Bicycling & Pictures of Hiking

Picking up in Ubud...

The morning after our VIP Kecak dance experience (with a night out at Ubud's most overpriced bar for one drink--I can pay $8 for a cocktail at home), we scheduled an all (well, mostly) downhill bicycle tour of the surrounding communities.

The tour took off at 7:30am. A bit early for our tastes, but nothing compared to what we did the next day (more on that to come). It was a bit sketchy at first...a half-hour van ride to breakfast at a restaurant with a wonderful view of nearby Mt. Batur (but bad food). Then another fifteen minutes in the van to an agriculture museum of sorts where they showed us the native plants farmed here and let us try the fruits of their labors. One thing of note here: we tried kopi luwak. If you don't know what that is, read the link. Yeah, we drank it. It was good. Not $45 a cup good, as you might pay in the states if you could find it, but good.

But then it was back in the van (are we ever going to ride those bicycles?) to a third location nearby. There the bikes were waiting, finally, and we were on our way. However, the bicycles were in terrible shape...mine kept shifting gears with every pedal (thankfully we were coasting downhill, for the most part) and Jon's blew a tire with a loud bang that made me think someone nearby was setting off fireworks.

It was all worth it, though. The views were gorgeous (no pictures, unfortunately, the camera was still dead at that point. Check Jonny & Kat's blog soon for pics) and along the way all the kids we saw would yell 'hallo!' and come running into the street for high-fives. We also learned a lot about Balinisean culture and rice farming.

After the ride, we had lunch at the tour operator's home. His wife was the most amazing cook! We had all kinds of Bali specialties and it was the best meal we've eaten so far. We left the tour happy for having gone and would recommend the company, Bike Baik, to anyone interested.

The pictures above are for the hiking post which I will write next but will post on top of this one. They are: the view from the top of Mt. Batur pre-dawn; the edge of the crater we hiked around; the group, with our guide, in front of the mountain we climbed (Alison, Kat and I were at the top of that peak on the left!)