We took a trip north to Bedugul to check out some hot springs and temples. We decided to go straight to the hot springs because we have been so stressed out (heh heh). Our directions seemed clear and we were following along smoothly when they just sort of ended with, “the destination village is Desa Angseri, but people will know the area as “patung jagung”, ask locals for directions from here.” So we asked a few people and they kept pointing back the way we had come. In my limited, but improving Bahasa Indonesia, I asked how far it was back. We kept asking people and they kept saying back, back. We were nearly back to the original turn in the directions, when we looked up what “patung jagung” meant in our dictionary. We had been asking people where the corn statue is. Not the hot springs. Not the area where the village is located. The corn statue. Thanks, directions. After this, it was very easy to ask directions to the actual hot springs and we drove through some very remote villages, in which everyone stared at us as we bumped along, and finally reached the springs.

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The pilots have been antsy on launch….

Paraglider Pilots tend to get antsy when they don’t get to fly. The last 3 days Timbis, Bali’s “ultra consistant” on-everyday paragliding site, has not been on. Light winds have been torturing us. All the pilots sit on launch trying to put on a good face. Ah, it will be good tomorrow, at least this place is beautiful, blah, blah, blah. And the place IS beautiful. 300ft coral limestone cliffs give way to the blue green Indian Ocean. Reef streaks out to the breaking waves for two hundred yards. Temples dot the ridge line. Dugongs troll the shallows behind the reef. Seaweed farmers toil at low tide.

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Our endless Saturday is flowing smoothly along. We wake up to the sounds of roosters, wooden cow bells, cows mooing a distinctive Balinese moo, little kids running around laughing. We can hear the wind in the trees in the garden and motorbikes in the village. In the mornings, we have time to explore beaches or temples or markets before heading to Timbis to fly. We fly the afternoons away with local and traveling pilots and hang out on launch between flights with everyone who makes up the flying community here.

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Wherever I have been in the world to fly my largest of kites, so much is the same. Pilots help each other, laugh with each other, analyze conditions together. Small crowds gather to take in the spectacle of humans hurling themselves into the void. Children shriek and dance with excitement with the wave of a passing pilot or perhaps a steeply carved turn directly over head.

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We waved goodbye to Nyoman, who stood nervously at the edge of a gas station watching us waiting for an opening for a crazy right hand turn into Kuta traffic mayhem. He couldn’t take it anymore and ran out into the oncoming rush and stopped cars and motorbikes while we burst out onto the street. Nyoman had rented us a fifteen year old Suzuki Katana for our stay in Bali. The car is a two door SUV that is smaller than my Scion at home. It’s right hand drive like everything here. Until I actually drove it, I kept thinking that driving on the left side of the road would be the tricky part. For me, though, it’s shifting with my left hand and signaling with my right, but down is right and up is left. Thankfully, the pedals are in the same order. It is also hard to be the passenger when the driver drives so close to the edge of the road and motorbikes whiz by on both sides in both directions. There’s a guy texting while driving a motorbike with three passengers including a toddler and a baby! There are two people on a motorbike carrying two 30-foot long pieces of PVC pipe on their shoulders driving on the wrong side of the road! There’s a dump truck that says “I love you full!” on the windshield pulling out in front of us without looking to the right! We’re getting the hang of it and it’s mostly hilarious.

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The Hordes on Kuta Beach

We knew it would be this way. Melody remembered this place from her last trip. But, it’s hard to describe the sheer wrongness of Kuta Beach until you experience it. Puerto Vallarta10 gets close. It’s to the tenth power because there are some many more people, so much more crap for sale, vendors are pushing the stuff on you so much harder. It’s hotter, the streets are tiny and claustrophobic. There’s an unbelievable amount of penis paraphernalia and t-shirts that beam mantras like “Up the Bum No Babys” (misspelling intended). Oh, and did I mention that when you are walking around there is this constant nagging feeling that you are about to get hit by a motor bike? My biggest fear in our 1.5 days here has been that I would get hit by a motor bike driven by an Australian. That would make me really mad.

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Melody Ready To Launch

We are about to shoulder our gliders and head to Indonesia! We’re both done with school and almost ready to go!

We each have 60-day visas in our books and about 20 words of Bahasa Indonesia in our brains. Hopefully more Indonesian will come over the course of the trip.

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