Pemuteran, Bali: Hot and Humid, sunny 37

Showering In a Lightning Storm

We are sitting here in a small resort on the north coast of Bali having enjoyed a morning walk along the beach and our breakfast just a few meters from the beach. The 'resort' is in the midst of a fishing village and it's the resorts that seem out of place here. Unlike other places we have visited in Mexico and the Caribbean, the resorts haven't quite taken over yet...but no doubt they eventually will. The only thing preventing this from happening sooner is the lack of an airport anywhere near by and the 6-9 hour island crossing that most tourists won't take. So for now, this place remains under touristed with a rare Canadian, but mostly Europeans from France, Germany and the Netherlands. We feel quite at home here! 

I mentioned the long drive in and that's largely what this post is about. We are here for about 5 days so time to speak of this area later. The drive...simply magical! We were picked up by a different driver than we had arranged which proved a pleasant blessing in disguise. Our new driver, Ari, is from this area, and as we learned along the way his 7 month pregnant wife was already up here visiting with his family. Hence the switch in drivers so that he could bring her back home when he returned. We hit it off nicely with Ari. He has much better english skills and drives considerably better than the first two drivers and...he has a great sense of humour!

Instead of the 6 hour drive our drive slowly lengthened into over 9 hours as Ari told us he could see that we were more interested in his country than just going as fast as possible to a resort. He stopped at many places and essentially provided us with a private tour. In many ways he is much like Annemarie's brother Gil in that he is very knowledgeable about his part of the country and takes considerable time to learn the history so that he can share it. This was quite different from our prior two experiences with the drivers here...older and less interested in sharing. 

So much was experienced on our trip across the island that I'm going to break this into two posts, and at some point Annemarie is going to write a cultural piece to attach. Some of my photos are taken from a moving vehicle, so may not be the best, but they do some justice to the areas we drove through. Others are I think, acceptable.

After a nice breakfast at our favour little spot

off we went! Our first stop was the Hindu temple at Tana Lot. The temple is stunningly situated on a small island just off shore and cannot be directly visited. The only real option is to walk the mainland area and try to take a few reasonable pictures in between the many tourists trying to take some of the oddest posed photos I've ever seen...amazing imaginations!

 The walk along the cliff tops to the various temples was scenic to say the least...

I seem to be having a technical problem with this post, so will publish and continue on a new post. The reason for the name of this title is because at the end of our long day we experienced an amazing lightning storm. Our shower and bath is outdoors, so while showering I was treated to quite the pyrotechnics show! Dazzling! More soon...