A Bedugal hiccup and recovery

So tonight is our last night in Bedugal, but it has been a rather less eventful few days for me than planned... After the treacherous walk back to our hotel on Monday night in the dark, Tuesday started out well. It was a beautiful morning, and before breakfast I decided to try some of the home grown strawberries nestled in the patch behind our bungalow.

You may not know that Phil is not a huge fan of strawberries. When his parents moved to Melbourne circa 1982, they bought land on which to build their house in Park Orchards (aka North Ringwood) which used to be... A strawberry farm. So there was a lot of strawberry eating for a few years. And apparently he has not seen strawberries of suitable quality since... Or he o'd as a kid. Whatever - he doesn't like strawberries.

Which explains why I skipped over to the strawberry patch on my own. With the key to our room. Which I had locked from the inside. You see, in a fit of passion and excitement for the morning, the neighbouring mountains and the promise of strawberries, I had jumped over the low fence enclosing our balcony to reach the strawberry patch. I had thought Phil would follow suit and we'd skip along to breakfast together. But, Phil's shoes were outside the front door of the bungalow - meaning he would have to jump over the balcony shoeless. This would not do.

So I'm blissfully picking my first strawberry when I hear "Sus, have you got the key"? "yes, my dear", I say. "you've locked the door from the inside and my shoes are locked outside the front door" (thinking bubble - oh for god's sake just come out without your sho... Never mind) "I'm coming", i reply. At which point I turn and make haste with key in hand, slip over on a bunch of loose rocks about five metres from the door and twist my ankle.

GODDAMMIT. Stupid strawberries!!

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Bedugal, in bed with my leg elevated, doing not too much of anything. I hobbled out to look at the fishpond a few times. That was pretty much the highlight. I pushed Phil out the door on both days and he managed to run all over the hills and through jungle and went to the Botanical Gardens and walked to the Lakes here - sounded nice! Things to do on our next trip. For me, I was very relieved that we'd stayed somewhere with a really comfy bed, a beautiful little terrace to sit on and nice gardens to look at. Oh, and an on-site restaurant, so i could get a sandwich! At the end of the day, 2 days spent in bed over 6 months isn't a big deal and I enjoyed reading and snoozing and more reading and more - you get the point!

So today the ankle was much better and there was some sightseeing catching up to do. We very rarely hire a driver to take us around on a tour here. It's much more likely that we'd hire someone to drive us from A to B and then explore B on our own. But as I said, there was some catching up to do, so we arranged for a driver for the day to see the local sights and headed off.

First stop, a drive to the nearby World Heritage UNESCO site of Jatiluwih. Basically, it's an area of beautiful views of mountainous rice terraces. Beautiful is an understatement - it is really spectacular. A view that makes you stop and stare. And then you turn thirty degrees and repeat. It's like, wow, all over again.




Then onto a coffee plantation where they grow coffee, cocoa, pineapple, ginger, vanilla, lemongrass etc. The women who work there roast the coffee beans by hand over a wood fire. They stir those beans around constantly by hand for two hours - holy crap. And then pound them in a giant wooden mortar and pestle. We tried seven different coffee and tea brews including the famous kopi luwak, which is reportedly is the world's most expensive coffee. Apparently the civet (a cute raccoon-like animal)...




Ooh, there's one...

eats the cherry red coffee fruit, (ahem) passes the coffee bean whole and then the beans are collected from the forest floor** and acquire a special flavour once brewed up like regular coffee. So if you're thinking, did all that mean she drank coffee that civet thing crapped out???; the answer is "yes". Was it good? Yeah, it was okay. Different. Not convinced it was waaayyy better. We left with a big slab of dark chocolate from the shop and some ginseng tea which was yummier than the civet coffee anyway.

Next stop was the Taman kupu kupu - or butterfly park - yay! Who doesn't like butterflies??

You know what? This post is getting long. And I'm getting sleepy. And there's lots more to go. And I have to get up at 7 am to go to the lake and get a boat to a temple... How about we make this part #1 with part #2 to follow?? Huh, won't that be all... suspenseful?

Tomorrow we go north to Lovina. If part #2 takes a couple of days, it means there's no wifi. I'll leave you with a lovely butterfly picture:





Oh, hell no, that's not a picture of a butterfly, that's someone's poorly executed tattoo... With crack!!! Look away and I'll try again.





Holy crap on a cracker - that's a butterfly alright, but it's attached to, to, OMG that's Delta Goodrem.




Ok, ok, no more silliness. Here is your butterfly. I'm going to sleep.

** when I first heard about the civet coffee I really believed that people went around searching the forest floor for digested coffee beans a la civet... Duh. The civets are kept by the harvesters in (large and fairly humane) cages.

I don't want to spoil the suspense of part #2, but I also discovered today that there are chicken farms in Bali and those chickens didn't look very free range :(

- Posted using performing civets