At home in Ubud, viciously hacking at coconuts. Both hands on the knife, don’t worry!

This past weekend we had a few extra days off, so we fired up our little scooter and headed off to the most Northwestern point on the island of Bali for a bit of scuba diving.

So proud of our progress…3 hours in.

Up and over the mountains!

After stopping for lunch (twice) and six hours of bouncing along on the back of our scooter, we rolled into the town of Pemuteran around 5pm. We immediately headed to the dive shop to plan out the diving for the next few days. The remainder of the evening was spent healing our sore bums.

Our lovely dive shop, so professional, so friendly.

Orange juice with chocolate sauce? Of course!

Friday morning found us at the dive shop, getting outfitted with wetsuits, masks, fins, etc. After fantastic PADI Scuba Refresher coursework and a skills dive with our delightful instructor, Adrian at Reef Seen, we were prepared to dive Menjangan Island the next day. We were both so glad we took the full refresher course, it was great to get back in the water, practice some buoyancy skills, and get our confidence back for a full day of diving on Saturday.

View from our hotel room in Pemuteran.

Menjangan Island is beautiful. It’s status as a national park ensures that the coral is thriving, we were both really taken aback by the different colors of hard and soft coral. Unfortunately don’t have an underwater camera, but thanks to a very generous guest on the boat, we have some photos of us getting ready to start our second dive. Yay!!

Checking all my equipment.

I’m always the slow poke when it comes to getting ready.

All geared up!

Swimming off through the jellyfish, ouch.

The diving was lovely, and although we didn’t see any big fish the different varieties of coral wafting in the current was really breathtaking and all of the tiny reef fish were so colorful flitting about in the clear water.

The ride back to Ubud was surprisingly painless, there was so much to see along the roadside, including fruit bats, Babi Guling (roast suckling pig), and overloaded scooters. We even stopped by a local community center to catch a children’s dance competition.

The sounds of gamelan drew us towards this adorable scene.

You know, transportation in Indonesia.

Another local delicacy, crocodile shaped cheese puffs.

Fruit bats.

For the low price of $3, tourists can put the fruit bat on their crotch, we refrained. We’re on a budget, folks.

Roast sucking pick, part of the famous dish ‘babi guling.’

Babi guling, can’t get enough of this.