Komo, Komo, Komo, Komo, Komodo Dragon!

Hello Friends and Family!

Wow, is it really July already? We can't believe how fast time is flying by. We are back in Bali after a whirlwind trip through East Indonesia. The last time we posted we were leaving Lovina to head to Gili Islands. We woke up at 4:00 a.m. as we were told our driver would pick us up at 4:30 a.m. Well, that turned out to be more like a 5:30 a.m. start. That seems to be how things go in Indonesia. We said goodbye to Lovina and prepared for a 2-hour car ride followed by a 2-hour speed boat trip. 

The Gili Islands are made up of three islands; Gili Meno, Gili Air and Gili Trawangan. We decided to  stay on Gili Air because we had heard that it was a good mix of the three islands and it is the closest island to Lombok.  There are no motorized vehicles on the islands so we hitched a ride with a horse and buggy taxi when we arrived.

You can walk around the entire island in less than 90 minutes. We did many laps of exploring around the island. It was so beautiful here!

Two Bintangs and an amazing sunset? Yes, please! This was how we spent our evenings while in Gili Air.

It was quite relaxing in Gili Air and our days were spent reading, swimming and enjoying some wonderful Indonesian food. It was a good thing that this island was so relaxing because Leanne wound up catching some sort of horrible bug and spent a few days recuperating. Within no time she was back at it and we signed ourselves up for a 4-day, 4-night boat trip to Komodo Island.

We left a little piece of our hearts with Gili Air as we packed up and headed to the harbor to begin our journey to Komodo Island.

We don't even really know how to properly explain our boat trip to Komodo National Park. It was full of ups and downs, literally! It was a 4-day, 4-night boat trip. We were thinking it would be a sizable boat since there were 18 passengers and 5 crew members. Boy, were we wrong! We are fairly confident that our boat was actually a fishermen's boat. The lap of luxury...not so much! The first two days and nights were horrific but the last two days and nights were all worth it. 

All 18 passengers slept upstairs. We are not sure who decided that many people could fit in this amount of space. It made for an intimate setting to say the least. At one point Josh rolled on top of Leanne and Leanne rolled on top of Stefano, the nice Italian guy that slept next to her for four nights. 

This picture was taken shortly after we "set sail." There were no bon voyage cocktails on this boat. We were all smiles at this point enjoying meeting everyone on the boat. When the sun set and the night kicked in you could stare at the waves in the ocean and see plankton that glowed in the dark. It was really cool and definitely a great way to pass the evenings.

The first stop was showering at this beautiful waterfall. The problem with this was that we had to swim from the boat to the shore. After our freshwater shower we had to swim back to the boat. We guess 10 minutes of being clean is better than none.

Making new buddies on the water. We represented the United States, France, Spain, Holland, Italy, Canada, Australia and Czech. We guess it is easier to refer to ourselves as fishermen rather than passengers. Believe it or not, one of our fellow fishermen was from Boulder, Colorado!

Leanne tried to put on a happy face despite being lured in by the seasick monster.

The snorkeling was absolutely amazing. As we island hopped, we would stop and jump off the boat to check out the coral. Josh was lucky enough to see an Eagle Ray!

Josh was pleasantly surprised with the food selections. Leanne didn't participate in much meal eating while on the boat. The crew did a great job with preparing homemade meals. When we say homemade meals, we mean it. At one point there were three live chickens on the boat. By the last day there were none.  Our Canadian friends even spotted a rare sighting while snorkeling... A CHICKEN HEAD! This was just part of the whole crazy experience.

After two days and two very long nights, Leanne turned her deepest shade of green before finally painting the side of the boat. Meanwhile, Josh was drinking beers and local spirits with his new buddies like he was floating down the Guadalupe river on a hot summer day.  That second night was the worst night on the boat. Around 2:00 am, everyone woke up wondering if we were going to flip over because the sea was so rough. However, by the time the morning rolled around we were greeted with calm waters and beautiful scenery.

Finally, Komodo National Park. We paid money to see these walking dinosaurs. The mood of the entire boat shifted the moment we set eyes on these incredible creatures. Those rough nights were all worth it! 

The men on our boat made a feeble attempt to catch dinner. We wound up eating vegetables and rice that night.

While we were anchored in the middle of the ocean, children would boat up to us in an attempt to make money while selling all kinds of trinkets. This boat of cuties was selling wooden Komodo Dragons. Leanne gave one of them a pen and you would have thought it was Christmas morning.

The next morning we woke up early to catch a spectacular sunrise.

Our next stop was Rinca Island. This island was full of wildlife from Komodo Dragons, monkeys, water buffalo, deer and wild boar!

Getting ready to hike!

They had a list posted of Komodo Dragon attacks. It's hard to see in this picture but if you enlarge the photo you can see the list of attacks on the island. Newer entries were hand written. Luckily we had the latest in technology to protect us from the dragons. A stick!  Haha!!!

On this particular island, monkeys are the main food source for the Komodo Dragons.

We saw a group of four of them chilling out.

Young Komodo Dragons live in trees for the first four years or so until they become adults and can no longer climb the trees.  Adult Komodo Dragons will kill and eat the younger ones so this is why the hid in the trees.

There were thousands of lizards on this island but there was only one Joshzilla.  Meanwhile, Leanne felt like she was at home with people of her stature.

Time for a group photo!

The landscape felt like we were in a faraway time.

We arrived in Flores, our finally destination, on the fourth night.  There were six of us that decided to stay on the boat for one last night to save a few bucks.  We met up at a local bar with an amazing sunset to say goodbye and celebrate life.

The next day we were kicked off the boat so we settled for a room with this view:

We took a flight back to Bali and spent our last few days there.  On the last day Josh took a walk on the beach while Leanne laid out.  A local Indonesian man approached her and asked "Where are you from?"  Leanne said "America."  He innocently replied "You can't be from America because your nose is too big." You can't blame the man for calling it like it is. He then proceeded to ask her "How do you make your teeth so white. Do you brush them everyday?"

That's a good segway into our topic of...

You know you're in a third-world country when:

• Your domestic airline ticket looks like this:

It's the back of a receipt that says "Ok, thanks": and then somebody's name scribbled.  (It worked!)

• The pilot of the plane is chain-smoking the entire flight

• You have to flush your toilet with several buckets of water (there are no automatic toilets)

While traveling through East Indonesia the pessimist would say, "You shower with your toilet water."  The optimist would say, "You poop in your shower water."

Either way Indonesia will always have a special place in our hearts and we truly believe that we have made some lifelong friends through our adventures.

As always, thanks for following us and we look forward to catching up soon!

Cheers,

Leanne & Josh

Scootin' in Bali... a Beautiful Place to Get Lost!

It’s June 21^st and we are in Bali. It’s a funny story how we ended up here. We kept hearing people talk about how great Bali is while we were traveling throughout Australia. As we sat in the airport in Cairns waiting for our flight to Uluru, we had 30 minutes of internet use and figured why not use that time searching for flights to Bali. Within 30 minutes we had searched, found and purchased our tickets to Bali. It was as simple as that and Bali became a destination on our route! While in New Zealand we emailed our fellow travel friends and they made some wonderful suggestions for things to do in Indonesia. We will come back to Indonesia in a moment.

In our last post we were summing up our amazing trip through New Zealand. We left Queenstown on June 12^th and made a six-hour road trip back to Christchurch. It was easy to pass the time with scenery like this:

We made it to Christchurch around 4:30 p.m. and we thought to ourselves “Now what are we going to do?” Our flight was not scheduled to leave until 6:50 a.m. on June 13^th.  It was a Friday night so we did what any other couple would do and made it a dinner and movie night.  We know it’s cheesy but you still have to go on dates while traveling the world. We found a mall and figured we could pass a few hours wandering around the shops. Wrong! This mall closed at 6:00 pm on a Friday night! What type of mall is that? Luckily the movie theater was open late. We saw a 9:30 p.m. showing of Prometheus. Although the movie wasn’t that great it did pass a few hours.

We finished up our date night by sitting in the ACE rental car parking lot while drinking our last few beers. Romantic! We parted ways with our rental car at 2:00 a.m., brushed our teeth in the parking lot (hygiene is important on the road) and hopped in a taxi for a lift to the airport. After several more hours of waiting, pulling an all-nighter and a layover in Brisbane we were finally on our flight to Bali!

We filled out our arrival card and took special note of the warning. Wow, they don’t mess around in Indonesia.

Our first 4 days were spent in Legian Beach, Seminyak, Bali. The streets were filled with the familiar sounds of scooters and overcrowded with vendors selling anything and everything. We lost count of the times Leanne was asked to buy a sarong. What a change from the serene mountains of New Zealand. The weather was warm and we enjoyed finding our way around our new home for the next few days.

Seeing all the scooters made us really miss our scooter back home, tucked away snuggly in our storage unit.

Of course, we had to rent a scooter to experience what scootin’ in Bali is all about. It was less than $4 a day to rent one so we were even more excited. We were passed on the left, right, honked at, stared at, smiled at, got lost, found our way, got lost again and we loved every second of it. All of that scootin’ in Colorado really helped Josh maneuver through the madness.  There are a couple of videos under our “Videos” tab as well if you’d like to take a look at those.

We filled up our tank at petrol “stations” located on almost every street corner. Who knew that vodka bottles could be recycled this way? Gas, believe it or not, is only a $1.75 a gallon!

Bali is known as the “Island of a thousand temples." Since Josh was such a pro on the scooter, we rode for over 10 hours one day and checked out the following temples:

Pura Luhur Temple (Ulu Watu)

Pura Luhur is a Balinese Sea Temple at Uluwatu on Bali. It was built in the 11th century. It is one of the most spectacular temples sitting atop the cliffs overlooking the surf at Ulu Watu.

Upon entering, we were required to cover our legs with a sarong. Leanne was able to use the one she purchased on the beach the day before while Josh had to borrow one from the temple. Who says a man can’t look sexy in a long skirt? What do you think…is purple Josh’s color or what?

Ulu Watu was unbelievably beautiful and there were monkeys everywhere!

Tanah Lot Temple

From there we rode for several hours in search of the next temple, Tanah Lot. We stopped and asked for directions and each time the person pointed in a different direction. We got lost, really, really lost and gave up hope on finding Tanah Lot. We took the next left and guess what? We saw a sign for Tanah Lot. Imagine that! Now, we were in a race against the sunset, as Tanah Lot is known for beautiful sunsets. Unfortunately, we missed the sunset by 5 minutes but we were still able to capture some amazing pictures:

We hired a driver to take us to Lovina, a town 4 hours north of Legian Beach. The drive was unbelievable!

Our home for the next 5 days was a quiet place with 4 guesthouses. Our place was huge! Crazy what $25 can get you in Bali.

On our first night we invited Stewart, a nice man from the U.K. and fellow scooterer to join us for dinner. We made friends with our waiter and enjoyed a great night of music, beers and good company.

On the agenda for the next few days was more scootin’ and exploring. Lovina is known for dolphin watching so we had to experience it for ourselves. We headed out on a wooden boat at 5:30 am to watch the sunrise and chase dolphins. It was quite the experience with over 30 boats cashing dolphins. One boat would spot some dolphins and all 29 other boats would race to where they were pointing. We laughed a lot, made new friends and captured some beautiful pictures.

After a rest, we hopped on the scooter and headed to Bali’s largest Buddhist monastery. Once again, sarongs were required for entry. Josh worked that green sarong!

And the day wouldn’t be complete without a dip in the Banjar Hot Springs. We are not going to lie; we were a little apprehensive upon arrival. It only cost 50 cents per person and the murky, greenish water wasn’t the most inviting. After a few moments we went for it and were pleasantly surprised!

We are happy to report that it’s been days since our dip in the hot springs and so far we do not have any illnesses to report!

We spent the next day hiking around and checking out three breathtaking waterfalls.

# 1 - GitGit Waterfall – the most famous waterfall in Bali

#2 – Twin Falls

#3 -  Multi-Tier Falls

That night, we enjoyed a wonderful dinner with our neighbor and new friend, Bonnie. She is from Perth and visiting Bali for 6 months! Bonnie wrote us the sweetest note and said, “I always believe that people come into our lives for a reason – who knows what that reason is, but I will remember you both”. Bonnie, you are exactly right and we will always remember you too!

We are loving how affordable it is in Bali. Our lunches are under $7 total and dinners are not much more. Check out some of the amazing meals we have enjoyed. – most of them around $3-$5.

Now we are packing up our bags again and making our way to the Gili Islands under the recommendation of several people. We will be picked up at 4:00 am tomorrow morning. Yikes, that’s an early start! Guess we should try to get a little sleep.

We look forward to catching up again and send all of our family and friends well wishes.

Thanks for following!

Cheers,

Leanne & Josh