Friday, 10th September 2010
The 3 senior members of the boat had a well deserved lie in, Skipper totally wrecked from sitting in busses for the last few weeks. Thinking about it, we certainly traveled some 2500 km in a couple of days in Darwin and now about 600km in 2 days. Aileen loves and thrives on this, while Skipper just wilts completely.
Today, at least we are only going on a half day trip, primarily to see the Monkey forest, and the bus leaves the marina at 13.30hrs. Before we set off, we did some boat cleaning and had long chats with with Paul and Susanne from Rally control. Aileen and Sue from Voyageur went off to do a little shopping and returned around 12.30 hrs.
Terry made some light sandwiches for lunch and then the 3 musketeers Aileen, Stephen and Terry jumped aboard the bus and off we went again.
Meanwhile the two N's went off to the beach with all the other young people and do whatever young people normally do!
So, after an hour on the bus, we stopped at a well run terraced rice farm, and walked through the paddy fields to the farm house where we had coke, fanta, and juices, plus something small to nibble on, actually very tasty it was and made from tapioca and sweet potato.
Then we drove off to "The Royal Temple of Mengwi" built in 1643 and is still in reasonable condition. An interesting thing here was lots of people fishing through out the waters of the temple, of course we had to stop and stare for a while.
Following that, went set off again on our merry way to the sacred - Monkey Forrest - this place is home to hundreds of indigenous monkeys, but again the entrance, like the entrances to almost all the Temples, were cluttered with lots and lots of stalls selling every from unusual bottle openers in the shape of a penis, to elephants, all made from a local hardwood. The detail and craftsmanship is excellent, and then there were the usual stall selling material and clothes with every colour under the sun.
Monkeys are monkeys, and they were all over the place, jumping up on people if they thought you had any food, and they had their very own sacred Temple, how about that. Skipper got to hold a Flying Fox one of those big fruit Bats, and we have some snaps to prove it all. Terry refused point blank to hold one, and Aileen was not very enthusiastic either.
Then, all back into the bus once more. That's ourselves, the Swiss 4 from Ariane, and a British couple on their honeymoon. We set off the the coast again, further west this time, to see "Tanah Lot" a Temple sitting on top of a huge rock on the sea shore. We were supposed the get a fantastic view of this at sunset, except the sunset was cloudy, so nothing spectacular here today.
All back in the bus again, Skipper was exhausted again, more headaches from all this driving, not to mention a sore bottom from sitting down for days on end.
20.00hrs We arrived back at the marina. Wrecked again, Skipper tried skyping on the laptop, but failed, the thing crashed and no one could get it working again. Ohhhh, one of our N's has gone, left, for home. Yes, Niall had to return home due to a family illness, and we are awaiting news of his return.
We had dinner in the yacht club, and on our way back to the boat, we got waylaid at Voyageur and had many night caps before eventually retiring to our scratchers.
Sick of tours, we had a good night sleep.
That's all for now.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)