Yesterday I hired a driver to take me around and see interesting things.  The hotel/villas I’m staying at helped me set it up.  Most of the drive was on part of the Holy Fucking Shit Road that I drove in on a couple days ago.  It was nice to be a passenger in a proper vehicle and for it to not be raining.  By the light of morning, it’s still a scary road.  This time when we rode on the top of the ancient crater, I could actually see the lakes below.  It was so beautiful.

We went to the botanic gardens.  They have a zip line ropes type course there that I wanted to do, but I only had flip flops on and you have to have closed toed shoes.  The gardens were huge.  It was more like a giant park with some gardens here and there inside.  It was big enough that we drove around and then got out to see certain things instead of walking.  One of my favorites was a fern garden.  Since ferns are thought to have been here since prehistoric times, the building that housed some of the ferns was in the shape of a dinosaur.  The gardens were wonderful.

Then we went to a spice market.  At first, I almost said no to the market, but then decided spices would make a good gift to take back to the other teachers at Sam Ngao so we stopped briefly.  Spices are not cheap.

Next was Pura Ulun Danu Beratan, a temple on a lake.  I have seen pictures of this one and was excited to see it.  If you’ve ever seen a picture of a Bali Temple, it was probably this one.  It’s on their 50,000 rupia bill.  It was crowded with people, of course.  It was beautiful to see, although it was not in the middle of nowhere as pictures I’ve seen made it seem.  It was in the lake, but not far off shore.

Then we made our way back up the HFS Road.  I asked if the driver knew of a good place to eat lunch.  He took me to his friend’s place.  It had an eating area overlooking one of the big mountains and the valley below it.  This might be one of the best restaurant views I’ve ever seen.  Then to top it off, there were hundreds of dragon flies buzzing around and very cool breeze.  I was almost cold by the end of lunch.  Such a great feeling after being hot for so long. I’m posting a short video of the dragonflies.

The last stop of the day was the Munduk Waterfall.  Why do all trails to waterfalls go down first?  You want to hike up first, then your reward is a waterfall to cool off in and an easy hike back down.  It doesn’t work that way.  At least it’s not too hot at this altitude (3000-4000 feet).  On the way up we got to one spot where some bugs were calling out so loudly it sounded like a cross between a squeaky swing set and a 5 alarm nuclear melt down.  I’m posting the video just so you can hear the sound.

Then back to the villas.  I just sat by the pool and read the rest of the day.  I sat and talked to a nice lady that works at the villas for a while.  I’m the only one here tonight.  That’s kind of a weird thought.  It seems so deserted.  The really loud frogs from last night are not even making noise tonight.  But, I can hear the tokay off in the distance and there are lots of other sounds of nature out there.

Two nights ago, I looked at flights back to the US thinking I could spend a week with Mom before I had to go back to school.  Flights were over $3,000.  What is going on?  That is ridiculous.  I may never be able to come back.  I battle back and forth between feeling like I should go back and I’m supposed to be here (Asia).  Going back for a week won’t accomplish much anyway.  It’s a more permanent decision, not a temporary, one week decision.  I felt quite at peace most of the day although I haven’t made the decision yet.

Today I had to take the POS up the HFS Road again, part of the way.  It was better than in the rain, but still quite a challenge.  Twice a car in front of me decided to stop on a steep hill.  Twice I had to back down to a less steep portion because it was just to steep to get up in 1st gear from a dead stop.  There’s no way to pass as the road isn’t even 2 lanes wide – more like 1.5 lanes wide.  It’s like if you paved the road to my house and then hit the edges with a jackhammer, and then threw 70 vehicles, 100 motorbikes and 10 dogs on it.

I went back to the botanic gardens to do the Treetop Adventure Park.  It had 7 different courses involving zip lines, rope nets, wooden bridges, swings, and other difficult things to traverse.  I did 3 of the courses.  During the second one, I was behind a big family who was much slower than me so I had to wait a lot.  Then I heard this loud noise like an airplane was coming down the hill.  It was rain.  We watched in horror as it came down the nearby road and picnickers fled to their cars.  There was nothing we could but watch it approach.  There was no way down from the trees except to finish the course we were on.  It dumped and I couldn’t go any faster than the group in front of me.  By the time we finished I was soaked to the bone.  At that point, I no longer care.  There’s something uncomfortable about watching the rain come and the process of getting soaked when you didn’t want to.  But, once the soaking is complete, it’s no longer uncomfortable. Maybe it takes that long to stop thinking “oh no, not rain” or maybe you can’t get any wetter so you give up caring.  I had lunch and when the rain stopped, I did one more course.  This last course had a part where you clipped into a rope and then swung Tarzan like to a large rope net.  Then you had to climb the rope net.  I turned into a girl and decided I didn’t want to do it, but there was no other way down.  The workers below kept encouraging me.  I kept saying “I don’t want to”.  I don’t know this girl.  Who is she?  Where did she come from?  I finally did it and it was ok.

I’m now in Ubud.  Going to dinner with my friend Gwin tonight.  My half sister, Carly gets here in a couple days.  It will be nice to have company.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore