Friday, April 15, 2011

Rain, routine & the beginning of the end

Last couple of weeks have been terrible weather-wise, we never had so much rain and unstable weather since we moved here. It actually has rained every day, several times a day for 10 days in a row. Bali has mostly a couple of hours of heavy rain and then the sun shines again or sometime it rains many hours during the night. But like this we have never seen. It doesn’t matter so much as long as it stops NOW, before our visit is coming. We feel sorry for the tourists who were here only last week, they have hardly seen sun at all. Iris has used the last weeks on building up energy again and reading books while Rino is working, during the afternoons we have been hooked on the serie ‘Californication’. We have seen all 4 seasons in 10 days. It is so funny! That’s the way we have survived the rain so far.

Last weekend we finally went away again on the scooter to see new parts of the island. We took a chance that it would be better weather on Saturday, which it was and we went away from the rain that was falling back home we heard later. We tried the west this time, which we had never explored before. Saturday morning we drove a couple of hours to the west and had planned that we would stay at Medewi beach. The road and traffic is terrible, it is the main road to the ferry that goes to Java, so there is a lot of heavy traffic with big trucks and busses driving (for Balinese standard) really fast! The pollution is crazy and for the first time on Bali we didn’t feel that safe on the road on our small, cute scooter between all the big, heavy, stinky trucks. It was a beautiful drive partly though because of a nice view over the ocean and vaguely we could see Java in the horizon. Keep left, drive carefully and let all the big trucks pass when they honk, then everything is ok.

The west coast of Bali is known for the good surf breaks and the homestays, hotels and beaches are also focusing on the surfers. There is not much tourism either except from surfers, yet. The beaches are not that nice, mostly black sand and much stones, but the breaks are beautiful and close to shore, without dangerous riffs. But we didn’t surf ourselves, we didn’t bring our board and it was not a priority this time. We checked in to a nice hotel and explored the area, we found Balian beach with cosy restaurants and swimming pool, which we enjoyed the rest of the day.

Sunday we had planed a drive up an alternative route before heading homewards. The route was up the hills of west/central Bali on small roads, through small villages and beautiful Balinese landscape. The route starts in Pelukan and ends back on the same road further east at Antosari. It’s a road well worth taking. We saw the beautiful (at this point for us) familiar rice paddies, we still never go tired of seeing rice fields here, they are stunning eye candy every time again! In this area there was also a lot of other farming, different spices, nuts, coffee and fruit. We even drove through an enormous tree where the road was made in the middle of the tree, really beautiful! We wanted to take a break and walk to a waterfall near Pupuan, halfway the route. One of the women in the village stoped us and told us that we had to take a guide, we would not find the waterfall otherwise... Probably she just wants to earn some money, but ok, we did it, it’s also nice to leave something for the locals anyway. We agreed on a good price for everybody and we walked together with Ketut, who turned out to be a really sweet, intelligent woman who talked perfect English. The waterfall was beautiful and the walk as well, the Balinese jungle is always fascinating with all the spices and fruits growing everywhere. Until now the weather had been treating us really nice, but on our way back from the waterfall the sky opened up and all water fell down that didn’t fall the two days before. We hurried back to the village and Ketut invited us to drink coffee at her family’s compound until the worst rain would stop. We drank Balinese coffee and tasted different Balinese vegetables and fruits she offered us and we met her sweet (youngest) daughter and just as sweet grandmother in law.
We had a wet and long drive home and the rain didn’t stop. But we had already seen the beauty of this route and of the west of Bali and were happy to just get home and watch more episodes of Californication. :-)

We are a little out of routine, because Iris was sick and with the rain last weeks, the days and weeks have looked different the last months than before. At the moment we talk a lot about going home, traveling and leave Bali. We now really look forward to have friends coming over, it’s just perfect timing for us and we need some social input and fun with friends. Through their eyes we can enjoy Bali to the max again for our last period here! Because paradise it is still, we are very aware of that!



1 comment:

  1. het ziet er toch weer fantastisch en eksotisch uit allemaal - het blijft mooi ! Heel veel plezier met Mailiss en Erling de komende 2 weken ! Ik geniet er van om Sofie thuis te hebben. Liefs van mij

    ReplyDelete