Dear All
I am glad to hear today that those of you back in UK are having an Indian Summer at last. We are having a lovely Indian Ocean Spring afternoon....light winds, full sail out, a school of small dolphins playing acorss the bow, the toilet unblocked, the engine now fixed, the tanks full of water (made since leaving Bali - we didn't risk running the water maker in the harbour!).... For the non-sailors and landlubbers amongst you, I will spare you details of the wind force, sea state, sail plan etc and reflect back to our time in Bali.
Northy's Tours (enthusiastically run and compared by Chris North from Cleone and with some considerable assistance from Rodders Roaders at the planning stage) excelled themselves! 25 crew from a number of WARC boats left the chores behind and set off on a 3-day bus tour of Bali, with our own driver and guide. Bali has a population of 3.5 million, which is over a third of the entire population of Indonesia, and on first impression is over-crowded, dirty and has a traffic problem to rival the M25, with almost every local over the age of 13 weaving in and out of moving cars and busses on a scooter. 1.5 million live in the capital of Denpasar but it is hard to tell where Denpasar ends and the neighbouring suburbs begin. Many people live in corrugated iron shacks, but more affluent villas are also seen in the outer city and rural areas. In complete contrast are the oppulent tourist hotels, and surfers' paradise of Kuta, with its throng of bars and nightclubs and chique restaurants in the trendier suburb of Seminyak further along the beach. Remember that a Bali nightclub was bombed by terrorists in 2002 and it is clear that not everyone is happy that tourism is now the primary industry here.
That aside, we could not have encountered more friendly and helpful people everywhere we went. Unlike other Indonesian islands, Bali is Hindu, and we found the people to be open, proud and more than willing to tell us about their Hindu culture. Balinese people carry identity cards which state which faith they belong to. People are free to choose a different religion, but I can't imagine that many young people brought up in a Bali Hindu family ever walk away from it; this is because it is not just something they do on Sunday mornings but is an entire traditional way of every day life. The requirement to pray 3 times a day means that almost every home and workplace has it's own open-air temple, and a village community usually has three. Fading sandstone religious icons pepper the streets, decorated in black and white square cloth (representing good and evil), and often shaded beneath a brightly coloured umbrella. Colourful, small, square baskets made from coconut leaves and festooned with petals and rice are preprared as offerings to the temple every day and litter the pavements, roadways, walls and steps.
Day 1 of our tour took us first to a silver jewellers where imported silver is painstakingly made into jewellry and works of art by hand. This turned out to be a feature of Bali life, as labour is readily available and cheap, thus making redundant the need to introduce technology and machinery. Whole villages are dedicated to a craft, such as stone or wood carving (I wondered who buys it all) and we stopped next at a wood carvers, where 3 generations of a single family live and work together in one compound. Sons stay in the family compound and inherit the home, on condition that they take care of their elderly parents; daughters move with their husbands, unless there are no brothers to inherit the home. After lunch on a terraced restaurant overlooking a lush green rice field, we visited one of the temples on the popular tourist trail, Pura Tirta Empel, a spring water temple revered for its purification properties. Despite the hoards of tourists with snapping cameras, the local worshippers went about their business as if we weren't there, bathing in the temple's public pools and sacred spring fountains and making their offerings. The Balinese can declare almost anything as 'sacred' (cattle are sacred but unlike India, beef is eaten in Bali), and our final stop of the day was the Sacred Monkey forest, where semi-wild macaque monkeys play, fight, nurse their young and perform other 'natural acts' at the tourists' feet.
Day 2 started with a traditional Balinese 'Barong' dance. This was more like a play than a dance and I confess that the less cultured amongst us took great amusement (Steve) in the name of the main character (which we will pass on verbally later!) or fell asleep (Bruce) or likened the whole performance to 'Balinese morris dancing' (Angela)! Let's just say that we were glad that the tourist version (1 hour) is significantly shorter than the real version performed at religious festivals! The tour continued with a climb inland into the mountains and hills, where we stopped for lunch at a superb viewpoint overlooking Mount Batur volcano and the lake beneath, before continuing to a coffee plantation, to sample ginseng coffee, lemongrass tea, cocoa and Bali coffee. Steve bought some gingseng coffee which is a poor substitute for other stimulants savoured on land, but I am not that keen. Balinese coffee is very good - smooth and creamy.
Soon before sunset, we pulled into the driveway of a boutique spa hotel, Puri Wulandari Villas, surrounded by lush green rice fields that could be mistaken for a golf-course! Northy announced that we would meet in a restaurant in Ubud later, but within 2 minutes of embarking from the bus, the entire group said "we're staying here!'. What a find! We could not believe that Steve had: (i) managed to locate such a hotel; (ii) that 20 rooms were free at short notice; (iii) that we could afford it!! (We later discovered that the rooms normally costs from 750 US dollars/night, yet our entire 3-day tour cost less than 140 GBP each!). We were greeted in the traditional Balinese way by the staff, and shown into the open-air bar, which overlooked a hill covered by rain forest and the swimming pool on the terrace below; we might have lingered there had Steve not encouraged us to go and see our rooms. This involved a hair-raising ride in a golf buggy (at least while holding onto a glass of wine!), down steep narrow roads and round corners which resembled a scene from 'The Prisoner'! We each had our own villa......an open air balcony with thatched roof, a small but private pool with sun loungers, and an inner apartment, with bedroom and 4-poster bed, dressing rooms and luxury bathroom, with indoor and outdoor shower and sunken bath. Set on terraced tiers, each villa was private and could not be overlooked; a phone call summoned a golf buggy and I was whisked back up to the restaurant for dinner. Apart from one honeymoon couple who soon scuttled away, we had the restaurant to ourselves and a wonderful evening was enjoyed by all, with excellent meal, great ambience and the opportunity to talk and get to know some of the other crews in a relaxed setting. Steve has already mentioned the togetherness and fellow-support of the much reduced World ARC fleet, and they are also great fun.
With great reluctance and for most of us, a private breakfast in our own villa, we left Puri Wulandari early in the morning and set off for the north coast of Bali - via a temple or two (Ulun Danu, by a lake and Tanah Lot, by the sea) and GitGit waterfall. The mountainside scenery was quite a contrast to the busy urban coastline towns and beautiful; on the lower slopes, terraced rice fields and on the higher slopes, where rice cannot be irrigated, lush rainforests, coffee, orange and sweetcorn plantations. Rice, like everything else in Bali, is planted, harvested and beaten from the husk entirely by hand. A 'toilet stop' by a roadside cafe provided an unexpected and rare opportunity to get close to 3 'flying foxes' (fruit bats) hanging upside down in a tree in the garden, presumably pets of the owner! Petra (skipper of Viva) fed them bananas and tried to avoid their claws while we took photographs. We settled for the night in a hotel on Lovina beach, which, while in another league from the hotel of the previous night, was comfortable, with a large swmming pool and close proximity to the black volcanic sandy beach. 'Spunky's Bar', about 200m along the beach, was a much nicer late evening drinking hole than the name implied, so much so that we returned for a group lunch there the next day. Northy was almost in tears as Nick (Kealoha 8) arranged for the bar to play "Nobody does it better" but he indeed deserved it after what had been a thoughly interesting - and entertaining - 3 days.
The bigest problem will now be how to top it! Will the CEO (Northy) of Northy's tours reinstate the Managing Director (Rodders) who resigned declaring constructive dismissal after a slight dispute over the company's finances (which occured during the time that Rodders was Acting Chief Finance Officer)? Will a rival tour company emerge amongst the fleet? Will Mauritius be so easy to find 20 available rooms at a ridiculous price? Watch this space!
Meanwhile, we're heading for an early Christmas on Christmas Island, en route to Cocos Keeling....
I wish you all well.
Lots of love Val, Steve, Angela and Bruce
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