North via Gunung Batur

On May 26th with the swell dropping off and restless feet I pointed the compass north and started off. I actually bought a compass and a road map. The map is missing many if not all minor roads including some new highways, has different names than those on the road signs, and has limited but not trivial function. The compass is actually a pretty useful tool, even if I'm not on the right road I can at least keep going the right direction until something makes sense. So yes, north. The center of Bali is mountainous with a couple volcanos visible from around the island on clear days. Gunung Agung is the tallest and most important to the Balinese. Before I leave I'm going to climb to the top which you begin at midnight to arrive at sunrise. Gunung Batur is the second tallest and Gunung Pohen the third. Both of these last two volcanos have lakes and towns at the top so the path was to go to the north coast via Batur and return via Pohen. I gave two days for the trip, one up, one back. I knew it gets cold at elevation but I didn't expect it to be as cold as it was as the sun set. Not to mention rainy, misty, and overcast, which wasn't a problem until the sun set and I was still on the northern descent down bumpy switchback roads. There seems to be more poverty on the mountains than along the coast, and the persistence of the vendors increases accordingly. Yet of all the things they were hawking the one thing I would have payed anything for was a jacket. But I didn't see any other traveler on a bike so maybe I'm niche market.

The calder is kilometers across, on the right you can see the center cone ascending but not the peak (I could never actually see the summit due to the cloud cover).

This is the weather over Lake Batur, only later did I learn that this area has Bali's coolest climate.

The volcano is active but not devastatingly so. The land around Lake Batur is fertile with most of the land covered in agriculture. The soil is dark, rich and aromatic of gardening, though the use of pesticides and fertilizers is on the rise here. I was told that years ago there was one rice harvest a year used for ceremonies and then the remainder was left, whereas now they have three a year and it is eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

There are fisherman all over using an number of tools, from nets, to spears, that you can see here and dugout canoes which you can see below.

That's the center cone you can see in the background and a typical example of the dugout. There also seems to be aquaculture here.

As you descend into the caldera you have a choice at the bottom, left or right. Left is where the tourists go, as you get to the hot springs, climb the cone, and there's a village which has a different culture (so I was told) where they neither burn nor bury the dead. As we didn't go that way I can't confirm this. I went right, as from the rim of the caldera there were a number of villages and it looked the more interested considering I wasn't going to spend the night. This is the village at the end of the road. I arrived an hour before dusk and there were a number of people bathing in the lake. I don't think they expected to see a foreigner here, they were all naked so I averted my eyes and kept my camera by my side so as not to offend. As you drive you're basically replying to almost everyone "Helloooo!!!" and waiving. To numerous to count were the offers of guides along the way, for pay, of course. Essentially there's one road so you can't get lost, and they were heading home anyway but I rather just explore on my own.

The road, windy, steep on the side and gorgeous. Aquaculture in the background.

Ok, so on the way back to the road up to the rim at the final town before the ascent I saw this scene in what is by day a market. It looked to be the whole female contingent of the town doing aerobics to the direction of the most masculine woman or most feminine man I've yet seen. It was the first instance of exercise here outside of the occasional person running or riding a bicycle. This is a place where the influx of western fastfood and wealth has turned obesity into a common occurrence. Thirty years ago it was rare to see an overweight person, even last time I was here eight years ago it was rare. It's interesting because if you go to the mall, where everything is more expensive, you see more of it. As though weight follows wealth.

Sunsets

There's going to be lots of these so get used to it. Not from the same day, I'm trying to catch up on my posts as I've been busy, and a little sick. I thought about writing more about the illnesses but sometimes things are best left unsaid. That said, I'm pretty sure I'll be posting something about the various health issues I have experienced (nothing serious) at some point, right now all I'll say is that the natural remedies are sometimes the best, especially where digestion is concerned. Anyway, with all that in mind... sunsets, enjoy!

Oh and the place is Balangan, a beautiful beach and an OK surf break. Almost every wave closes down on you so you have about 50 meters of fun till you're looking for a way out. In the end it's not the best surf spot but you're falling asleep to the sound of surf and waking throughout the night to the same. A mixed blessing.

West Coast Part I

Sand, it's pretty.

I have to say I'm always drawn to the act of fishing as long as I'm not the one fishing. It's like say, marveling at the beauty of Peggy's Cove though I'd never live there, ever, even if you paid me to. He was walking back from fishing as the sun set, while another fisherman does something in the background which I can't discern.

Tanah Lot Temple, supposedly the work of a 15th century priest Niratha, it recently underwent a restoration to restore some of the rock which had been eroded by the ocean. Of note there is a holy snake which resides there, and a spring of holy water. The holy snake is in a hole, dug in sand, covered by a flat rock which shows signs that it was recently moved to allow you, upon donation, to view it. That said, it would seem that the resting place of said snake is rebuilt each day as it is below high tide and anyone who builds from sand knows the durability of one's creation. Though, in general, I believe it isn't wise to question a holy snake's ability to make a sand structure impervious to the laws of entropy, I do have my doubts to the providence of this particular snake. Which brings me to the holy water. To preempt your question, yes I drank it, and paid to do so yet, the experience is more than the sum of its parts. Not only did I get to quench my thirst, I also received a blessing, some rice placed in the center of the eyes and a frangipani flower in the hair. These are all traditional accouterments in Balinese spirituality which were bestowed upon me by a kind and short old man.

Bikes of all type are used here, and the old ones are the nicest to see.

Central to the Balinese culture is the rice field, so here's another.

Ubud and area I

These photos were taken on the day stated but posted much later... eventually I'll be caught up but probably not yet as getting sufficient upload speeds to post photos requires a trip into town and I'm not that interested in bringing my computer everywhere on the off chance I'll get some wifi. Anyway, the first photo is from a road winding through a steep valley of jungle near Ubud and is the pedestrian access for a house. I'm guessing that it's a house as there are no signs advertising anything. Regardless it's the sort of thing you'd love to approach knowing it's yours.

Rice fields on the way home from Ubud, so maybe not Ubud area at all, I don't know. Supposedly a few years ago you would be able to drink the water from the rice terraces but those days are past. The effect of the development here is stark, the coral is dead in places from dynamite fishing and covered in other places with alge due to fertilizer runoff from golf courses among other things.

Ubud and area II

Walking around the Ubud area of Bali and a little off the road we came across the spider below. In Balinese it's called a Kekawa and while not deadly it can give a pretty nasty bite. It spans about 4 inches leg to leg while the body was at close to 2 inches long. Jacqueline was about 1 ft from walking face into it before, for an unknown reason as I hadn't seen it, I grabbed her shoulder and stopped her. Pretty isn't it?

Ubud is the center of the Balinese art scene. There are high end shops and low end shops and everything in between. It's hard to tell whether you're looking at something of which there are hundreds similar, if not identical, in the shops around it. To give you an idea of the volume of work available the shot below is one small part of one small store. I don't want to sound like I'm taking anything away from the artist, each painting shows more skill with a brush than I can hope to show but when every shop/gallery says the artist is their grandfather you start to wonder.

This is a Ubud rice field but there are rice fields all over Bali, I guess it was with the cultivation of rice that the first cultural vestiges of what is now Bali began. Though don't take my word on that, as it's just something I read. There was an old topless man in shorts and a ball cap occasionally yanking on a line which spanned the field. Each time he pulled the line it would rise and with it the rags tied to it would leap up. An active, if manual, scarecrow but not for crows. I haven't seen crows here.

Thoughts...

So today we moved, a simple enough task yet every move involves a step into a not so drastic unknown. Each place you stay becomes somewhat familiar, and each week spent there gives the false impression that you’ve become intimate with the layout and familiar to the people. All such thoughts are mostly false impressions, but may have a ring of truth in that you really do keep your eyes wide open when you travel and so are more aware of where you are, or if you’re driving a scooter, you better have. The road to and from your home, what you come to call your home, if even for a night, feels like the 103 from Halifax to Chester, you gauge time by the corners and the trees. Though here you gauge them by the corners and the cows, little family stores and Circle K’s. All the while hoping that you remember the next pothole around the next turn and which turn is a hairpin and which one is a lovely sweep that reveals the joy of driving.

I say joy with mixed feelings as fear, excitement, white knuckles and a sore back are all part of it. One can easily imagine why so many foreigners get into accidents. They start to believe that they (and here I’m including myself) can drive like the locals, not only can they, but they should. Yet one needs only to look at the fourteen year old passing them, with their five-year-old sibling holding on, to understand their experience far out weighs your own. No matter how many hours of highway or city driving you may have under your belt back home, be it car, bike, or motorbike you are unlikely to ever possess the confidence and grace on two wheels that the barely post-pubescent rider who just past you on a blind curve, at night, and continued threading the needle between two small dump trucks ahead of you possesses. That said, one can hope and one should hope. Madness doesn’t do it justice in either direction. There is something altogether other about the driving experience here and I’m sure to find even more ‘other’ as this trip progresses. I think I read once that Bali is the land of temples. If this isn’t true it should be, only a faith in a higher power gives sense to the road and its ways, and there are temples on almost every Balinese property that can afford one to drive the point home.

So we moved, and are much happier for it. A little further from the beach, no sounds of crashing waves, but hopefully my dreams will be a bit more sublime than surreal. I’ve only been here ten days so far, but you can pack so much into a day when each and every one begins at dawn. Sometimes months would pass at home and if one were to ask me what I did I would be at a loss, sure I had completed some task, created at least one new memory but standing there, trying to recollect it, I would feel the continuation of continuation. Maybe the same can be said of all people at certain times but the contrast between the now and the before is stark. A good friend said to me before I left on this eight month long trip, “what can you remember about the last eight months?” Not much I replied. Exactly, he said. Simple and true yet there is such comfort in the familiar, but who doesn’t know that. All I’m saying is that it’s so nice to have that taken away, at least for a little while.

Markets

There are markets everywhere, flower markets that I showed before, food markets and markets for everything else that I'm sure to encounter soon . The food markets open up at certain times of days and then they're gone, that’s it. So sometimes you'll be driving through an area you've driven a dozen times before and find something new. This was mostly a food market but they all have something else as well.

Denpasar

Here are some photos from Denpasar. It is a crazy city which has almost no tourism so you can generally spend the day there driving around and never notice another foreigner.

Each and every morning families and stores put offerings out in small reed boxes of which I'll have some photos posted soon. Each offering has a consistency to it, flowers, incense being the two most prevalent while they also have personalization in the form of cigaretts, candy bars, or crackers to name a few. After placing the offering and sprinkling blessed water upon it the incense is lit and a payer is offered. It is a beautiful ritual which is repeated each and every day. These are a few shots of the flower market in Denpasar for the offerings.

Kids and kites on a city street. I have to find out what the sign the kid third from the right is giving me means, I see it a lot.

A number of rivers flow through Denpasar, as filthy as they seem it doesn't stop people from fishing, washing and swimming in them. You can see a small girl and her sister watching from the window, they were waiving and smiling but I'm not sure if I caught it in this photo.

Kids are the same everywhere it seems, these tough nuts were fishing in a pond at a museum for carp.

At the same museum, which was closed, there was a couple in full traditional wedding dress.

Driving, well I'll speak about that at a later time, but of all the driving I've done, Denpasar is by far the most chaotic. It's a beautiful madness that slowly makes sense. There isn't the agression nor the spitefulness you find in North American cities. People let you in and accept that you're going to try to pass, on the inside shoulder, along the divide, and even between them. Yet they'll slow in order to make a gap for you if need it. Often you do. As it is, you can see all forms of transport still in use, though I'm assuming the horse drawn buggy is less popular.

This man is fishing in a river which is only a few feet deep. It runs through the center of Denpasar and like all rivers I've seen there is garbage floating by and scattered along the banks. Yet, despite the apparent pollution, with each skilled throw of his net he brings in many fish.