Trekkin’ It Balinese Style
On our last day in Ubud, Gen and I decided to go ahead with a packaged deal. Everything in the Downhill Bicycling package pamphlet looked right up our alley, so we figured we’d get after it. Lorrin and Kea wanted a chill day to get settled so we charged with just the two of us.
After a swoop up at around 7:45 am we were off with about 8 other people in a tour van heading uphill. The experience was next level, a short list below will give you a glimpse…
- Stop off at one of the biggest terraced rice paddy lands in the country, aka the setting you see across copious amounts of postcards in Bali
- Breakfast overlooking the active Mt Batur and Mt Angnan, with a rift induced lake between them.
- Coffee plantation stop where we scoped local gardens, hung out with a nocturnal Civet, were learned in the ways of roasting our own coffee, and had a local coffee and tea sampler to die for.
- Downhill bicycle mas through rural Bali
- Atop at a local village to learn the structure and methods by which most Balinese family villages work.
- Stop at a local rice paddy were rice harvesting in full effect.
- Stop to take in a 500 year old Banyan Tree and play with the local children.
- Traditional Balinese lunch feast with Bintangs to boot
Our tour guide Wade (pronounced Wa-De with two syllables) was the man. A traditional rice farmer, he’d just started doing tours to advance his English learning. Let’s just say that his English was far better than my Indonesian or Balinese. The sights, the smells, the sounds. Every sense was tickled while the mid-day breeze cooled our faces. We were greeted by smiles and yells of “Halo!” and “What’s your name” from the local children and their families alike. The children also liked to receive high fives as we rode by so I obliged as many as I could.
I can’t really put into words everything I saw or tasted or touched, however in sum, it was a very informative and real experience, and though we were a bunch of tourists, for 8 hours or so, we felt like we were actively part of the Balinese community. Something else.
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