Medana Bay

When we got back to Medana Bay we discovered that Eid holidays were about to begin and last for about a week. So we decided to leave Pegasos on a mooring at Medana Bay and go hang out in Bali again for a week. The biggest difference between Bali and Lombok is that Bali is mostly Hindu and Lombok is mostly Muslim, making Bali a much more inviting place to be.

 

 

We took a ferry from Bangsal to Padang Bai. Ferry operators are cutthroat and prices are not fixed, it depends on how much effort you put into comparing and negotiating at the port. We discovered that buying a ticket at the port was cheaper than on-line.

Padang Bai is a heaving mass of ferries, passengers, taxi touts and people carrying anything - such as a large swordfish.

It was hot and after checking in at hotel we went for a swim at White Sands Beach - a misnomer.

The next morning the hotel staff were very enthusiastic about arranging a taxi for us at a rather inflated price so we compared prices and decided on Grab - the Uber version of rideshare in Bali. This has to be done discreetly as local taxis hate competition and can attack Grab drivers. Most hotels won't allow Grab near them so slick is the hotel/taxi mutual partnership. There are certain hotel lined roads banning online taxis.

So we waited a short distance from the hotel until the car appeared, slowed down and the driver said "Quick, get in quickly" and we were off in a flash. A friendly, chatty driver made our journey of over an hour to Ubud interesting. There is no open countryside along the main roads and one town blends into the next.

Ubud is much busier than we expected with throngs of tourists, hotels, restaurants, and zillions of shops selling handcrafts that Bali is known for, as well as many art galleries and studios teaching art and wood carving. Temples and shrines are everywhere.

We visited the Monkey Forest Sanctuary in the heart of Ubud. It's a well maintained green jungle space, home to about 900 monkeys. There are long-tailed monkeys everywhere who are very used to people moving amongst them.

There are 3 temples in the Monkey Forest - the cremation temple has particularly disturbing statues.

We also visited the Agung Rai Museum of Art situated in a large green shady area with many trees and water features. There are 2 galleries, one is for traditional art - a fascinating display of intricate, finely detailed, busy Balinese paintings.

Rice paddies are everywhere, even next to our hotel in the middle of Ubud. We decided to see the famous Tegallalang rice terraces and hired a scooter for the day.

 The countryside is lush and green and we enjoyed the scenic drive.

 

We were expecting a quiet village surrounded by rice terraces. Instead we got hillside rice terraces completely overwhelmed by tourists, taxi touts, jam-packed stalls selling trinkets and pushy young postcard sellers.

We found a lunch spot further away to get photos that didn't include zip lines and swings, a nice view.

On our way back into Ubud we visited the Elephant Cave (Goa Gajah) temple which dates back to 8th century. Wearing a sarong is obligatory.

 

We booked a stay in a coffee plantation further away north near Kintamani, a village close to Mount Batur, an active volcano. Our barn type accommodation was literally in the coffee plantation.

The host drove us to viewing sites around Lake Batur, a huge crater lake inside the caldera.

We walked on the edge of an old massive black lava field - it's lunar surface in sharp contrast to surrounding vegetation. Our host told us about the eruptions and formation of the lava field which poured into a village on the lava path.

The coffee plantation was very interesting and we tasted their various coffees.

 

The coffee plantation also makes the famous coffee via civet cat "processing" and we met a 5 month young civet cat. Cute but perhaps they would be happier in the wild.

A long drive back to Padang Bai for the night and the morning ferry back to Lombok and Pegasos.


We got back at spring low tide - an occasion where the villagers forage on the exposed sea grass flats collecting sea urchins and other delicacies.

The haul out of Pegasos went very smoothly. It was the first multihull haul out for Medana Bay Marina with the general manager Suraya getting into the water for a true hands on supervision. We were all happy with the process and after a wash down and preliminary scrape, Pegasos was maneuvered into its parking spot.

First the job of anti-fouling - luckily we had a willing assistant for the scraping and painting leaving Robert free to design a mounting bracket for a spare outboard engine for back up to our inboard engine. This also means drilling some holes through the side of the main hull - yikes!

The scraping and painting took about 4 days and Pegasos looks re-freshed. Pegasos will stay on the hard until early September. We're off back home for 2 months and plan to join the Sail2Indonesia rally in September going through to Malaysia - an exciting adventure to look forward to.