Ubud

This week slips away, staying with Ian's sister Heather. It's busy in town, but life goes on as usual out in the villages…

The rice gets planted 

and ploughed with a Japanese cow

Heather's garden is looking great after nearly 2 years

The waterfalls are thundering after almost daily - very unseasonal - rain

And there's plenty of great places for coffee and amazing food 

Lipah

This is maybe the 7th time we've stayed at this small east coast fishing village. 

View from our balcony, aaah…

Sometimes the fishing is very good, other times not. If not its rice and greens for dinner…

They have a co-op, our friend Made keeps a note of how many buckets of 80 mackerel each man catches, it goes to market, then when the money comes back the next day it's divided. Excess gets frozen or salted for the off season. 

We have lunch and dinner every day with Made, husband Joni, and kids Putu and Resa. 19 yo Putu has just been accepted into midwife training, a huge achievement. We've paid half her fees, but buy a pig so the family can keep up with the rest by selling piglets. Free range it's not!

 

Lots of morning tea choice after a temple ceremony - each person takes food to the temple to be blessed, then it's shared among family and friends

Pork satay being cooked, the BBQ is men's work

Candidasa

This village is in southeast Bali. It was popular about 30 years ago, but then a  coral reef was removed for building material and the beautiful beach disappeared. Now rising sea levels bring more challenges, but with lots of resorts here things are sort-of booming again. 

Takeaway dinner being prepared and eaten

Ocean or pool??

Local entertainment

Making offerings at nearby village

Ian's birthday "fruit cake"

The beautiful lagoon

We invite some local kids to the resort and pool, they've already palled up with one boy at their family restaurant

This is what their mum cooked for us. Prawns with long legs? Yabbies without claws?

Gotta love tropical rain. There's been lots since arriving, but mainly at night, very unusual for July

 

Today we head further east to Lipah, where a family we help live. Here comes a week of real home cooked Balinese food😄

Bali week 1, Jimbaran and Bingin

Aah, it's warm, familiar and just beautiful. This first week we stay at 2 beach places - Jimbaran just south of the airport, 

this lady does a great job of keeping the beach clean,

then Bingin, an isolated surfing beach where we meet Torquay friends Cheryl and Joe.  

We eat fresh caught and cooked fish on the beach, while watching amazing sunsets. 

We visit Uluwatu surf break, where lots of little cafes are built into the side of the cliff, great places to eat and watch the action

There's a lot of people going up and down and through the cave to the only tiny beach access for surfers …

$3 fish satay takeaway being prepared and cooked and ready to eat. Yum!

Alice to Darwin

It's just a quick hop up the highway, er about 1500k, so 2 long days with free camps and we're nearly there. It's amazing the number of vans who are set up by 3pm, we grey nomads are not the only ones who like to stop early! We try to choose places with a toilet (long drop, there's no water), and there's usually a fireplace. Chook roasted in the camp oven - mmmm. 

Bitter Springs near Mataranka is beautiful, it's a short walk from the caravan park to a gently flowing warm stream. It's clear in the morning but gets a bit murkier as the many visitors stir up the sediment. There's turtles to be spotted using mask and snorkel, and noodles for hire to float with. 

 

We pass cyclists Linda and Brian for the 3rd time in 2 weeks, and stop for a chat. There's lots of other crazy people riding to Darwin…

Our final stop is at Litchfield National Park. Due to the huge number of travellers and the very limited camping available, we book into a nearby caravan park. We'd planned to visit a few places but decide nothing can beat Wangi Falls with its huge swimming hole, and prop there both days. Aah. 

 Luckily the crocs are elsewhere

 

Now in Darwin where we'll store the car and van, and fly to Bali for the next bit of this trip 😀