DAY 7: I'm on a boat AGAIN!!

We thought day 4 was a traveling day... Well, we had no idea!! Day 7 was 18 hours of traveling! You'd think we were going back to the US!

Luckily, we were still able to enjoy ourselves! Here are some pictures from the van and the boat! ENJOY:

When we were leaving Gili Meno, we jumped onto a small boat, holding way too many people, and got stuck in the sand!! The locals, along with some of the tourist, pushed and pulled ropes and anchors until we finally were freed of the sand! This was a 30 minutes ordeal!

When we arrived on land, we took this horse drawn carriage to the parking lot down the road to catch our van!

I noticed our van even had an offering, hanging tightly to it's windshield!

While we were waiting to leave, we met this guy, name Full. We talked for a long time with him about life in Bali. He is a high school graduate, and would love to go back to school, but he doesn't have the money to do it. He sells these necklaces near the port, and makes the equivalent of about $3.00 a day, on a good day. I think this is probably the case for most young Indonesian men. We asked him what he would recomend we see in Bali, and he said he had never been to Bali. (Take out a map and look. Lombok to Bali is REALLY close!) At this moment, I realized just how fortunate I really am.

Before we knew it, we were making the treck back in Bali in the first van of the day! The outskirts of Lombok is gorgeous! It's lush, with palm trees and rice fields everywhere!

I fell in love with this river! I saw it on the way to Gili Meno, and had to take a picture! What I would give to live near something this beautiful!

As we were driving through the town, I noticed this lady, walking up to the cars and scooters, asking for money for the building of the mosque nearby! Sounds like a good way to do a building project, huh?! Unfortunately, this would never work in America!

Driving through town...

... and back into the forest!

Finally, we made it to our Ferry! This one was different than our first one... a bit smaller, and a little cleaner. We quickly settled here, at a small table and chairs near the ledge.

Our boat actually had a mosque on it!

I have to include this picture, because I have to take a moment to show the extremely long finger nails of the Balinese men! We saw this guy on our boat, selling food. Whenever I ask them why they're so long, they always tell me different stories, like: "Growing them out is my hobby" and "I do it to play guitar." I overheard another foreigner saying that they grow them out to show that they don't work in the fields! Either way, it's DISGUSTING! I think Aaron is trying to do it too, because his nails are getting pretty long! I am encouraging it though, because it makes back scratches sooo much better! My skin is so darn itchy from being burnt! (sorry mom... One day without sunscreen! I've learned my lesson!)

While this ferry did probably go a little bit faster, we ended up waiting in the ocean for 2 1/2 hours, in one spot, for our turn to enter the port! On the positive side, we got to watch the sunset over the water! On the not so positive side, it ended up being a 9 hour boat ride!

... luckily they had a little snack bar with Tim Tams to fill out tummies! Unfortunately, 2 Tim Tams is 497 calories though! That will be the last time I send Aaron to the snack bar to pick out something!

When we got off the Ferry, we were met by a Balinese man who loaded us and another couple into his air conditioned SUV (so nice!) and drove us to Ubud. He was a crazy driver, so I closed my eyes and tried to sleep! This was the first time I ever put my seat belt on!

We arrived around 11:00pm, and were really lucky to find a great place to stay at such a late hour! It's actually a guest house of sorts, and it sits right near a river. There are 2 rooms, which is perfect, and an adorable yellow retriever to keep us company!

More pictures and blogs to come! It's time to go explore Ubud!

Day 6: Shell Searching!

We both woke up around 8:30am and ordered breakfast at our place! I'll bet you can guess what we ate! Yep, banana pancakes! :)

We put on our bathing suits and decided to take a walk around the island! We walked about 45 minutes and the water was calling our names, so we jumped in and swam for an hour or so here! There were only 2 other people in the water, and they were at least 200 feet away! This place is basically a deserted island!

Aaron and I revert back to our childhood, fairly often, when we're together. Case in point, we played a game called "Pick it up with your toe" that we made up! We would create a category, ie: the biggest piece of coral, and we would each try to pick it up with our toes in the water. The best one would win!

When we had had enough swimming, we decided to keep walking... This is when the shell searching began! We found some of the most amazing shells laying in these mounds of coral on the shoreline.

We're so proud of them, we took plenty of pictures for you to see! You can't find these in Huntington!

This was our first find of the day! (I found this one!)

I found this one too!

Aaron found this one! He said it's his favorite.

He found this one too! This one is my favorite!

As we were walking around the island, a storm started brewing over the water, so, we knew it was time to kick it into high gear and get back to our place! We had cameras to protect!

When we got back, it was pouring! We have definitely come during rainy season! We were peaking out the wooden slatted shutters in my room at some people who were showering out in the rain, and were thinking, "They're crazy!" But, then we thought, no, we're crazy! We have sea water all over us! Let's take showers in the rain! So, we went out, with our bathing suits on, and showered in the rain! It was one of the coolest things I've ever done!

After the rain settled, I layed in the hammock and read for a while...

... then decided to walk into town to see if the internet was working! Unfortunately, it wasn't up and running, but I was able to get some great pictures of some locals!

For such a small island, with such little resources, we were shocked at their expansive menus! Where the heck does all this food come from!?

We decided to have dinner at Good Heart Bungalow; the hotel next to ours. The food was awesome! It was a great ending to an awesome relaxing day on the island!

DAY 5: Snorkeling and relaxingl

Woke up at 6:30am, thanks to Aaron, who came to my door and said "Let's go for a walk!" So, we walked into town to get some breakfast! (35 min walk) along this pathway, just in from the shoreline! It wraps around the entire Island. You can actually walk it in 2 hours! That's how small this place is!

We stopped a couple times to do things like catch baby chickens while this lady fed them...

... admire the wild purple bouganvilla...

... and the other beautiful flowers, native to the island!

Breakfast was banana pancakes, with Knotts Berry Farm honey, overlooking the ocean! How cool is that?!

After eating banana pancakes on the beach, we walked over to the internet place. There are only 2 on the entire island, and one was closed because the owner went to Lombok, and the other internet place was down. So sad... This was what happened everytime I went into town for the next 3 days! Which is why you're reading this so late in the trip.

Instead of walking along the shoreline, we decided to walk through the middle of the island, since that's where the natives all live! There were palm trees everywhere and thousands of mosquitos to go along with them! We had bites all over our bodies! Lesson learned... don't walk through the middle of the island, near the lake!

When we finally got back to the bungalow, we relaxed and did some reading in the hammocks. That's when we met Tongues (our favorite cat on the island). Tongues is like a lap dog! He follows us everywhere and always wants to be where we are! We named him Tongues, because when we would pet him, he would purr and kneed, and his tongue would always be hanging out just a little!

When the sky started to clear a little, we met up with Max and Baola and did some snorkeling! We really wanted to see the turtles, but the waves were huge, and trying to walk with flippers in the ocean was interesting!

While we didn't see any turtles, we did find the most incredible blue starfish! It was huge... about the size of an over-sized dinner plate, and was bright royal blue, like the picture below! I'd never seen anything like it before.

We would have loved to have been able to take showers after being in the ocean, but there was no water! I took this picture later in the week when I saw the water being delivered! Yep, this is the amount of water supply this place had! Talk about needing to conserve, huh?!

We had lunch with Max and Baola on the beach and while we were eating, we noticed that the water bottles here all say to "keep away from smelly goods!" hmmmm...

This was the mama cat at the place were were staying! She was really mean and would usually kick her babies in the head when they were trying to eat! We had to feed her and keep her occupied so her little one could jump under her to get some milk!

We ordered dinner and ended up taking it up to my place, because the mosquitoes were in full effect! so, we sat under the mosquito net, and relaxed with our yummy food!

As you can see, there's not much to do here! We love it! This is what a vacation is all about!