turquoise.

The beaches were deserted. If you look in the center of the photo, you can see Mount Semeru (the largest volcano on the neighboring island of Java!) peeking out above the clouds.

me, meredith — Mer doesn't like scuba diving (she has trouble equalizing the pressure in her ears) but she was excited to snorkel around the reef while we were diving.

Pirately ship!

Awesome.

Around 10:30, we anchored about 200 yards off of this island and got ready for our first dive.

See you in 40 minutes!

Descending along the reef.

The coral was really pretty.

And teeming with fish.

Clown fish

Blue starfish.

Our divemaster picked up a huge sea cucumber and was passing it around for us all to feel.

It was heavy and squishy and dense.

Surface.

Riding to the second dive location. Check the two volcanos in the background!

We anchored near a reef off of another island.

Strapping on a fresh tank.

Wanna hold this guy?

Awesome visibility

Branch coral.

Butterfly fish.

Many-Spotted Sweetlips (I think!)

Up.

A beautifully-patterned map puffer (Arothron mappa)

Bigeye Jacks! (Bigeye Trevally)

Anyone know what kind of fish this is? I'd never seen anything like it!

Awesome.

This guy was curious about us.

Five minute safety stop. (Hanging out at depth of 20 feet to allow any excess absorbed gasses to be released from my blood before the final ascent to the surface).

Shaking Mer's foot at the surface.

The island we were moored off had pura that were visible from the boat.

Headed back to Pemuteran.

meredith — Volcano spotting.

In the background you can see another walled pura.

We got back to our room to find it all decked out with fresh flower petals.

Went out onto our porch...

meredith — ...and rinsed off in our little pool surrounded by plants and flowers.

meredith — After our swim, we decided to try out the little shaded beds next to the pool.

The view from the bed was probably one of the most picturesque views I've ever seen in my life.

Why not make paradise better and get some hand-delivered snacks? Spring rolls, a salad, garlic bread and tropical fruity drinks!

I got sunburn on my chest and it hurt to rest my book on my chest so I fashioned my napkin into a tiny protective shirt and Meredith kept (rightfully) laughing at me.

We took a long nap and when we woke up it was 9pm and there was a gorgeous full moon.

Late night dinner. Pizza and a veggie tofu curry.

This spotted lady came out of the shadows to say hi. She was really interested in our food, but was a wild beach dog and was too scared of us to come much closer.

Monday, September 7th

On Monday our stay at Amertha was over and we packed up to head just a hundred yards down the road to the Mati Hari.

Tall palms.

meredith — Nothing beats fresh pineapple juice in the morning.

Another perfect day.

Look who decided to get a big boy breakfast!

me, meredith — After eating, we hopped back into our rental car and drove for like 3 minutes.

The entrance to The Matahari Beach Resort and Spa.

The place was unreal.

Here's the entrance to our bungalow. (Although, considering that the structure was primarily made of marble and stone sculpture, I don't know if it technically qualifies as a "bungalow" anymore)

meredith — Practically everything inside was made out of beautiful hand-carved wood.

Check out the bungalow's woven, pyramid roof!

Amazing.

meredith — More juices!

meredith — Mer lying next to....

...the heart-shaped flower bouquet.

The bathroom had an indoor shower...

...and then more carved, wooden doors that opened to an outdoor shower. Complete with a statue of a three-headed dragon...

...the water came out of the top dragon's mouth.

Meredith didn't bother to put on any sunscreen before she spent three full hours floating face down while snorkeling and got CRAZY severe sunburn. Ouch.

The beach had trees growing feet from the water! It's wonderful to sit on the beach in the shade of trees!

Black sand.

If you looked down the coast to the right, you could see Pura Pulaki. A big, coastal Hindu temple that's overrun with monkeys!

Giant chess board on the beach!

Outside of our room was a carved, wood statue of a woman holding a sign...

..the sign spun around! Haha.

meredith — Later that afternoon, we went to check out Matahari's "tea garden."

Overdo it much?

The tea garden was massive. It was a giant, walled lilly-filled pond that had bridge-accessible "island pagodas" for enjoying tea.

All of the wooden boxes were filled with different kinds of tea.

Ali Baba No. 14.

The hotel had a massive banyan tree on their grounds. (The banyan tree is known for being the kind of tree the Buddha sat down in front of before becoming enlightened.

"The branches go downward and the roots upward. Similarly, this material world is a reflection of the spiritual world. The material world is but a shadow of reality. In the shadow there is no reality or substantiality, but from the shadow we can understand that there are substance and reality." - Bhagavad-gītā 15.01

meredith — So, you know, don't take all this all that seriously.

meredith — Later that evening, Meredith and I decided to walk east along the beach and visit the Pura Pulaki, the nearby Hindi temple famous for being overrun..

...with monkeys! We came upon this (sort of creepy) monkey statue on the way and knew we were getting close! And then the next thing you know...

REAL MONKEYS! Check out our first customer! Monkey's just so maxed and relaxed! As we got closer to the temple, monkeys were everywhere! We were strolling along the beach holding bags of "monkey treats" that we'd purchased from the locals when suddenly, a large male monkey walked up to us and started reaching up to grab Mer's bag of monkey treats. Meredith tried to play keep away, but the monkey launched himself into the air, landed on her chest, held onto Mer's waist with HIS MONKEY FEET (!!!) and then used his super-monkey-strength to rip the bag of monkey treats out of her hands! TREAT-MUGGED BY A MONKEY!

Right after the mugging, the locals saw us struggling to defend ourselves against a pack of monkeys encroaching on our space intent to steal our second bag of monkey treats and they started waving at us and showing us that we should pantomime like we have rocks to throw or slingshots in our hands and the pantomime totally scared the monkeys away! Good looking out, locals! Thanks!

As we were walking up the stairs to the temple, we saw this female monkey carrying an adorable baby monkey! I started snapping pics...

...and then this male monkey walked over and just started crushing that shit. Poor baby monkey's just hanging down underneath trying to ride out the bang-invasion. Haha.

Right when we got up to the temple, the sun was just getting ready to set over Java in the west.

meredith — The temple was getting ready to close and we were the only visitors! Luckily, there was a temple minder there who's job was to show you around and to help keep the monkeys from getting too aggressive!

He even gave us wooden switches to intimidate the monkeys with!

Hand feeding!

The temple was beautiful.

me, meredith — You had a cover your bare legs.

meredith — The whole time Meredith was feeding this guy...

...he was number one.

Sunset was magnificent.

Backlit temple.

NONE SHALL PASS! (The guy at the temple didn't speak any English, put he certainly understood the pantomime for "Hey, wanna pretend we're having a SWORD fight for this photo?" Yes!)

I don't think this is a banana, but it sure looked like one! It was a big yellow pod that had dried out and split open. Inside, it was filled with fluffy fiber and black seeds.

Meredith's impressive sun ~~poisoning~~ burn: day two.

That night we ordered in room service and had an awesome late night dinner on our bungalow's porch.

Haha.

Monday, September 7th

I got up early on Monday morning and went for a swim.

Bamboo.

meredith — Sleepyhead.

meredith — Birds of Paradise.

Red, white and pink flowers.

A little after 10am, we went to get some breakfast.

After 3 days in Pemuteran, we had decided it was time to move on. We busted out the guidebook and started looking at possible next-destinations!

View Larger Map

After a whole ten minutes of deliberation, we decided to drive about thee hours to the east and south of Pemuteran up into Bedugal, the mountainous, central highlands of Bali! (Bedugal is only about 30 miles inland from Bali's northern coast, but in that short amount of space, the land goes from sea-level to 4,500 feet above sea level!)

meredith — After getting our next destination all squared away, it was time to enjoy a breakfast feast!

One last awesome outdoor shower courtesy of DRAGON STATUE SHOWER HEAD!

meredith — Mer giving Lord Ganesh one last hug for good luck.

This is carved from a single piece of wood!

Then we hit the road. Bedugal or bust!

After passing through this gate, we turned off the main northern road, and made a right...

...onto a super-narrow local road. Most of the roads that wound up through the mountains were this wide. It doesn't look too scary here, but imagine having a 1,000 foot drop to your left and trying to share it with oncoming trucks whizzing around blind corners.

Getting elevated.

Up in the highlands, we started encountering lots and lots of beautifully step-terraced rice paddys.

Wow.

Green.

The roads spiraled up around the mountains and each time we reached the top of the next set of hills, the views got prettier.

Different kind of farmland.

Around 2pm, we stopped at a scenic overlook to stretch our legs. If you look in the distance, you can see the ocean horizon way off in the distance.

meredith — There was a local guy with a baby pet monkey. Meredith went over to say hi to the monkey and he leapt into her lap...

...and took a monkey nap. It was adorable.

After hours and hours of driving up crazy steep roads that are were only four feet wide, we finally hit a main road with two actual lanes. The road was basically a continual hill.

Up, up, up.

Things started to get foggy and then we realized, "Oh, it's foggy because we drove up into the clouds."

Even more up!

Way up in the mountains, we came across Danau Tamblingan, an emerald-green lake ringed by clouds.

me, meredith — Here's us doing our best to not squint.

Then a little ways down the road was a much larger lake, Danau Buyan.

Forty-five minutes of windy roads later, we stopped off to check out the incredible Eka Karya Botanical Gardens.

Awesome greenhouse. I felt like I was walking into something out of a Ray Bradbury novel.

meredith — The greenhouses were amazing.

Cacti house.

Star Cactus.

Not sure what these are but they were shaped like wonky paddles and they were 10' tall.

Fern tree? What?

This place was pretty amazing. I kept expecting Ewoks to wander out of the shadows and offer a hug.

Oh, yeah. But then they also have forty-foot statues of monkeys attacking a giant, angry (Hindu?) god.

Wow.

Stump Lives!

meredith — It was a pretty big tree.

Beautiful orange mystery fruit that split open into PacMan shapes when ripe.

After two hours at the gardens, we hit the road looking for place to relax and eat.

meredith — Mmmm, malty.

Terraced view.

meredith — We decided to order some food and look for a place to stay after eating.

I got friend rice and a baked bean jaffle (pressed sandwich).

me, meredith — People in Bali are super-friendly and any time a local found out we were on our honeymoon they were so excited for us. It was really great.

After dinner, we ended up going just a few feet down the road and booking a bungalow at Saranam Eco Resort. The hotel's front desk is right off the road at the top of a mountain. In order to get down to the bungalows (which are at the BOTTOM of the mountain, you have to get in a little elevator car and a cable-winch slowly lowers the car down a railway laid on the hill.

The hill is pretty much a 45-degree angle. Here's the view looking up the hill from inside the car! Very Temple of Doom.

And here's the view of the car descending down the mountain side into the rice-paddy flat down below.

It was like we'd stumbled into an even more magical Smurf village than the last place!

Fruit basket.

The mosquito netting hanging over our bed looked like wedding tent for circus-folk!

3 comments

guestoctober 7, 2011
spectacular!
guestoctober 12, 2011
yeah, totally amazing!
christopher cochranoctober 13, 2015
Fish: Remora
Flowers: bougainvilleas