east bali and temples

after i ripped myself away from the beautiful islands, we took a rather wet and bumpy boat ride back to padang bai and then a taxi to candi dasa...stayed there for 3 days.  it was an ok hub to see other parts of the east but overall i wish we'd stayed in amed.  oh well. we had some retail therapy and ate some incredible meals so all was not lost. did some day trips to a bali aga village (tenganan) and then took a full day temple tour on the way to ubud.  we saw the floating palace (my favorite), king's palace in amlapura, water palace, besakih temple at the foot of gunung batur (volcano), sampled kopi luwak (cat poo coffee) along the way, and ended up in wonderful and enchanting ubud.  see more photos here in this album

rinjani volcano trek - lombok

once we got into bali - at 6am - we hailed a taxi with a fair amount of trouble and went to padang bai to catch a fast boat to lombok port (teluk nara) where our tour guide was waiting for us to drive us to senaru.  the boat trip was rather bumpy but beautiful. lombok turned out to be an incredible island. it's relatively untouched by tourism and so much more beautiful overall. it was a great way to see more of local life.  we embarked on a 4 day/3 night trek of the second highest volcano in indonesia (rinjani). it was one of the hardest and steepest treks i've been on but also one of the most beautiful. i saw my first shooting star on this trip which was exciting. our guide and porters were incredible. they carried so much weight and ran up and down the mountains in just flip flops, barely breaking a sweat.  this trek was one of my favorite parts of our trip. see more photos in this album

Super tired from our lago quilotoa tour

We had a full day tour of lago quilotoa, a lake in a volcanic crater. Pics to come later. It was awesome and a good hike down and up again. Tons of dust though. Then we had lunch and explored the Pujilí market where they sell all kinds of stuff including loaves of unrefined sugar. Tastes like molasses.