The Rally is actually centered on the village of Kalibukbuk identified by a iconic dolphin monument on the beach. Every morning as we ascend to our flybridge aerie for coffee we see the fleet of local boats loaded with tourists motoring BACK IN from the predawn dolphin watching excursion!
Sail Indonesia Events
The Sail Indonesia events started Monday with craft and culinary expos during the day at the top of the beach and a dance exhibition on a stage in the evening. We were among the first to check out the former -- yes, buying AND eating! -- but I'm embarrassed to say that by evening we couldn't face dressing again after our swim so listened to the gamelan orchestra from across the water. Sitting in the aerie at sunset, sipping wine, watching the scattered lights come on across the mountainside, and listening to the orchestra -- a pleasant tinkle at this distance -- was about as nice as it gets.
North Side Tour: Munduk, Waterfall, Twin Lakes, Singaraja
Tuesday morning (after running the engines on the three boats we are looking after!) we found ourselves a driver for a bit of a nosy (as the Kiwis say) around the north side of Bali. Hustled by a young man whose English was pretty good, we discovered he was a front man for drivers who don't speak much English! Our driver, Koko, was a very nice father of four, but our communications were limited to essentials. Even my Lonely Planet phrasebook couldn't much help with the kinds of questions I wanted to ask!
Our first destination was another coffee plantation in the Munduk region. Munduk is village, but also a steeply mountainous region centered on one of the watershed valleys north of Bali's central cluster of volcanos. Villages cluster on ridge tops or valley bottoms, their roofs tightly packed together in a sea of green. At lower elevations we passed multi-tier rice terrace cut into the hillside, and, finally, lucked into one community in the midst of harvesting. Most amusingly a clutch of dozens of baby ducks had been turned loose on a cleared area to gorge themselves on any remaining edibles.
The plantation our driver chose in truth was a clove plantation with coffee and all the other typical "panaculture" spice species -- three coffees, cocoa, cinnamon, vanilla, ginseng, turmeric, etc -- sharing the roughly terraced hillside. Like our previous coffee stop, this venue was more a garden showplace, with the larger plantation elsewhere! Still, we had an informative tour, by an attractive young lady this time, and got a more evocative photograph of what the Luwak coffee beans look like in civet cat poop! The ground seemed very very dry, but our guide said this year's clove crop was poor because they had had too much rain. After the tour we enjoyed a couple of Bali-style coffees -- one ginger, one mocha -- poured from quaint coconut-shell coffee pots into carved wooden coffee cups!
Next stop up the mountain was a hike in to a spectacular waterfall. Oddly, the pool at the bottom was three-quarters filled with gravel and silt and didn't seem to have enough room for the volume of water coming down let alone any swimming. On one side, a three-gate stone sluice channeled water into an aqueduct that snaked away through the forest to service some rice terrace below.
We stopped at a restaurant just up the road from the waterfall path for a quick lunch and the spectacularly cool and misty view north.
From there on our our sightseeing was mostly from the car as we climbed up to the ridge top to look down on two mountain lakes in an old caldera. Even here the rough land was thoroughly cultivated with the primary commercial crop being blue flowers, like a single-stalked hydrangea! At a roadside overlook, a man was proffering the chance to hold/touch an huge iguana, three fruit bats, and a huge python. We left just as he was draping the snake in several coils around a tourists' neck! Eeeecccch! Our route back brought us down through Singaraja .
Welcoming Ceremonies
The evening event on the beach was the official welcoming ceremony for Sail Indonesia, complete with relatively brief speeches by the local government officials. The program was a surprising mix of traditional music and dance and more modern interpretations. This included a Balinese rock band which mixed electric guitars with gamelan, Balinese drums, cymbals and flute. It was terrific!
Surprising to see some more modern-style dances performed, and even more surprising to find I preferred the traditional ones! Having seen these dances several times now, we are beginning to have a feel for what we are seeing. The first two very traditional dances were definitely our favorite, particularly a dance by three women in gold symbolizing a battle (I believe.)
The troupes performing were drawn from a number of villages in the regency. There was an attempt to merge several dances into an interpretive suite about man needing to return to "God, Nature and Society" to save the world from all the negative trends of the day, the final piece of which performed to a female singer singing in a sort of nightclub style, in Balinese English. This came across a little too overt for my taste! Were we Westerners being lectured?
The rest of the week has been more of same: evening dance events; some meetings by rally organizers regarding our visa extensions, boat export, and cruising plans for Malaysia; and, of course, socializing with other cruisers. We have put some elbow grease into making Dedalus look good for George & Melinda's return tomorrow; we sure have enjoyed the chance to treat this big boat as our own.
This morning we moved our packed bags over to Ivory Street, another handsome vessel. We sure are cruising on the cream of the crop. The original plan has been to depart Lovina tomorrow aboard Ivory Street, but there is some suspense about whether our passport extension will be back yet today. None of us are too keen about moving on with a promise of passports down the road!
Gwen Hamlin
Cafe Getaway
Sent from my iPad
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