Simply cycling around
Good morning (Salamat Pagi in Indonesian). We start the day with a 3h trek to visit a waterfall. Then we drove down to the coast to Lovina, the place where we can see dolphins and do some snorkeling. Compare to Munduk, Lovina is much more touristy. We can’t walk without being grabbed by someone who wants to sell paint, jewels, souvenirs, clothes. The best answer we have is “Tidak, Terima Kasih” which means “No, thank you”.
Today we are going to visit the mountains of Bali. The roads are getting narrow and windy. The most astonished thing is the traffic; it’s like we never leave the city. Everywhere where there is a road “shops” are present. Like always if we had a scooter we could find a place to repair it every 5 minutes. There is shops specialized in offerings, Warung when we want something cheap to eat, tiny supermarkets, laundry. Balinese are really into services. It looks like they don’t own much stuff live mostly outside their homes. On our way up, we stopped to visit the water temple called “Pura Ulun Danu Beratan” which is the major one in this area.
First day travelling in Bali and by car! From what we heard, people recommend to get a driver. We could not hide scooter as we have luggages. We finally decided to hire a car because we don’t have a special route to follow. We have some ideas but we preferred to be free to go where we want when we want. The first step is Ubud, one of the main destination for tourists. We had to start by something :-) Then we will spend the rest of our trip more in the countryside to discover Bali on its different facets.
My brother arriver yesterday evening and my mum and Gilles very early this morning. We are now all together in Bali for 10 days. Tomorrow we will start travelling around Bali so today we have a look around. Because of the dense traffic and our lack of knowledge about the fact that we were not sure if we could rent a scooter straight away we decided to take to bicycles provided by the hotel. They are definitively not the best one… First of all they are small, the gears don’t work on all of them we can’t change the height of the seatpost and the breaks are really light. Nevermind, Balinese people will pay attention to us, we expect!
This is the first picture I got from Bali, the airport :-) The flight was good. I paid $51 (AUD) for a 1 month visa and will have to extend it 10 days before the end to get another month. It’s now about 5:30 and I’m cycling to the hotel which is 14km north, in north Kuta. There is not much traffic now so I prefer to wait there than here.