Bali Bound

Day 14 It's the final day in Bali now.  It's a slightly challenging day as it's an evening flight but the latest checkout we could get was 1 pm.  And our shuttle to the airport leaves around 3:30pm, as it is still a longer drive to get back to Denpasar in the rush hour traffic.  But the grounds are lovely so the plan for everyone seems to be to chill by the pool until it's time to leave. random shot of Ubud It was a bit of a lazy day for us today.  We took the shuttle into Ubud town for a bit of a walk around during the day.  We wandered around town a bit.  It's an odd tourist location to visit.  There isn't really too much around here and the closest beach is a few hours away.  But the place is filled with a lot of young backpacking Australians so perhaps the low prices and plentiful bars and restaurants are the big draw.  There are also a lot of tourist shops and they all seem to sell the same things.  Every market or shop had...

Day 13 We have had a lot of time in Ubud with 2 full days and an evening and another morning to explore.  It feels like a lot more time than is necessary for what the area seems to have to offer.  We opted to do our own tour today and hire a driver for a day rather than take a taxi.  grounds at the Bali museum We headed back down to Denpasar as our plan was to visit the Hard Rock café for a pin for Terry and to see some of the sights along the way.  Our first stop was at the Bali Museum.  It was fairly small with 4 small buildings to tour around.  There were a lot of ceremonial knives and coins on display.  And some lovely grounds with a few couples getting wedding pictures done.  We were trapped in a courtyard for a few minutes waiting for them to finish up.  And of course the people trying to sell some of their junk to the tourists.  fabric stores all along, on both sides! The big markets in downtown Denpasar were c...

Day 12 rice terraces Today was a busy touring day in the Ubud area.  We headed north for a volcano hike around the Batur caldera.  It last erupted in 1999 for 4 months so there is still a big ring of lava from the eruption.  We went for a hour and a half hike around the caldera at the base of the volcano.  Indonesia has a large amount of volcanos for such a small country.  They also have the most active volcanoes in the world right now.  This one still has activity ongoing as you could see the small smoke plume still coming out. On the way we stopped to see some of the rice terraces.  They do have a lot of them in the area.  They are interesting to see.  You are able to wander up and down both sides but we didn't have that much time.  And it was a lot of irregularly sized stairs to go up and down. What the tour company called a gentle hike turned into a fairly intense trek down the hillside.  As the bus was meeting us at ...

Day 11 Today is another travel day, heading back to Bali for our second visit.  We are heading to Ubud in the middle of Bali for our final 3 nights. hotel in Labuan Bajo, view from the balcony We did try to sit on the beach this morning, but left as the giant bee seemed to think they were his chairs and we were in the way.  It was huge.  And close to the size of my thumb.  And on the way back we spotted a tiny bird that looked not much bigger than the bee.  The grounds here seemed to be really good for bird watching as there were a couple guys on the tour that were really into the birds and they spent most of the morning wandering around looking at birds. Now it's just waiting for the flight, which is now #8 for me of this trip.  I feel very well traveled this vacation.  Typically my holidays include more bus time than airplane time.  The Komodo airport is small on the departure side as well.  But it feels like there are more staff...

Day 10 It's our last day on the boat.  It was a bit cooler last night but most people opted to sleep up on the deck.  Sadly we stayed in a nice quiet bay so I didn't get rocked to sleep last night.  Once you get used to it is a nice feeling. starfish There was an optional sunrise hike early this morning.  We had seen the trail from our snorkeling the previous afternoon.  So we said no.  It looked really steep like the last hike and to beat the sun we would have been doing it in the dark.  So we decided to stay on the boat and get some extra rest.  Only one guy ended up wanting to go and said that it was good but just another sunrise.  Which we watched from the boat anyways.  And we didn't get much extra sleep with the boat starting up around 5 when he departed for the trail. sea urchins It was a lazy morning of sailing to our final destination.  It was this lovely island with a beautiful beach to snorkel from.  I...

Day 9 We survived our first day and night on the boat.  It was another busy day of hiking with the komodo and snorkeling.  We did get a very early wake up call as they turn the engines on at 5 am.  And you can't sleep through that very well.  The one catch with the cabin on the boat is that we are underneath so it is pretty hot and stuffy.  We could have air conditioning but it involves a loud generator all night.  So nobody really fought for it.  After our early wake up we had a 2 hour travel to the next animal hike. Our second hike was on Komodo Island.  Which funnily enough has less komodo than Rinca.  As usual the komodo are all around the buildings at the entrance of the park.  But we had a nice hike through the jungle.  We didn't see too much this time going through.  There were a lot more open spaces here to feel the hot sun coming down on us.  We did see a boar as we started our hike.  All these other ani...