Seems you can soar anything here…..

Soaring the Nikko Hotel – Nusa Dua, Bali:

Ubud is quite nice. They call it Bali’s  “cultural heart” and there are a multitude of activities for the tourist to engage in that are aimed at introducing them to Balinese culture. To be fair the villages surrounding Ubud are beautiful and steeped in the full richness of Balinese Hindu tradition. In some ways Ubud might be the cultural heart of an island that is jam packed with culture. It certainly is the epicenter of tasteful, upscale tourism and its associated art and shopping madness.

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As I drive through the villages completely relaxed or we see our friends at launch I allow myself, momentarily, to feel like a natural part of this place. But every single day, the moments that remind me that we are not in Kansas anymore are hilariously charming. “Did you just see that?!” I ask Sati delightfully so many times each day. Huge yellow dump trucks piled high with massive limestone boulders say “I love you full” in two foot high block letters across their windshields. Other similar trucks come barreling down a steep, narrow road at us with “Risky” emblazoned on their windshields. Indonesians have adopted toilet paper for many other uses and most warungs (little restaurants) have plastic dispensers specifically for toilet paper to use as napkins. Some people here row out in boats just to fly kites. Other people make kites that create a weird, we’re-being-invaded-by-aliens sound and then tie their kites off to fly on their own all night. Teeny kids hide behind fences and pop out long enough to say, “I love you!” and then duck and hide, giggling insatiably. Mothers take all four uniformed kids to school on a motorbike at once. In some villages, when all the kids are in uniform and walking to school, girls carry stick rakes and boys carry machetes. Pringles come in softshell crab, shrimp and seaweed flavors. There is a brand of snacks called Pura Agung that has no indication on the packaging what the snack is made of; some are shrimp crisps, others are fried sweets, others are shredded coconut cakes – you just take your chances until you can recognize those you like. Fifty motorbikes might decided to drive at you in your lane in the wrong direction to get past a bit of traffic on their side of the narrow median. People have fake police lights on their cars. It’s all just weirdly awesome.

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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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