Today was another day to drive the POS. Yay! I got to drive on the HFS Road again too. At least it wasn’t raining. Twice I got stuck behind a slow truck that stopped on a steep hill. The POS would not go up the hill once stopped. 1st gear was useless. I had to slide back down the hill both times and start from a less steep place. Traffic in Bali did not like this plan, but everyone survived.
Since it was a 5 minute detour, I decided to go back to the botanic gardens and do the Tree Top Adventure Park. They have 7 different ropes type courses. There are ziplines, hanging bridges, tight ropes, rope nets, tarzan type swinging ropes and a bunch of other challenges in each course. This is a weird thing to do by yourself. When you do good on a section of the course, there is no one to cheer you on or say good job. But, I could go alone or not at all. Still, it was quite interesting to do an activity that is highly based in “look at me!” by myself.
At some point, I am following a family of 8 and we hear a large rumbling sound like a large truck coming down the road. There is no large truck. I ask the guy in front of me what he thinks that is. As soon as the words left my mouth I knew and he confirmed it was rain. I saw picnickers off in the distance packing up and running for their cars. My first thought was “oh no”. Those of us standing on the platform just stared in disbelief as we watch a giant wall of water come booking it down the street and heading straight for the trees. For an instant you feel so trapped. We can’t get down. We can’t run. It’s going to rain. Then it’s a downpour. We have to keep going on the course and I can’t go fast because of the people in front of me. The curious thing is this feeling of dread as the rain approached and the desire to hurry up and get out of the rain. Even if I hurried, I’d still be soaked to the bone. After about 5 minutes I was completely soaked and the dread had gone away as we all gave in to our fate. We talked about how we use to run around in the rain on purpose when we were kids. Why was it so awful now? Once soaked, it became fun again. About 20 minutes later I’m off the course. This is a classic example of not loving what is. As soon as we saw the rain coming we all complained and dreaded it. The thought is, it shouldn’t rain when I’m dry. In the long run it was fun, but only when I was fully soaked and no longer able to hold on to the belief that I should be dry.
The restaurant is packed with people trying to stay out of the rain. A nice family lets me sit with them as there are no more open tables. They were delightful and had me laughing all the way through lunch. After lunch, the rain cleared up. I decided to do one last course.
There was a big tarzan type rope on the last course that people had to swing from a platform into a rope net and grab the net with both hands. People were getting crap beat out of them. There was much screaming. I decided this did not resemble fun and I would skip that course. Two stations into the course I did decide to do was a smaller version of this Tarzan rope. There was a worker at the bottom who tried to talk me through the process. Then I became possessed by some little girly girl and heard things like “I don’t want to” come out of my mouth. At first I had to look around to see who said that. Nope, it was me. It took me a good 5 minutes to work up the courage to jump. Who is this little girl that is scared of rain and a tarzan rope. I was harnessed into the rope so I’m not sure why it was so scary. It did hurt to slam into the net at the other side.
I arrived in Ubud late in the day, exhausted from the stressful driving. I went out with a friend that is living in Bali. We went for dinner and then out to sample the nightlife. You aren’t missing much if you haven’t seen the Ubud nightlife.
Sorry, no pictures today.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
Rraine Drops 