Munduk

Seminyak, October 31, 22:30

This weekend we went to Munduk, a small village up in the central mountains of Bali. On Friday afternoon the journey started and was partly the same as to Lovina, except for the last 45 min. Even though we where better prepared this time it was still very cold when we came high in the mountains. We had booked a room at Puri Alam Bali Bungalows, which supposed to have good views (according to the Lonely Planet), well the view was absolutely stunning, what a panorama! And this for the nice price of 200.000 rp (16euro) a night. Rino now finally has his KITAS (workingpermit), witch gives a lot of discounts/local prices on many many things. We are very happy with this little passportlike book! :-)

The next morning we had lovely breakfast at the rooftop restaurant of our hotel and we headed up to Jatiluwih, another small village where we should find one of the most beautiful rice terraces of Bali. The rice terraces spread out over 18km up in the mountains and it was wonderful. We could drive through with our scooter and we also took a walk to see the fields and the rice closer. It was fantastic and definitely one of the most gorgeous places we have seen on Bali until now. From the end of the road through the rice fields it was not very far to the temple Pura Luhur Batukaru, one of the holiest Hindu temples of Bali.

Unfortunately it started raining very hard when we arrived at the temple, the rain didn’t seem to stop but with a borrowed umbrella we walked through the temple and could take a closer look. The road back took longer then we thought, mostly because it rained so hard. We even warmed and dried up at a restaurant with a nice fireplace and hot chocolate and tea. :-) It’s funny, we felt really cold and were happy with this fireplace, as you are in the winter back home after skiing in Norway or skating in NL, almost forgetting that it was maybe 20 degrees. No! we are not complaining, it was just an unexpected experience on Bali ;-) In the evening we had diner at another close by hotel and played some cards and red a book in our room. Munduk is a very quiet, small village with nothing further happening at night and no streetlights. We had a very nice time until Iris saw a huge spider, which Rino could not kill because he climbed al the way up to the roof. Luckily our room was a family room and had 2 bedrooms, so we moved to the other one.

The next day we arranged a guide who would bring us to 2 waterfalls. The first waterfall was 30m high and the second 50m. In total it was a 2 hours walk through a beautiful forest, with lots of interesting plantations. Cacao trees, avocado, banana, pineapple, Balinese fruits and many more. The waterfalls where spectacular and we where both very happy we took this trip. It was good for body and soul and for the eye. We needed a weekend like this now, to see and explore a bit and get some exercise. When we arrived back to the hotel we where exhausted and took an early lunch. Unfortunately it started raining again very hard and very long so therefore we decided to go home directly instead of taking an alternative route, which would have taken us through rice fields, coffee plantations and another 2 waterfalls, but we will take that route next time. The great thing is that we still have so much time to see everything we want of the island!

When we arrived back home we could finally switch to the room we wanted in the villa. Rino was trying whether the locks worked and eventually it ended up that we locked ourselves out of the room and we had to break the window in the door to unlock it, not so smart! But luckily these thinks don’t costs much on Bali ;-)

See here our pictures of the weekend on our Picasa. http://picasaweb.google.com/fromeynfotos7/Munduk?authkey=Gv1sRgCLqu-9zC4IWnEw#