Day 2 - Saturday (Rach comments in italics)

Well, another great day. No rain today. (Beautiful, beautiful day)

We tried to find a church to go to today, but to no avail. They actually had a Yellow Pages and White Pages phone directory (surprised), but nothing for churches. I couldn't find anything on the internet either...Strange.

So, we did other things today. We started off with another native dance. This time, it was the Barong dance. I didn't like it as well as the one last night (probably because it didn't have fire). However, it was still interesting. They had a Gamelan orchestra playing the music - that was interesting. (Costumes were extravagant, energy high, no fire--so sad.)

We then went to see a river valley. We saw it from a few vantage points and it is very impressive. They had a lot of groups doing white water rafting where we were at. The bad thing about that is you would have to walk down a long way to get to the river and then when you are done, you have to walk back up! I went down to the river (almost slipped and hurt myself!) and came back up and it was no picnic - and I hadn't been rafting.

At the place where you started rafting, they had elephant rides down to the river. You would sit on a basket on top of the elephant and ride down. Looked a little sketchy to me.... (What looked a little sketchy to me was walking into the ladies bathroom after the walk to the river and guess who I saw......GREG! I guess wearing the sarong yesterday...well, let's just say it has impaired his ability to read the word 'LADIES':) (Greg Comment - in my defense, I really didn't see the Ladies sign AND yesterday, there was a unisex bathroom, so I figured it must be normal. Still, I felt very silly....) (Rach comment AGAIN - this is his story...but I didn't use the "unisex" so I can't vouch for its accuracy...whatever)

We did see some beautiful scenery on the drive today. Rice paddies seem like such a normal thing, but when they are all green and terraced, they really are something.

We came back and ate lunch and then went to a nearby beach - Jimbaran beach. It was not crowded (at least when we got there). The water was pretty nice (cold at first) and had some good waves. We tried using a boogie board, but it seemed to be in pretty bad shape and about to break in half, so we decided to return it (in one piece) and just body surf. That was good fun.

We went back to lay on the beach and decided to come back and body surf some more about an hour later. Well, we were rudely greeted by a flotilla of nasty plastic pieces - they looked like torn up bits of garbage bags. Very disconcerting. I, of course, immediately thought it was a swarm of jellyfish. I am not sure which is really worse - jellyfish or old garbage bags. We are still wondering where they came from, and worse, what was in them at one point. Gross. (DO NOT BE ALARMED Greg was not hurt, I repeat, not hurt by the phantom jelly fish garbage bag! I tell you, it was touch and go there for a minute, but when he realized that it was just a bag....needless, to say the stinging subsided.)

(This is for Brad Williams) as we were getting ready to leave the beach, a brawl broke out (or was that just a soccer game?). Seriously though, they had two soccer games going on the beach by the time we left. It was interesting. (GOALLLLLLLLLL!)

Well, that is pretty much it for the day. More to come later (with pictures soon, we promise).