Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!
Friday, November 27, 2009
Reaching Amed!
On Monday Henk and I caught the morning shuttle from Ubud to Amed, after stocking up on bottled water and a few banana jaffles that the woman running our hotel graciously made for us. We enjoyed the extremely scenic ride and spoke with some of the other passengers about their journeys, and their stay in Ubud.
We met an elderly couple, who were both teachers, and we later sat down with them for some fresh juices during the shuttle stop. They gave us a few tips for later in our travels, suggesting we do some conversational English teaching while in China. We even got some company names and phone numbers from them after they told us we won’t need a special certification or anything to teach, just be a native English speaker. We wondered if we’d have enough time in China to try teaching, but it’s a fun idea!
Finally, we reached Amed and were dropped off at our pre-booked hotel, a beautiful cliff top location called Waeni’s. Although it was a bit pricier than our Ubud hotel, a quick look around later in the day reassured us that most of the places in the area weren’t too much cheaper. Plus our room was amazing! We ended up getting the best room in the hotel with a nice daily discount. Henk and I took a quick walk around town to see what there was, but we realized quickly there isn’t much besides the beach.
The beach, which we have a perfect view of from our hotel, is extremely rocky to the point where it’s pretty difficult to walk on. This made me slightly skeptical about the beach’s quality at first, but I was later proven quite wrong. That night was a dinner in the hotel of Sweet & Sour Pork for myself and a fish dish for Henk. Then we retired to enjoy the outdoor bed/lounge area our hotel room included.
The next morning we put on our bathing suits and got ready to explore the snorkeling! We decided to walk towards the snorkeling and pick up some gear on the way, which turned out to be a good idea. Ali rented Henk some snorkeling gear (no sizes left for me) and suggested we snorkel outside one of the nearby hotels named Kusuba Jaya, which had some amazing reefs. I got my gear from the hotel and we stored our stuff before heading into the water.
The snorkeling was absolutely incredible! Henk and I were astonished at how varied and colorful the coral was here – it even rivaled, and surpassed we might argue, what we saw at the Great Barrier Reef! The amount of fish, and the variety was just mind-blowing. I didn’t remember seeing nearly as many fish at the GBR as we saw in Amed. Perhaps it was because there were less coral formations and they were much more condensed than in the GBR, but the fish swarmed around us like mad. Henk and I explored in separate directions for a little while, but quickly realized that 4 eyes see more than 2 and decided to try and stick together.
We even came up with some of our own hand signals to point-out and describe what we were seeing to each other while under water: 2 hand squeezes means you’ve spotted something interesting. Then came the ‘shape-game’: making a ‘tube’ for spotting a long fish, a ‘ball’ for spotting a very fat fish, obviously a ‘triangle’ for a triangle-shaped fish. Made communicating a lot easier!
Side note About Images: We wish we could show you pictures of the fish we saw, but renting an underwater camera was pretty expensive for the Great Barrier Reef, and we didn’t want to spend the extra money this time around. However, I’ll find some pictures from the internet of what we saw and I’ll post them for you all here as examples.
We snorkeled for a couple hours and then took a break for lunch at the hotel where we left our belongings. Henk had what he called an ‘amazing’ chicken curry, and I decided for a simple garlic and oil spaghetti. We shared some ice-cream for dessert. Then it was back in the water! Some parts of the reef were insanely colorful and full of life… but other parts of the reef where completely barren. They were covered in mashed up lava stone, we guessed from the many boats that ripped through the reef on their way out to sea, and we wondered how well Bali’s reefs were being protected. Doesn’t seem like they are protected at all! There was trash all over the place, floating in the water and littered all over the beach. Such a shame, when the nature itself is so beautiful there…
Oh, by the way! Henk and I were under the assumption that since I have such tanned skin already, that I don’t really sunburn and probably tan just slightly. I’ve never been in the sun too much, so I never really had the opportunity to find out. However, take a look at this crazy photo! That’s what the sun did to me! I guess I do tan/burn…
That evening was another dinner at the hotel, where we were attended to by Mario, the helpful and cheery manager of the place. Since it was low season, we only noticed other guests a few times while we were staying at Waeni’s; it was like we had the place to ourselves! That was exactly how we felt about the reef that day. We were so pleased with our first reef experience that we planned to go out and snorkel something amazing the next day: a Japanese ship wreck!
We booked a cheap boat from the hotel Kusuba Jaya for the next morning at 10:00 am. After another breakfast of fruit pancakes and jaffles, we went down via the beach and met our boat driver. We tossed our gear in the boat and hopped aboard. I have to say, the boats were really interesting! As we were sitting on them, I described them to Henk. I likened them to “motorized canoes on water skies” because that’s exactly what they seemed like! The boat was narrow like a canoe, but had these two larger appendages sticking out on either side, making the boat appear to float quickly above the water. I laughed as a similar boat came towards us – “they remind me of water spiders…” I told Henk.
After a great boat trip, we arrived at the Japanese ship wreck. It was so awesome! Henk was very surprised that the boat was so close to the surface – he said it reminded him of something “they would have on the Discovery Channel.” And that’s so true! There isn’t much information available about the ship itself. All we know is that it was a Japanese ship active during World War II, and that there is also an American shipwreck, the Liberty ship, nearby. Anyways, here is a picture we found of the wreck we visited, showing the hull of the ship completely covered in different types of colorful coral.
Later that afternoon, we had lunch at our new-found hotel again. Before lunch however, we jumped into the pool! We played around in there for a bit, having the entire pool to ourselves for half-an-hour or so. It was so nice to splash around in something where I didn’t have to worry about stepping on coral! For lunch, Henk opted for another curry (fish this time was available) and I had a chicken sandwich with onion rings and a soda.
The next day was pure relaxation – we stayed in and watched movies all day. The only time we ventured out was in search of some internet to check e-mail, but it was so sweltering hot out that we didn’t want to stay out for too long. The next morning we checked out and had the owner of our hotel drive us to Kuta. Immediately after arriving, we realized we were in a completely touristy destination. Tons of people, completely commercialized, really bad traffic, and not a local seen anywhere. Seriously, only Australians. We didn’t expect much from Kuta because we heard all this before, but still it made us miss our stays in Ubud and Amed! Well, we’ll see how much there is to do here…
Talk to you all soon,
Francesca
We met an elderly couple, who were both teachers, and we later sat down with them for some fresh juices during the shuttle stop. They gave us a few tips for later in our travels, suggesting we do some conversational English teaching while in China. We even got some company names and phone numbers from them after they told us we won’t need a special certification or anything to teach, just be a native English speaker. We wondered if we’d have enough time in China to try teaching, but it’s a fun idea!
Finally, we reached Amed and were dropped off at our pre-booked hotel, a beautiful cliff top location called Waeni’s. Although it was a bit pricier than our Ubud hotel, a quick look around later in the day reassured us that most of the places in the area weren’t too much cheaper. Plus our room was amazing! We ended up getting the best room in the hotel with a nice daily discount. Henk and I took a quick walk around town to see what there was, but we realized quickly there isn’t much besides the beach.
The beach, which we have a perfect view of from our hotel, is extremely rocky to the point where it’s pretty difficult to walk on. This made me slightly skeptical about the beach’s quality at first, but I was later proven quite wrong. That night was a dinner in the hotel of Sweet & Sour Pork for myself and a fish dish for Henk. Then we retired to enjoy the outdoor bed/lounge area our hotel room included.
The next morning we put on our bathing suits and got ready to explore the snorkeling! We decided to walk towards the snorkeling and pick up some gear on the way, which turned out to be a good idea. Ali rented Henk some snorkeling gear (no sizes left for me) and suggested we snorkel outside one of the nearby hotels named Kusuba Jaya, which had some amazing reefs. I got my gear from the hotel and we stored our stuff before heading into the water.
The snorkeling was absolutely incredible! Henk and I were astonished at how varied and colorful the coral was here – it even rivaled, and surpassed we might argue, what we saw at the Great Barrier Reef! The amount of fish, and the variety was just mind-blowing. I didn’t remember seeing nearly as many fish at the GBR as we saw in Amed. Perhaps it was because there were less coral formations and they were much more condensed than in the GBR, but the fish swarmed around us like mad. Henk and I explored in separate directions for a little while, but quickly realized that 4 eyes see more than 2 and decided to try and stick together.
We even came up with some of our own hand signals to point-out and describe what we were seeing to each other while under water: 2 hand squeezes means you’ve spotted something interesting. Then came the ‘shape-game’: making a ‘tube’ for spotting a long fish, a ‘ball’ for spotting a very fat fish, obviously a ‘triangle’ for a triangle-shaped fish. Made communicating a lot easier!
Side note About Images: We wish we could show you pictures of the fish we saw, but renting an underwater camera was pretty expensive for the Great Barrier Reef, and we didn’t want to spend the extra money this time around. However, I’ll find some pictures from the internet of what we saw and I’ll post them for you all here as examples.
We snorkeled for a couple hours and then took a break for lunch at the hotel where we left our belongings. Henk had what he called an ‘amazing’ chicken curry, and I decided for a simple garlic and oil spaghetti. We shared some ice-cream for dessert. Then it was back in the water! Some parts of the reef were insanely colorful and full of life… but other parts of the reef where completely barren. They were covered in mashed up lava stone, we guessed from the many boats that ripped through the reef on their way out to sea, and we wondered how well Bali’s reefs were being protected. Doesn’t seem like they are protected at all! There was trash all over the place, floating in the water and littered all over the beach. Such a shame, when the nature itself is so beautiful there…
Oh, by the way! Henk and I were under the assumption that since I have such tanned skin already, that I don’t really sunburn and probably tan just slightly. I’ve never been in the sun too much, so I never really had the opportunity to find out. However, take a look at this crazy photo! That’s what the sun did to me! I guess I do tan/burn…
That evening was another dinner at the hotel, where we were attended to by Mario, the helpful and cheery manager of the place. Since it was low season, we only noticed other guests a few times while we were staying at Waeni’s; it was like we had the place to ourselves! That was exactly how we felt about the reef that day. We were so pleased with our first reef experience that we planned to go out and snorkel something amazing the next day: a Japanese ship wreck!
We booked a cheap boat from the hotel Kusuba Jaya for the next morning at 10:00 am. After another breakfast of fruit pancakes and jaffles, we went down via the beach and met our boat driver. We tossed our gear in the boat and hopped aboard. I have to say, the boats were really interesting! As we were sitting on them, I described them to Henk. I likened them to “motorized canoes on water skies” because that’s exactly what they seemed like! The boat was narrow like a canoe, but had these two larger appendages sticking out on either side, making the boat appear to float quickly above the water. I laughed as a similar boat came towards us – “they remind me of water spiders…” I told Henk.
After a great boat trip, we arrived at the Japanese ship wreck. It was so awesome! Henk was very surprised that the boat was so close to the surface – he said it reminded him of something “they would have on the Discovery Channel.” And that’s so true! There isn’t much information available about the ship itself. All we know is that it was a Japanese ship active during World War II, and that there is also an American shipwreck, the Liberty ship, nearby. Anyways, here is a picture we found of the wreck we visited, showing the hull of the ship completely covered in different types of colorful coral.
Later that afternoon, we had lunch at our new-found hotel again. Before lunch however, we jumped into the pool! We played around in there for a bit, having the entire pool to ourselves for half-an-hour or so. It was so nice to splash around in something where I didn’t have to worry about stepping on coral! For lunch, Henk opted for another curry (fish this time was available) and I had a chicken sandwich with onion rings and a soda.
The next day was pure relaxation – we stayed in and watched movies all day. The only time we ventured out was in search of some internet to check e-mail, but it was so sweltering hot out that we didn’t want to stay out for too long. The next morning we checked out and had the owner of our hotel drive us to Kuta. Immediately after arriving, we realized we were in a completely touristy destination. Tons of people, completely commercialized, really bad traffic, and not a local seen anywhere. Seriously, only Australians. We didn’t expect much from Kuta because we heard all this before, but still it made us miss our stays in Ubud and Amed! Well, we’ll see how much there is to do here…
Talk to you all soon,
Francesca
2 Comments:
Bedankt Francesca voor alweer een prachtig verhaal.Het zal jullie niet meevallen, om later weer een normaal leven te leiden. Maar dit jaar neemt niemand jullie ooit weer af. En wij genieten mee.En die foto,s,zo mooi. Op dat bed met al die blaadjes,ja die komt ook nog aan de beurt voor mijn achtergrond.Ik kan er niet genoeg van krijgen. Liefs Omaxxxx
Hallo Henk Jan en Francesca, wat allemaal weer prachtige verhalen en foto's. Jullie doen, zien en beleven veel. Fantastisch toch.
Jullie kunnen straks wel een tentoonstelling in elkaar zetten van al jullie prachtige foto's.
Geniet met jullie mee. Veel plezier evrder en ben benieuwd waar jullie naar Indonesie naar toe zullen gaan.
Groetjes, pap.
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