Journal Entry 13 Saturday, May 15, 2004 Bali Tamon Resort, Lovina Beach

We rode all day along the parched coastline of Northeast Bali.  Amazing that the landscapes of this one little Island are as diverse as another whole continent.  It's so dry and brown here complete with cacti.  These poor villages with what seems to me, little or no resources.  Why the decent road?  So these big trucks referred to as Loris can get around Bali without going through the steep, narrow mountain roads are my guess.  The occasional short, but very wide, stinky, noisy trucks take up most of both of the two little lanes.  That was the only real traffic at least.  Unfortunately the beautiful coastline views disappeared just twenty minutes North of Amed.  


Not by choice did we not eat all day (poor child!) but there just wasn't any place to stop, mainly just a few shack warungs, which upon approaching the unusual smells in the air, we no longer had an appetite.  We did wave down a little ice-cream-vendor on a motorcycle, who politely stopped and served us, that was a lifesaver.

Coming out of the parched area we took a sudden turn off heading back West towards inland when, hot and miserable, I scarcely noticed a old sign with an arrow that pointed to "waterfall".  Ahhhh!! I was hopefully envisioning, as I ground up the steep path-of-a-road in first gear, this will be worth it...please...knowing full well it is dry season now.  (As always first gear is too high, and second too low which forces me to back into first again which has ended up in a few exciting little pop-a-wheelies, only mostly because of the steepness and the auto-clutch thing).  

A lovely man from this tiny waterfall village spoke just enough English to offer himself up, for a small “donation”, to guide us up the path; I hesitated wanting privacy, but then gave in to his friendly demeanor.  This ended up being quite a hike in the hot condition we were in. It was not at all an obvious path and became more steep and complicated, for which I was very glad to have him along.   On the way he introduced us to his friend who was up high in a tree harvesting cloves which he tossed to us and we carried around for hours (Morgan later stuck hers in her helmet) breathing in deeply the fresh spicy smell.

The reward was ours; no one was there!  Happy Birthday!! 


The water poured down, over the rocks high above and dropped, at least a few hundred feet, into a small natural pool misting us.  The power and energy of this thing!  We carefully waded in a few steps and looking up in awe, the fall had it's own course and moved to dump, and I mean dump, it's water on us each one at a time, moving across the pool at it's own pace.  We were absolutely soaked within minutes of being there!

Several times out of the corner of my eye I noticed our guide making big round motions with his arms.  It was clearly something spiritual though when he saw me he pretended he was stretching.  Later, after our donations to both him and his village, he told me he was thanking the spirits or god of the water because it's a very holy place.   Indeed it was!  


We were so incredibly refreshed and felt better then we had in days.  


Then we said goodbye to another new friend.