Thursday

Really, really early pickup at the hotel today so it's a 5:30am wakeup call. I'm pretty tired since Merry woke me up at least 4 or 5 times thinking we'd missed our wake up call. She'd wake me, ask the time and then be back to sleep in seconds. I, on the other hand, had to lay there for a while. Repeat as necessary, yeesh! Met our guide in the lobby right on time. His name is Agus which rhymes with Bagus (good), hopefully it's a good sign. In the van and off to Sanur to pick up some other customers for the Bali Eco Tours bicycle tour.

No traffic at this hour and we see far fewer than normal life threatening potential motor vehicle accidents. I continue to marvel at the skill exhibited by drivers of all types of vehicles. Motorbikes, cars, vans and busses all within mere inches of each other traveling at times at speeds that seem about 5X faster than safe. As if that isn't enough, the motorbikes cut in and out of traffic constantly in what I'm told is some kind of "system". To me it just looks like total madness and constant flirtation with death and the subsequent requirement of ceremonial cremation. Apparently, there are no burials here. Cremation is required as per Hindu custom.

A halp hour (the Balinese can not say "F" sounds, it's almost always replaced by a "p" sound) later, we stop in Sanur on the SE coast to pick up some Aussie's who will be doing the trip with us. Turns out they're from Melbourne very near where I stayed while visiting there years ago. Doncaster, which is just down the road a spell from Box Hill where I was. The lady was even a Collingwood supporter. The Collingwood Magpies Aussie rules football team is sort of like the Edmonton Oilers of old. You only liked them if you were from there, if not, you're favorite team was whoever played them. Another forty five minutes and we're at the rim of the volcano, Mt. Batur. The second highest point on Bali at almost 2000 meters. We're dropped at a restaurant which is cliffside on the inside of the crater for a fantastic breakfast of presh pruit and banana pancakes. The kopi here is realy good too. Very strong....very, very strong. sort of like espresso. It takes lots of milk to make it change colour but it tastes so good! Took lots of pictures of the crater, the lake inside it and the cinder cone at it's center. Looking carefully, you could see smoke from the lowest of the 2 vents on the cone. We're told that the last major eruption was back in 1963 and there were over 1000 people killed. Turns out there is a village in the bottom of the crater and it's still there. Natural selection at work? Possibly.

After breakfast, we went down the hill a bit to a plantation. Saw BBC (bananas, bamboo and coconut) growing. Also saw kopi, cinnamon, snakefruit (Salak), star fruit, vanilla, jackfruit and pineapple. They were roasting coffee beans over an open fire and Merry got to help stir. Drank some atomic powered kopi and some hot chocolate. Oh yeah, I forgot we got to eat part of a cacao fruit which they make chocolate from. Then across the road to pick up our bikes.

They were nice bikes once, probably about 10 years ago. Oh well, they worked for the most part and it wasn't like we were going to do any major off-roading. The rest of the day was spent cycling downhill about 30 km in total with various stops along the way at a temple, bamboo mat shop, rice paddy and a family compound complete with authentic Balinese family. Dad - artist, oldest son of 10 years was a musician playing the woden xylophone things and he was very good. Merry says she'll never complain about our kitchen again after seeing theirs. We'll see about that! Next we stopped and dropped off the bikes and they took us for lunch. The food was awesome and a couple of Bintangs went down pretty easy. A quick stop at the monkey forest after lunch and then back down the mountain to drop off the Aussies in Sanur (with a couple of Bintang's for the road) and then back to Nusa Dua. A long, long day but a most excellent adventure indeed.