It's been a great day – nice and relaxing in the morning – just a few quiet laps of the Promenade Deck. I accompanied Gaz today to make sure the teeth were in...
The captain made good his promise and we arrived at the Port of Benoa, Bali two hours ahead of schedule. They had also secured a catamaran to ferry us to shore, cutting the estimated time from 40 minutes to 20 minutes which was great. All our prayers were answered and the swell wasn't too bad, though it did get a bit dicey by the time we re-embarked late today.
Anyway, we got away about 2pm and set off for our adventure to the Bali Bird Park. It was about a 60 minute bus ride from the port but that gave us an opportunity to see some of the sights along the way. We drove through Denpasar & Kuta and were amazed at the numbers of motor scooters and motor bikes zipping in and out of traffic. It was a warm day – about 30 degrees but our lovely tour guide had cold towels and bottles of water for our comfort – lovely people, the Balinese!
The bird park was wonderful! Very nice grounds and lots of beautiful birds both behind wire and just wandering around. We had a chat with a cocky who only seemed to be able to say “hello” though Gary tried to teach it some other phrases that I won't mention here! I took lots of photos and we were also treated to refreshments as part of our tour package which included yummy chocolate cake, fresh fruit salad & a fresh fruit cocktail drink.
After the bird park we made a couple of stops. The first was to a silver and gold shop where you could also watch them make the jewellery etc. Gary bought a silver dish there. The second stop was to a Batik outlet where everything seemed outrageously priced so we didn't part with our rupees. One of the girls did grab Gary's Nike cap and drew a flower with Bali 2010 written underneath – very nice...
It was almost 6pm when we reached the dock so there was just enough time to spend the last of our rupees (we had only changed AUD50 which equalled over 400,000 – I felt very rich..briefly) before we were tendered back to the ship, once again on the catamaran. Unfortunately we didn't get to any markets so all those orders from James & Carly will sadly remain unfilled. It was a bit bumpy on the way back to the ship as the swell had risen somewhat in our absence, yet Gaz took it like the seasoned trooper (or is that sea-salt) that he has become.
We were both pretty tuckered out so decided to call it a night after dinner. I will be heading for the land of nod very shortly. Although our experience was extremely limited, both Gary & I can see the appeal that Bali has to so many Australians. The people are lovely, extremely thoughtful, and very welcoming. Maybe we will come back here one day.
We now have 3 days at sea as we head south to Fremantle. I think I'll need to make the most of any warm weather we still have as I am not confident in it lasting from Freo onwards.
Talk to you soon...
1 comment:
Greetings,
It's still Saturday here so I'm still catching up with all your great news. Thanks for keeping us in the loop.
Good to see you were early into port this time. Great pics Penny. of both kinds of birds, natural and human.
Talk about sea swells. Did you know of the humungous swells off Tassie and in the south east of Aus? All waves rose to a massive 17 meters - yest that's taller than a 7 story building. As we saw that news, I thought of jessica Watson and how lucky she was rounding cape horn.
More later,
Frank & Lee
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