The Beauty of Kintamani

I woke up around 5am (still not used to the time difference) and started to get ready for the day. We had breakfast at the resort, took a quick stroll by the pool where the blue sky was out and the day looked very beautiful (despite the wind). By 8am we were picked up for our first tour. This was the first taste of real Bali. The traffic was nuts. It reminds me of the intro to Whose Line is it Anyways. Instead, its Welcome to Bali Traffic where the laws are made up and the traffic lanes dont matter. There are hundreds of scooters and motorcycles. Cars everywhere, and very little room to change lanes. I'm very impressed with all of our drivers knowledge to know just how much time you have to pass another vehicle because according to our standards there have been plenty of close calls. The drivers don't have road rage, a lot of the time they just honk their horn to let other know they are there. After picking up another couple we went to our tour place to wait for the others and the tour to start. We were accompanied by 4 other couples. One from South Africa, one from Hungary, one from Montreal and onr from Saskatoon. Our Tour guide Witana was very knowledgable, liked to talk and even knew the capital of Saskatchewan.
We started our tour and the first stop was in Batubulan for a traditional Balinese Barong dance. It was a complicated story with a beast, a monkey, a witch, a queen and a king. It was very beautiful. After that we continued to our next destination, Mas. There, we saw where they do wood carvings they are done in beautiful wood with very intricate details. We continued to Tampaksiring and visited the Tirta Empul Temple. This is the Holy spring water temple. After following a procedure, you can bathe in the waters (each fountain provides different benefits) and continue through the temple for prayers. We continued to Kintamani for lunch overlooking Mt Batur. Lunch was buffet with Indonesian style food and was very good. 100,000 ($10) for all you can eat and they encourage you to eat a lot.
We started our trek home and stopped for coffee. We got to see a lot of the fruit grown and the luwaks (civet). The animal is strictly fed arabica beans and when it poops, the faeces have coffee beans in them. They are cleaned grinded down to make coffee. Compared to the Balinese coffee it is much sweeter and more mild. But very expensive to buy. They had a big swing to swing over the edge, we didnt try it but a few from our group did. After we finished there, we headed back to our hotel. We had Italian food that night. It was really good but it was quite windy which was a problem since the restaurant is outside.Baca lagi