Nyepi
So I guess I 'll start with Nyepi. Nyepi is the Balinese "day of silence" which in more practical terms means we are not allowed to leave the hotel property the whole day , no internet , no music and of course no electricity. They have had Nyepi events the last 2 nights, a dance on Sun and a parade last night up and down the Main Street with these big , and I mean 10 or 12 ft big evil looking figurines on platforms that are carried by a crew of people . Lots of fun, fireworks, bands , torches , singing....all fun , all the time in Bali. So today we are hiding from all the evil spirits and making ourselves inconspicuous so that the evil spirits pass us by.
So let's start back at the beginning.... We left the states last Wed , David in the afternoon and us.. as in..Carrie, Shelley ,Curtis and I in the evening. Around 34 magical hours later we all landed in Denpasar , Bali on the same flight at around 3pm on the fri. OK should we try to catch the ferry at 4pm from Sanur, which is about 30 minutes by taxi from the airport.. this is sort of setting up as a math question. Well lets grab a taxi and see what happens and well... not much happens, we're a a balinese traffic jam which is different from the normal traffic jams in that in Bali those annoying white lines on the road are ignored. Anyways 40 minutes later we have missed our ferry.... but WAIT!! not only is there a ferry at 5pm, it's also a fast ferry and it's only $5 more, so only 35 minutes instead of almost 2 hours. OK we're all in and jump on the ferry and we're a day early... oh we're a day early, which means no hotel reservations ,oh well. We get a room at the place we are going to stay anyways, cool, love it when a plan comes together, David's place is not open, so he gets a room at our place and moves to the room the next day..ahhh the romance of travel. Guess what we do next, yes we are all in bed by 830pm.
Up early the next morning to go to the dive shop to see if we can get on the dive boat that day and Tadah!! no we have no room at the Inn today sir. Ok bummer no diving today ... BUT WAIT!!!! what do I see in the distance? Yes it is Wayan from the dive shop and he has come tell us that yes we have room on our dive boat , would you please join us for some joyous diving fun? YES! YES! YES! we exclaimed. This has turned into something unexpected and really should stop.
So Shelley has started the Open water course and should be finished by tommorrow ( wed) the rest of us have done 6 dives and they have been mostly good dives, we weren't able to see any Manta Rays the other day , but we are going back on Wed to see if they are there then. We have seen some cool stuff...ribbon eels, turtles, octopus, cuttlefish and well to Curtis it's all cool!! It's always nice to dive with someone new to the sport, it reminds you to remember that the sport is fun and exciting, leave the cynicism at home.
So the tentative plan is to leave here on sat morning and grab the ferry back to the mainland and a taxi to the airport, and fly to manado on Sulawesi, over night there and out to Bunaken island the next morning. A little wrench has been the fact that I haven't been able book flights on line for some reason and well.... today we have no internet, so today is not feasibile either. There is no ticket agent or travel agent on the island, so it's online or at the airport. Which could mean our plans might change...we'll just see what happens.
Just something I wanted to mention that was pretty cool, last night as we were meeting up with David at his place, a lady came in with incense and holy water? and was blessing everything in his hotel, while a man with torch and a woman with a cymbal chased out any evil spirits that may have been hiding there. Is there any where in the world that is more fun than Bali ? I think NOT!
Love and warm thoughts from Nusa Lembongan
glen and carrie
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