Road Trip... Bali Style!!!!
Trip Start
Unknown
1
12
14
Trip End
Ongoing
Bali, Indonesia
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
We are now back from the fantastic road trip Greg took us on last week. We had so much fun and it was such a great opportunity to experience a variety of micro-climates and see many interesting parts of Bali with a "local" as our tour guide extraordinaire! Another of my dad's longtime friends, Nick and his partner Julia, also happen to be in Bali visiting Greg and Katie for a few weeks, so we all went on the trip together. Actually Katie was only able to join us at the end because she had to work, but at least we got to spend some time with her too.
We began our trip by crossing the volcanoes and heading down through the coffee and clove plantations. At one point we had the car windows down and we could actually smell the cloves drying in the sun by the side of the road.
We also stopped off at the botanical gardens where my fear of heights was put to the test once again on the high ropes course nestled amongst the tall trees. The course took us about 2 hours. Well, it actually took ME about 2 hours. Judging by how quickly Aaron completed the toughest level (I decided to stop after the second to last level), I think it is safe to say that I held him back quite a bit. I was very grateful for his patience because he helped me with my safety equipment and talked me through the really tough sections.
After the botanical gardens, we made our way along the north coast to Pemuteran, a favorite spot of Greg and Katie's. I loved Pemuteran! We stayed at the beautiful and luxurious Tamansari Resort. It was right on the beach and the large villa we all stayed in was gorgeous! We even had a private pond and outdoor lounge area. On our first full day there we took a boat out to Menjangan island to snorkel the reef and the following day we went back to dive there. It was a fantastic place to view tons of interesting sea creatures and a wide variety of coral. According to Greg, it is probably the best reef in Bali and it was easy to see why! In the evenings, we had fiercely competitive games of croquet and dominoes.
After Pemuteran, we passed through Singaraja, the old capital on our way to Tulamben. In Tulamben, we got the chance to dive around a World War II wreck which was pretty awesome!
We then travelled over some of the most beautiful countryside in Bali and stopped at Tirtagangga to visit the Water Palace that was built in 1946 by the Raja of Karangasem. The palace is now owned by the government and has been opened to the public as a swimming area. We went for a very refreshing (code word for COLD) swim and felt like royalty! We also stayed at a lovely resort nestled amongst the magnificent rice fields.
On our way back to Greg and Katie's we made one final stop at a traditional village to view the local handicrafts and chat with the people who live there.
As you can tell we had absolutely no fun and didn't get to see anything beautiful or interesting... Hahaha. In reality it was a wonderful road trip and we are very grateful to Greg for taking us!
We are now off to the busy Kuta beach for a few days before we leave Bali for a few other islands...
KT
