Amed, Bali, Indonesia
Staying at Shell House, which is associated with Sunrise Cafe, in Jemeluk Village. It’s a local family run operation, with great hospitible service, yummy food, and excelent beach front location (despite the anoying road noise behind us). I highly recommend this place. Plus, you just know that the money you spend here is staying here in the village.
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After 4 days in Lovina, we took a bus along the north coast of Bali to a small fishing town called Amed. We stayed in the next village over (Jemeluk), which boarders a beautiful bay full of crystal clear snorkeling (when tide is coming in) and abundant fish life. There were two things we wanted to do near Amed: Dive the USAT Liberty wreck near Tulumben, and hike to the top of Gunung Agung (the largest volcano in Bali, even after having blown its top off in 1964).
On our first day, we rented some scooters, and toured around the S.E. part of the island. Such beautiful scenery… tiny villages, windy coastal views, and fields of rice paddys and corn, dotted with banana trees. There wasn’t much traffic, and the roads were in great condition, so it seemed like a safe place to be cruzing on 2 wheels. But on the way up one of the windy hills, we spotted a french woman on the side of the road who had apparently crashed into a guardrail with her scooter. She was lying there stunned… it must have just happened. Grant and I stopped to help her out. Lukily Grant is able to think clearly and act quickly in these kinds of situations, because I froze. Although we’d taken a wilderness first-aid course before leaving, nothing prepares you like the real thing. It looked like she had broken her colar bone, with some of the bone protruding, but the more gruesome thing was the tip of her finger dangling from one of her middle fingers. Luckily an van came by almost right away and the driver stopped to help out. Lots of locals stopped to try to help. They guys in the van took her to the nearest hospital… that’s one place I wouldn’t want to be visiting on a trip to Bali. I hope she’s going to be O.K. But I can tell you one thing, we were a lot more nervous, and cautious, riding the scooter after that. One little tumble, and you loose a finger… if you’re lucky.
Since we were there in time for the full moon, it was a perfect time for “the hike”. The volcano is so high (~3000 m) that it gets covered in clouds after the sun rises, so ideally you get to the top before the sun rises. This requires sleeping in a nearby village, and getting up before 2:00 AM to drive up to a temple that’s part way up the mountain (1500 m). It’s ideal to hike when there’s a near-full moon, since it provides some light for the hike up. You can’t hike on the official “full moon day”, because the mountain closes for religious reasons. It is the holiest of holy mountains in Bali. We kind of lucked out, because the morning we wanted to climb was the day following the full moon day, but it still technically provided us with a full moon. Unfortunately, it was also the first day of rain since the dry season started. We got rained on most of the way up the hill, which had the unfortunate effect of making the ground a little slipery. But we were treated to a heavenly sight of the full moon shining down on us and the cloud tops, as we emerged from the cloudy cover.
The hike was quite difficult (picture the shape of a volcano…. now add a line going straight up it, and splash on some water from a night’s worth of rainfall), but we made it up in time to watch the moon set over the horizon, the sky turn indigo and then light blue, and finally the sun rise up over the clouds below. It was a majical experience. It was well worth getting up at 1:30 in the morning, and hiking through the rain in the dark. The descent, as you can imagine, was extremely painful. Our feet, ankles, knees, and quadriceps were in major pain by the end, but nothing compared to the pain we felt the next day.
After our hike, we signed up for yet another massage (I’m affraid we might have developped an addicition). We also enjoyed another couple of days of snorkeling, and then took the plunge (despite Grant’s ears not yet being 100%), and signed up for a couple of dives at the US Liberty wreck (don’t worry, Grant’s ears ended up fairing well in both dives, with no problems clearing).
In Tulumben, the dive to the wreck is a shore dive. This means someone carries your gear to the shore, and then you gear up and walk/swim out to the dive sight. At this particular sight, a group of Balinese women make a living by carrying your gear for you. These women are incredible! They look so petite, yet can carry more weight on their heads than I could probably press with my feet. And their balance is amazing. One woman put a dive tank on her head, and then had our dive bag (which is incredibly heavy and awkward) hoisted on top of that!
The first dive was very deep, as we went along the outside of the wreck, fairly close to the sandy bottom, which slopes quite a bit away from the shore. There were quite a few fish to see on that dive, but the second dive was much better. On the second dive, we dove along the top of the wreck, where there seemed to be more abundant fish life, and more diversity. I’d have prefered to do two dives like the second one. Visibility wasn’t as good here as it was in Manjengan, but it was pretty cool diving through the remenants of an old ship. It kind of felt like a graveyard filled with fish..
