Weds 14.6-Sat 17.6.17
We woke up most mornings to the call to prayer wailing - me more than Daz as he always wears ear plugs! Also, the resident cockerels like to join in with this so no sleep in's for us. We decided to go snorkeling so headed off on the short walk to the beach. We hired the flippers, mask etc. for a few quid then we hit the sea - making sure to enter the water backwards. The water was warm and clear so off we swam, heads down in the water searching for the first sight of coral/fish. It wasn't long before we were rewarded with both! There's a few artificial reefs with surprisingly good coral including different colour/type ones (stag/brain/white/blue-purple colour) along with blue starfish (almost looked plastic!) and beautiful fish (small brilliant blue ones, black/white/yellow angel fish, multi coloured parrot fish to name but a few). We snorkeled for quite a while as easy to become immersed in this underwater paradise. Back on the beach, changed and off for some lunch (pot of noodles knocked.up in our room with our trusty Pifco water heater (only 50p at a boot sale!). I did some washing in the bathroom using a borrowed bowl (getting quite good at this laundry thing). We went back for more snorkeling in the afternoon but the visibility wasn't as good so we cut it short.
During the next few days we unfortunately had to deal with some hassle from our agents which was awkward when email is pretty much the only form of contact (without incurring costs) but luckily this got sorted out so all happy again! We discovered that I have a problem with the pin on one of my cards - don't know how but we've managed to work around it - just makes you realise how cut off you can be out here.
Most mornings we would watch some small monkey looking guy climb up the coconut trees outside to harvest the palm oil. Considering how high up he went and that he didn't use ropes it was quite amazing to see this.
Anyway, we hired a bike/moped (Honda Vario 115cc thing) with 2 dodgy open faced helmets (luckily both black so we sort of looked a bit cool!) for the next couple of days to venture out and explore. We visited the Atlas pearl farm and were educated on how they farm artificial pearls (as they are able to speed up the whole process as well as control the colour - normally either white, silver or gold). This was free but we were invited to browse the shop afterwards - once we spotted the price tags there was alot of 'oh that's pretty' and 'what a lovely design' quickly followed by 'but we can't buy anything' (as the truth is 1/ we're too tight 2/neither of us want to look like somebody's gran 3/we would rather spend our money on beer & noodle dinners!). We went on to check our the local turtle sanctuary (only had 1 baby as the rest had just been released back to the wild) but quite a few adult turtles including a mature green turtle who didn't look to happy to be stuck there on a wage of a few piddly fish when he could be out riding the ocean waves! He didn't fit in our rucksack otherwise we would have liberated him. Then we rode to the Pura Pulaki monkey temple which is watched over by the resident Balinese macaque monkeys. These are quite cute when small but the larger ones have scary teeth and the males have massive gonads plus are quite feisty if you look at them the wrong way (the advice is to not stare at them and don't show your teeth - even by smiling!). On our last full day, Friday, we had a lazy morning, did some snorkeling but crap visibility, own made lunch back at base then we went for our last round of snorkeling which was brilliant - so many fish! Only one problem - sea+sun+exposure=sunburn! Yes, even though we're normally really careful with the sun cream we both got fried! Me especially so - like a frigging lobster all down my back/legs with my bikini white bits highlighting the glare of the sunburn! Big ouch.
Saturday we were off, we ended up having to hire a private car/driver to take us to our next stop - Ubud, as it was proving almost impossible to arrange transport any other way out of Pemuteran!
The monkey priest prepares the alter for the offering to the gods.
Daz offers Kathy as a sacrifice and the gods are happy.
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