Harmonie - Bowled Over in Bali - Bali Marina, Benoa Harbor, Bali, Indonesia

Bowled Over in Bali - Bali Marina, Benoa Harbor, Bali, Indonesia

Harmonie

Don and Anne Myers

Tue 5 Oct 2010 00:29

08:44.454S 115:12.800E

Early on September 15, we left Lembongan Island and rode the current a few hours across the rest of Lombok Strait to Benoa Harbor and Bali Marina on the southeast coast of Bali. We had been warned about the trash heap floating in Benoa Harbor and the cramped, slightly dilapidated Bali Marina docks, so weren't disappointed when we arrived at the marina and found it to be exactly as described. There was one very nice surprise waiting for us when we rounded the hairpin turn to port and entered the tiny marina...Basia, the German, Polish, French Canadian catamaran from the 2008/2009 World ARC Rally was there waiting for us with Barbara waving wildly from her perch on the bow, her husband Michael and daughter Cathy waving more sedately from behind. The last time we saw Basia was at the World ARC Rally dropout reunion in Noumea, New Caledonia two years ago. Basia dropped out of the rally around the time we did, but instead of sailing down to New Zealand with the rest of us dropouts, they carried on to Brisbane, Australia where they based themselves for the past two years. This year, following just behind us, Basia sailed up the coast of Australia and joined the new World ARC Rally in Mackay. From there, they carried on with the rally up and over the top of Australia to Darwin, again, just a few weeks behind us. From Darwin, the World ARC sailed straight for Bali, where it stayed for only one week before moving on across the Indian Ocean to Cocos Keeling, 1,000 miles to the west. While the rest of the World ARC fleet sailed on to Cocos, Basia was delayed in Bali awaiting electronic charts to be shipped in (no easy feat given the beaurocracy associated with delivery of an international package in Indonesia). Their delay was good luck for us since we wouldn't have seen them otherwise. Don and I and John and Sue spent the next several evenings with the crew of Basia catching up. They reported the 2010/2011 World ARC Rally participants were not nearly as much fun as those in the 2008/2009 version we were all a part of, but they also said the organization had improved immensely and those running the rally were doing an excellent job. As much as we miss the old World ARC crowd, we are still glad we dropped out, and just as glad we didn't re-join the new rally in Australia as we originally intended. Having spent nearly two months meandering around amazing Indonesia, we can't imagine just breezing in to Bali for a week and moving on 1,000 miles across the Indian Ocean immediately afterwards. Basia's package finally arrived and they were off. Six days later they made it to Cocos Keeling. At the moment, they are on their way to Mauritius, 2,900 miles further west in the Indian Ocean. In the time we spent lollygagging around Bali and then motoring several hundred miles to Borneo (which is where we are now), Basia has sailed nearly 2,000 miles. Shew! Glad we're here and not there. It was great to see our German, Polish, French Canadian friends again and we hope to see them again someday. We expect we will, it's just a matter of where.

So, about Bali...

Fortunately, Benoa Harbor and the Bali Marina are not representative of Bali as a whole. The Balinese believe in the balance of things: good and evil spirits, mountains and the sea, wet and dry seasons, so it only makes sense that the ugliness of Benoa Harbor is offset by the overwhelming beauty of most of the rest of the place. Bali has been populated since prehistoric times, but according to the Lonely Planet, "the oldest human artifacts found are 3,000 year old stone tools and earthenware vessels." Hindus on neighboring Java Island brought their religion to Bali in the years between 1019 and 1042. Over the centuries, Bali was sometimes ruled by sultans on Java and was sometimes autonomous. Eventually, the Hindus on neighboring islands gravitated to Bali where their version of the religion flourished to what it is now. The first Europeans arrived on Bali in the form of the Dutch in 1597, but the island wasn't fully ruled by the Dutch until the early 1900's. During WWII, the Japanese moved in, but vacated when the war ended in 1945. A few years later Indonesia officially gained its independence from the Dutch; and Bali, of course, was part of that deal.

There are 3.2 million people on the island of Bali, and 95% of them are of Balinese Hindu descent. Their religious beliefs frame their lives just as their temples frame their villages - one so much a part of the other there is no real separation. We are no experts on the Balinese Hindu religion, but we can say there is an endless array of gods and spirits that must be appeased in one way or another, and the good news for us tourist types is that the ceremonies, shrines, temples, dances, music, costumes, offerings and artistry involved in doing so is like watching a never ending exotic musical set in the real outdoors with a backdrop of mountains, terraced rice paddies and the sea. One morning Don and I were walking in the Bali countryside next to an expanse of rice paddies when the pleasant drizzle dripping down on us turned into a downright downpour. As if by magic, a tiny outdoor cafe with a picnic table and thatch-roof cover appeared on the side of the road and a woman beckoned us over to take cover. After serving us the famous Balinese coffee (grown on Bali, very smooth and very sweet), she went on to explain in surprisingly good English that the Balinese were getting ready for an important religious ceremony to take place the next day. She then went on to say that, "We Balinese have many, many ceremony. We prepare for a ceremony now, and in fifteen days, we will prepare for the same ceremony again. We have the _____ ceremony, then the _______ ceremony, and the ______ ceremony...." She ticked off about nine ceremonies on her fingers as she explained what they were and how often they occurred. We can't remember the ceremony names or their details, but the sheer number of them was enough to impress us. This Balinese Hindu stuff is serious business.

Picture 1 - This statue of the god of the sea sits in the center of a busy traffic circle about a five minute taxi ride from the Bali Marina. We thought it only appropriate this was the first bit of the 'real' Bali we boaters saw when we took our first taxi ride to the huge supermarket in the nearby Bali capital city of Denpassar. The marina might have been trashy (an amazing selection of floating plastic bottles, bags, cans, jars, etc. collected in and around the marina docks on a daily basis), but it is the only marina in Indonesia that we know of aside from one other on Batam, which is near the Indonesia / Singapore border. The Bali Marina's location is perfect to use as a base to see the southeast part of Bali, and is close to Denpassar and all it has to offer, not the least of which is the Carrefour grocery store as mentioned above. Not only was this the first time since leaving Darwin that we were parked in a marina, but it was also the first time we visited a supermarket. Not too bad - we went two months without shopping for food (other than the occasional cabbage and tomatoes purchased in the local street markets). Aside from the multitude of cockroaches crawling around the conveyor belt at the check-out counter, our supermarket visit was delightful.

Picture 2 - Our second evening in Bali was spent at the Ulu Watu temple on the southwestern coast with John and Sue and the Basia crew. The temple is built on the sea cliff, where the monkeys like to hang out on the stone fence and stare the tourists down while attempting to snatch important things like glasses and earrings off faces and ears. We had been warned about these particularly cheeky monkeys, so we returned the stares and hid our sunglasses.

Picture 3 - On the temple grounds, we attended the sunset performance of the Kecak dance. It was less dance and more theater, the main characters acting out a well-known Balinese story in pantomime as the male 'chorus' (the seated men dressed in sarongs) chanted and snapped their fingers at a tempo matching the action - frantic during a battle scene, soft during a love scene. A woman, shown here, was taken away from her husband by an evil king, only to be rescued in the end by her husband and his ally the good monkey king. As we were to discover is typical for Bali, the costumes were completely eye-popping, every detail perfect, gorgeous and outrageously colored.

Picture 4 - The beauty of parking Harmonie in a marina is that it allows us to travel overnight worry-free. No need to run the generator to keep the batteries happy and the freezer freezing. No need to worry about an anchored boat dragging off into the blue yonder should a squall blow up. Generally, a boat plugged in and tied up in a marina will stay that way unless something really drastic happens. So, off we went with Tom and Suzie from the American boat Priscilla to Ubud for the night. Ubud is located in south Bali, but in the highlands away from the coast. The Ubud area is known as an artist's Mecca - each of the surrounding villages specialize in a specific craft - knife making, weaving, stone carving, painting, basket weaving, etc. and many of the goods end up for sale in the Ubud shops and galleries. Once again, the sleepy artist colony we thought we were headed for turned out to be a bustling town crammed with shops, restaurants and cars and motorcycles toting tourists around. Once we got over the initial shock of the busy place, we found we didn't have to go far to escape the commotion. Our hotel, or 'resort and spa' as it was billed, was on the main street, but set back far enough that one of its two pools cascaded into a rice paddy. We floated in the saltwater pool shown here feeling just this side of guilty watching the workers bent over under the blazing sun tending to the rice.

Picture 5 - Another view of our Ubud hotel grounds. The split stone gates and tiled roof pavilion are typical of Balinese architecture. Our room faced the pool, had a wide veranda, marble floors, and.....air conditioning. Who could ask for more at only $115 a night?

Picture 6 - Temple gates in Ubud. All local stone, all hand carved. And not just hand carved. Hand carved in place. As in the carving is done after the stone is laid. No room for error. Incredible stuff.

Picture 7 - This is a walkway on a ridge between two rivers just outside of Ubud. Marvelous.

Picture 8 - Another view from the ridge walkway. There are top-end resorts (of the $500 or more per night variety) lining both rivers on either side of the ridge and this secluded gazebo appeared to be part of one.

Picture 9 - Rice paddies. Bali produces an enormous amount of rice for its size, and its success has to do with the nature of the mountain soil and the complex, engineered over hundreds of years, system of terraces and irrigation. The fertile hillsides have been turned into terraces, many built into the sides of mountains much more spectacular than those shown here (sorry, we didn't get to the steep mountain terraces). Water runs from higher elevations through canals, streams and tunnels, and each rice field can be flooded or run dry at will by the farmer with a simple filling in or clearing of a field's water inlets and outlets. The tropical climate allows for three rice harvests per year and throughout the growing cycle, fields are flooded and dried depending on the rice growing stage.

Picture 10 - This is a typical scene throughout Bali and other parts of Indonesia. Women carrying all sorts of odds and ends on their heads. We decided it makes for very good posture and we should all try it at least once - maybe not with a 25 pound bag of rice like some we've seen though.