21st - 24th December 2011
After a restful ten hour sleep in our beautiful room, I worked out while Djalma had a lie in and then went to find the rest of the Brazilians on the beach. I wasn't good for much except eating breakfast, Jillian Michaels knocked me out! We had lunch all together by the sea, Nasi Goreng, the staple dish of Indonesia is basically damn good fried rice with vegetables and maybe meat, topped with a fried egg. After eating I disappeared off for three hours to write and try an catch up with my blog – a month behind as usual. The Brazilians all hung out together by the sea, husband included – happy to catch up with his friends, do Brazilian things (like nothing but with extra style) and talk Portuguese.
I joined them after my mini mammoth writing session having only written about Vang Vieng in Laos and Chiang Mai in Thailand. I wanted to go for a stroll to take some photos but everyone decided to tag along so very slowly our group of eight and a bit moved from the black sand beach and along a path down the road leading to mine and Djalma's hotel.
I have mentioned in passing how utterly beautiful Bali is, thanks to the tremendous amount of rain, it is the lushest, freshest, most blinding green I have ever seen and there is plenty of it. After three months on the mainland of SE Asia, where the cool dry season is now approaching, it was lovely to see so much life and variety, not to mention some new flowers. The narrow rough roads linking the beach to a chain of small family run hotels were lined with green and the odd splash of colour, walking down to the beach from our hotel we passed a small grove of coconut trees growing out of a blanket of small yellow flowers sprouting between thousands of dinky green leaves, to the left, stone walls covered with small potted plants, variegated shrubs and more flowers. Oh, and everyone smiles, every bit as beautiful as the island itself (and that's saying something).
Our walk took us through some privately owned land fenced on one side by small terraces dotted with chewing on their evening greens and a small undulating field with more cows tucking into the grass.
We ended up, a few minutes later on a small headland with views to either side of coastline and plenty of breaking waves, the west coast is rather good for surfing in the rainy season apparently. After taking a few photos I joined the rest of the group (I will introduce them shortly) and saw my husband on a relatively flat stretch of rock enjoying the breaking waves rather closer than absolutely necessary. A couple of waves crashed and slid over the rock bed and then two huge waves in very close succession came rolling in.
Of course, Djalma had his back to the sea when they were closing in and luckily for him (and me) Carlos shouted for him to run (I couldn't my heart was in my mouth), he started but was swept off his feet by the first wave and skidded feet first on his back for several metres. Fine. He got up and showed he was fine and then the second one came crashing in, by this time he was close enough to the base of the headland and managed to hold on while the second beast of a wave swept through. He climbed back, my heart was in my mouth and I wanted to hug him and smack him at the same time, he had skinned part of his hand, the side of his knee, grazed his butt cheek and lost huge amounts of skin on his foot, all on the right side, everything was leaking blood, it was horrible. We called it a night after that and hobbled back slowly to wash his wounds and try to stop the bleeding. The worst cut was a big flap on the pad of skin under his 4th and 5th toe, he cleaned it up as best he could and closed it. We then sprayed the cuts with our magic plaster, but too soon because they continued to bleed. We resolved to keep an eye on the various cuts and to keep his adventure loving self out of the water for the foreseeable future.
I was up early the next morning and after trying the first workout of the third week (they get progressively harder between the first and fourth week) which was almost too much for my right buttock which I had managed to strain at some point, I met Djalma and his crew for breakfast. Time to introduce the group; Carlos (who people call Carlão or big Carlo because he is so tall) is friends with Djalma from University, Carolina is his wife pregnant with their second child and Luna is their absolutely charming, irresistible and gorgeous 16 month old daughter. Gabby is Carolina's sister and is married to Adimir (I can only remember his name because it is so close to Vladimir), Eduardo or Do for short is Gabby and Carolina's brother, and Cassio is a friend of the family. There are more people to join the group at a later date, I think eight people including myself and Djalma is more than enough for now! The first thing I noticed is how much the siblings look like each other and how everyone has nice clean clothes, that are new and co-ordinate, Carolina has a green bikini and green glasses, this looks unbelievable cool. They also have changes of clothes and outfits, this is something that hasn't bothered when we've met other people along the way because we only ever travel together for a couple of days but I'm going to start feeling like a poorly clothed street urchin in a few more days. Everyone is also very nice, very friendly and very Brazilian, unfortunately for me I am not Brazilian and plenty of their conversations go straight over my head, what's most annoying is that the words I do catch from the myriad of conversations held at the same time, are words which don't give the meaning, words like; before, after, seven, but, more, I, you and so on. My word sifting is rubbish.
So, I think that Brazilians like not doing very much, and preferably by the beach or some water, like a pool, just chilling out, shooting the breeze about nothing in particular and maybe a little card playing, this is all fabulous, if you speak Portuguese. Since I don't, I decided that I would get further up to date with my writing and after something to eat, the best and spiciest Nasi Goreng we'd had so far, I disappeared to my room to write a little more. Chastised by Djalma for being anti-social I rushed the writing and hurried back to the shared bedroom of Carlos and Carolina, with her sister and her husband, people were hanging out, doing a bit of reading about Bali and Djalma was farting. It rained the whole afternoon.
Djalma and I were up early the next morning, we had decided the previous afternoon to book the same minivan that had brought us from Denpasar to the beach, to take us through the bottle neck at the South of the Island and to a long beach on the West coast of the Bukit Peninsula. We had room service for the first time in our trip and then walked down to wait for the minivan which was late.
It took several hours for us to get to Balangan back passed the innumerable terraced rice paddies, we stopped for lunch at a large place designed to cater for large coachloads of tourists. It was actually rather good and we made use of the time to freshen up a little. I got my baby wipes and for the first time used them on a baby, giving Luna a little bath and then sprinkling on a little talcum powder, it looked so good that I nipped to the ladies and poured some more on myself.
We finally made in the early afternoon, we dropped our bags and the rest of the group off at their beautiful, pre-booked resort and then Djalma and I went down to the beach for something actually affordable. I left Djalma with his injured foot up while I worked the beach front searching for the best deal, everything was at least 10USD and lots of the sea facing rooms smelt all musty and had the nastiest looking mattresses I've seen in a while. We settled on one place, Maria's, a large room with a good bed and a fan. It had the bonus of the cutest little girl since Luna and about the same age too.
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