Friday, October 28, 2011

Bali's NW Coast






Upon my arrival on Bali on Wednesday, I was met outside the arrivals area by my driver & guide, Nyoman Dana. I also was able to meet up with Agung, the adminstrator extraordinare for Dive Damai! He's been working with me for months on practicing my Bahasa Indonesian and it's great to finally meet him face to face!

After loading all my gear, we headed out of Denpasar with a quick stop to visit a long-time friend and dive guide, Anton Kusmayanto, who now owns Bali Dive Travel. We spent a short while having tea and catching up but with traffic picking up, it was time to head north! The road north out of Denpasar is called the Sunset Road, but there's so many buildings and so much construction going on, I haven't a clue how one could possible see the sunset from that road! Traffic on Bali is tremendous and short looking distances on a map take forever to travel. My first stop on Bali was Medewi Beach Cottages, about a 3 hour drive north of Denpasar. Medewi Beach is known as a hot surfing spot with a famous "left-hand" wave. There were a few surfers waiting to catch a wave but the sea was pretty calm while I was there...needless to say, the surfers from around the world were slightly disappointed!

Thursday's drives included a stop at Bunut Bolong, a huge Banyan-type tree that has had a road carved through the middle of it...looks very healthy and has put out many, many more roots outside the roadbed so it's thriving!

We then headed farther north to one of Bali's nine seaside temples which surround and protect the Island. Pura Rambut Siwi is made up of six separate temples all situated on a cliffside overlooking a peaceful stretch of black sand beach. One of the temples is actually located down many, many steps right at the water's edge.

Next we headed further north to Pura (Temple) Gede Perancak, another of the seaside temples. It's closed to visitors right now because of ongoing refurbishment, but my "find of the day" just past the temple was a whole fleet of Javanese-style fishing boats! These fishing boats are all painted in vibrant colors and all sport decorated icons on their masts...it's a gorgeous spectacle to behold and I was able to speak (through Nyoman, of course) to some of the fishermen. They go out at least 50 miles to fish for "small tuna"...each boat holds 60 men! The catch for his boat the night before yielded 20 ton of fish! As a diver, such huge harvests makes me sad to think they do this night after night? Soon there will be NO fish left in our oceans!

Friday morning's drive was 1-1/2 hours north to the NW tip of Bali, driving through Bali Barat National Park. The park is over 74,000 hectares plus over 7,000 hectares of protected coral reef offshore. The Park is home to many birds, 200 different species of plants and lots of wildlife. We saw lots of macaque monkeys sitting by the side of the road but none of their signature "mouse deer" but it was the middle of the day and hot, hot, hot there! It's the end of the dry season on Bali so it's quite dry up in the Park, not as lush as farther south where it's a more tropical climate.

Today's plan is a 2-tank boat dive with Mimpi Divers here at Mimpi Menjagan Resort. I have a lovely walled villa with a private natural hot spring pool in my courtyard! It will be something to look foward to jumping into after my dives today.....

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