Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Raindrops Keep Falling on Our Heads

Our late mornings (8:15am) seem to be a good wake-up time for us...we beat the 8:30 alarm again this morning.

After breakfast, there was just time enough for us to get into our snorkel gear, pack up, and get to the reception area where Ketut was waiting for us, as always. He had told us yesterday that sometimes tourists (from other countries) keep him waiting as long as an hour or two. "Nine o'clock means 9:00! Ten o'clock means 10:00!" We are careful to be on time!

We saw that the staff had put out the usual ceremonial flowers to greet the day and to please the 33 million Hindu gods. We felt well sent off for our final day of snorkeling. This morning we would be making an extra stop as Putu was joining us. She lives about 30 minutes away toward Amed, our snorkeling beach, and was ready to jump in the car when we pulled up. She is very small & young-looking...hard to realize that she is the mother of four, ranging in age from 2 to 14 years old. Her husband got laid off when his company went bankrupt a year or so ago, so she is the sole breadwinner now. Besides normal living expenses, she has to buy 3 of her children school uniforms each year...about 4 different sets for each, for different days of the week. She drives a motorscooter back & forth to work, sometimes after she gets off at 11:00 at night.

As Ketut wound his way through traffic of cars, trucks, motorscooters, pedestrians, dogs, and the occasional chicken, we made note again of how painted lane lines and things like traffic lights seem to be just "suggestions". Frequent beeps of the horn (Ketut's and others) don't appear to signal anything in particular, as no one even indicates he/she has heard, but continue doing whatever. One trick we've learned is that on the divided highway near Denpasar, the right-turn lane at a traffic light is really the merge lane to get in front of the line of cars ahead of you. Montana, after considering the driving in other countries (like India and China), has decided she could handle this traffic.

On the way to the beach today, we met one Hindu procession taking up the oncoming lane. A ceremony to the sea, we were told. Montana and LuRue were glad that they were going in the opposite direction, not behind it.

Once at the beach, the routine was the same...10,000 rupiah to get in (parking, maybe?), then 50,000 rupiah for the use of two lounges. LuRue gave Putu her conventional mask & snorkel to use, but Putu indicated that she wasn't ready to come yet so Montana and LuRue went to the water's edge to put on their fins and take off for an hour and a half of exploring the underwater life of Bali. The beach wasn't nearly as crowded today so we spent most of the time cruising back and forth in front of the public beach area.





It rained off and on, though we barely noticed. Always a few new sightings to keep things interesting. The real excitement started after we got out. Just finishing up our beachside showers, we started to get rained on again, but it was light. However, by the time we had gotten our gear together, the skies opened up and Ketut asked if we minded waiting a bit. Of course, we didn't. We waited...and waited...and waited. For an hour we waited. Toward the end, we saw brown plumes of water jetting up from the surface of the lagoon, where a stream of water was flowing down from the mountains, We watched as the circle of brown water spread out, engulfing where we had been snorkeling a couple of hours before.


After the rain eased up enough to leave, Ketut led the way through a back route. When we reached the street, he could look down the road and see water gushing over it. All traffic was stopped. Ketut hailed a truck as the rest of us stood under a shelter and the truck was finally able to cross. Putu could see that a motorscooter was on its side and some big branches were being cleared away. In a short time, Ketut was back with the car. Always fearless, he tooted his way to the front and charged across the "brown river" and others followed. Putu said she would be too afraid to cross on her motorscooter. A mile or two down the road, we came across another traffic tie-up...another brown river, but Ketut plunged right through with no problem. Certainly very, very different from Arizona where you would likely find yourself in trouble!
Our attempt at screenshotting a video on the chrome

By the time we reached Putu's house, we were in dry territory with the sun out from time to time. For being here in the rainy season, this has been the only time we were put off schedule at all.

Montana and LuRue had both discussed another visit to the Orchid Spa & were contemplating it while spreading out our snorkel gear onto the drying rack. The spa is right next door to us, separated only by a row of tall reeds and a bamboo shade. Maybe my masseuse heard us because she has never looked around the shade before, but there she was. Within seconds we came to a decision and she told us that the best time to come was right then. Within 15 minutes of arriving "home", we were lying on tables...LuRue got a relaxing massage this time, while Montana got "waxed". Neither was totally pain-free, but no screams of pain, at least. Montana said that it felt like a million bandaids being ripped off at once. One masseuse was spreading wax on one leg while the other was ripping away. Actually a good experience for both in the end.

The Grand Finale for Candidasa was dinner that has been advertised on a large board in the restaurant. It needs to be ordered a day ahead. We got Bebek Betutu...a duck that has been steamed for 6 hours, then served with a special Balinese sauce, accompanied by rice and a vegetable dish. We say our goodbyes tomorrow.

A disappointing PS: For reasons unknown, Montana's computer has "gone dark". We have tried every technique mentioned on the Internet for restarting a dead computer, but nothing has worked. We are now dependent upon this contrary little Chromebook, which sometimes has a mind of its own.

Another disappointing PS: Now the Chromebook seems to have gone into a snit and refuses to open any photos. It may be downloading, or syncing, or just pouting, but at least we seem to have gotten the written word out. If we get the photos working at a later date, we'll send a special edition.

PPS: We somewhat fixed it.


3 comments:

  1. Bummer, Montana about your computer. Too much moisture maybe? I wonder if it is ruined. Yikes! Hopefully it was backed up before you left.

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  2. And so the adventure continues! My goodness! Nice photos. And I'm sure you were glad you weren't snorkeling when the brown water engulfed the area. So, how was the Bebek Betutu?

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  3. Once again I enjoyed the fish photos. So clear and relatively easy to ID (If you don't mind leafing through 500 pages of Reef Fish ID!!) : yellowtail Coris-IP; Moorish Idols; Indian Vagabond Butterflyfish

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