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American Spirit II - Day 248; A Tour of Bali and a Whale Hits Boat Story from 20 Years Ago; Wednesday, September 10, 2014



Up at 6:30 AM for a tour starting at 8:00 AM. Breakfast on the boat consisted of bacon, scrambled eggs, chilled fruit cocktail and raisin bread.



At 8:00 AM we boarded a bus for our all day tour. Our tour guide was named Arsa. As we started our tour it became obvious that there was no public transportation in Bali and that most people drove scooters or motor cycles instead of cars. Driving was on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the right side of the bus and cars.



Arsa indicated that Bali has two seasons: dry and wet. Currently we're in the dry or summer season. As we drove around we saw MacDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Circle K and Dunkin Donuts. There are over 13,000 islands in Indonesia with 3,000 of them inhabited. Bali itself is 95 kilometers from north to south and 110 kilometers from east to west. Like many trade wind islands, the east side of the island is very dry. The western part of Bali is a national park. The governments actively encourages families to have only one or two children per family.



Our first stop of the day at 9:00 AM was at a silver store, where silver jewelry is made and sold. The silver content was 92.5%. Not sure what that means.



Our next stop was at a hardwood carving shop at 10 AM.



At 11 AM we stopped at the Goa Gajay temple, where we had to wear a 'sarong,' a colorful dress-like covering, to enter the temple.



From 12:22 PM to 1:13 PM we stopped at a coffee plantation, where I bought 3 different coffees for the boat: Vanilla, Coconut and Ginger. One type of expensive coffee that I did not buy was called 'Luwak' coffee. Luwak is an animal that eats the entire coffee bud and poops out the coffee bean. The locals then take this pooped out coffee bean and sell this as 'Luwak Coffee,' which is quite expensive compared to the other coffees.



We ate lunch at the Sari Restaurant on a mountain top overlooking a valley to a volcano that was active as recently as 10 or 15 years ago. The ground beneath the volcano was still black from the lava. Nothing had grown back yet. The restaurant was open air and the view was breathtaking. Imagine what the view would be like with an active volcano. The buffet lunch was outstanding, and a highlight of the tour. Really, really good. And cheap.



Something that I found curious as we drove around was that the billboards and most signs on stores had a majority of their printing in English. I wonder why?



From 3:36 PM to 4:20 PM we stopped by the Gunung Kawi Temple. Again we had to wear a sarong to enter the premises.



Outside of the two temples we went to street people sold craft items and clothing pieces to you. Unfortunately, we became victim of 'bait and switch' tactics in purchasing some items. Jeanine bought a carved box with butterflies on the outside, but when she got back to the bus and opened the bag it was a carved box of inferior quality but with the carving being turtles and not butterflies. She went back to the vendor and the vendor wouldn't make her whole. David had a similar problem, in that he bought an item of high quality, but then noticed when he got back to the bus that the items was the same type of carving that he'd bought, but that the one he now had was of a lesser quality than the one he had agreed to buy. Still someone else bought a sarong, but when they got back to the bus they found out that the sarong they ended up with was much smaller (it didn't fit) than the one they thought they were purchasing.



At 4:50 PM we stopped at an ATM and David and Jeanine both got some money. The exchange rate is really different. Just take the US money and add 4 zeros. $100.00 in US money is 1,000,000 Rupiah dollars. So we are all millionaires now. At any rate, David and Jeanine both came back to the bus after using the ATM machine and found out they only had 100,000 Rupiah dollars, or the equivalent of $10.00 US. Bummer. In the air conditioned ATM booths there are also two ATM's: one for people from Indonesia and one for foreigners. Our ATM cards wouldn't work in the Indonesian machines. Go figure.



We were back at the marina by 6:00 PM. We had a cocktail hour and invited Jan from Ghost over for a drink. While she was here we had to quite talking whenever a plane flew over. The marina was right at the end of the airport runway. At any rate, Jan had sailed around the world 20 years ago with her husband, and was doing a couple of legs on Ghost. She related how they had sailed up on the back of a humpback whale, because they had inadvertently gotten between the mother and cow and the mother actually swam towards the cow and hit the boat in the process. As the whale swam away, apparently uninjured, they could see the blue bottom paint on its back. Jan said that it was like they ran aground, that the boat rose up out of the water like it's hit a sand bar. Their boat was steel, so no harm done to the boat either.



We watched a movie at 7:30 PM called Maiden Voyage. A movie about a 14 year old girl from Norway who sailed around the world. We popped two bags of pop corn as we watched the movie. No dinner tonight as we'd pigged out during the lunch buffet earlier in the day.



David went to bed at 9:00 PM and I followed at 9:30 PM. Joel and Jeanine went to bed at around 10:00 PM.



Brian Fox


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