Bali Birthday: Amed

Tim treated me to a pretty kick-ass weekend in Bali for my birthday this past weekend...  we headed to a part of the island we hadn't yet been to, the coast on the far eastern tip of the island, a few hours from the airport and miles away from the beach party scene surrounding it.  We stayed in a cute little cliff-side, ocean-view villa in a fishing and salt-making village, Lipah, which is part of a group of villages collectively referred to as Amed (Amed is just the largest of those villages). 

The area is a stark contrast to the bright and flashy beach areas of south Bali.  On the dry side of the island in the foothills of the Mount Agung, Bali's revered volcano (gunung api, which literally means fire mountain), the area around Amed is much less lush than other parts of the island.  People have historically struggled to successfully grow very much there, so they rely on fishing, sea salt production, and now scuba diving tourists for their livelihoods.  The Amed area is visibly poorer than other parts of Bali, as evidenced by the tens of people Tim and I saw bathing and washing clothes in the stream on our way into the area.

The view from our villa was great... blue ocean peeking out through the fruit-heavy mango tree and bougainvillea:

 

In the early mornings and late evenings, you could see Amed's fleet of colorful, wooden, double-outrigger fishing boats (called jukung) with their brightly striped sails:

Our hotel was also home to these two ducks that waddled around the pool/restaurant area... I think they may have been the owners pets, but the staff was none too happy about it.  Each time the waiter came out with a beer for us, the ducks ran after him, quaking and biting his legs and feet.  Poor guy.

Unfortunately not pictured here is the main purpose for our visit to this area: diving the USAT Liberty wreck. The wreck is a U.S. military transport ship that was torpedoed by the Japanese in 1942 off the coast of Bali during WWII.  The ship was beached near Tulamben so that the cargo could be recovered and sat there until

1963 when Mt. Agung erupted, sending tremors through the island that shook the ship back into the water,  about 25 meters from the rocky shoreline.  Since then, the wreck, the top of which is about 5 meters deep and the bottom of which is 30 meters deep, has grown soft and hard coral and become home to tons of sea life, making it an awesome diving spot.

I wish we had an underwater camera to capture how cool this dive was, but in the meantime, I'll rely on the internet to link us to lots of Liberty wreck dive photos.  With the help of dive outfitter Eco-Dive, we suited up on the beach for the dive, waded into the water and swam out to the wreck.  The wreck is sorta split in half, so you're able to swim into it, and yet it's not confining, as you can see from this video.  Tons of fish were swimming all around us, not unlike this video (although our dive was not accompanied by weird porny sounding music)- schools of snapper and surgeonfish, moorish idols, sting rays, nudibranches, sweetlips, box fish...

Our next dive was a couple coves down from the wreck and was an awesome wall dive going to depths of 60-70 meters... Super cool coral, including giant barrel sponges, nudibranches, grouper, lots of trumpet fish, box fish, giant clams, skunk anemone fish (like Nemo, but with the stripe going down his back skunk style), puffer fish, anemone shrimp, and the coolest of all: the ghost pipe fish.  Pretty beautiful and relaxing dive.

After diving we took a dip in the hotel pool and had a beer, then headed out on one of the jukung for a little sunset boat ride with fisherman Wayan.  Apparently, when not fishing, the fishermen are happy to make an extra buck by toting bules around the bay.

The junkung is very narrow- just wide enough for my butt to fit comfortably, but surprisingly deep- my feet dangled when I was sitting on the boat's bench. 

 

I loved seeing all the boats lined up on the beach- they look at little bit like insects from afar:

From the boat you could see Mt. Agung in the distance:

You could also see some of the valleys in the foothills of Mt. Agung:

This photo give you a sense of how arid the area is- the hill tops are totally brown and dry:

 

These glamour shots are the result of me only bringing the new telephoto lens that Tim gave me.  Turns out it's hard to take a photo of yourself on a narrow wooden boat with a telephoto lens without falling out of the boat.  And yet somehow the photos turned out to be really cool:

The sunset over the volcano was really beautiful:

I love how colorful the sails are on the jukung, giving each on a personality... and each one has its legs painted different colors, too:

Obligatory chickens-on-the-side-of-the-road shot:

As I mentioned, the Amed area is known for its sea salt production, although I think they are phasing it out somewhat as the tourist industry develops and because it is backbreaking work.  Tim and I stopped by the salt production area on our way out of town, but weren't able to capture the production as it happened because it normally happens quite early in the morning before it gets too hot (well, too hot is relative, I guess).

Salt-making involves lugging buckets of sea water ashore to spread on the sand, let the water evaporate and then harvest the natural salts.  It's a multi-step process, documented at this website.  Kinda crazy to think about how much work goes into salt, huh?  

Sydney: Eating at Rockpool and Drinking at the Rocks

For our 1st wedding anniversary, Tim and I treated ourselves to a fancy dinner at Rockpool Bar & Grill, set in a cool art deco building in Sydney's CBD (photos below).  Sadly we neglected to take photos of the food before we dove in, but I can sum up: pretty freaking tasty... Tim said his aged steak was the best he'd ever had, our Aussie oysters were awesome, and the passionfruit pavlova we shared for dessert was to die for (and Tim and I are not usually 'light and fruity" dessert lovers).  I found the recipe for the pav online and am planning to give it a go, so expect to see it over at my other site.

 

The following night, our last in Sydney, we walked over to the Rocks for some bar hopping.  Established in 1788, the Rocks is a former portside slum under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but is now home to shops, restaurants and lots of old school, oddly named bars.

We started out at Fortune of War, which claims to be Sydney's oldest continually operating pub, established in 1828.  They have all sorts of documentation on the walls to prove it, including an ancient looking liquor license.  The bar is a down-home place stuffed with tipsy old guys and locals, which is funny since it's sitting across from a Gucci store.  Hmmm.

Our second stop was another historic pub, Molly Malone's Bar in the Mercantile Hotel.  Full of both Aussie and Irish drinkers, it was also where we spotted and failed to properly capture the world's most amazing mullet (see behind Tim in the photo below).  A rippling party of curls in the back, yet all spikey business in the front, it was a sight to see:

While walking around, we found these invasive cane toads, painted and turned into coin purses.  Awesome.  I thought some of my college buddies would appreciate this, having watched the funniest documentary on cane toads back in our college days: 

Our last stop was the historic Hero of Waterloo pub, which we later found out was connected to a tunnel used for rum smuggling and involuntary recruitment of sailors during colonial times.  Now it's a cozy pub with wood fires, live music and lots of beer.

After our mini-pub crawl, we wandered past the docks at Circular Quay and attempted to take some cool night shots of Sydney, somewhat successfully.  Turns out it's hard to take a non-blurry night shot without a tripod.

Sydney Shots

OK, here's a collection of random photos from around Sydney that I wasn't able to categorize...

A shot of the Sydney Tower Eye from street level, as well as a cool old school clothing ad on the side of a building:

 

Me and Tim, sun drenched on the docks at Circular Quay, waiting for the Manly Ferry, Opera House and Bay Bridge in the background:

Didgeridoo players entertaining the crowd at Circular Quay, sounding similar to this video I found:

Triple A also enjoying the sun at Circular Quay while we waited for the ferry:

Cool clouds over the harbor:

Baby Alex can't keep his eyes open in the bright sun, but he's cute anyway:

Drool worthy meat pies with mash, "mushy peas," and gravy at Harry's Cafe de Wheels, a portside Sydney legend originally opened in 1938.  I ordered "The Tiger," depicted below, which was awesome.  I had heard an Aussie chef on TV refer to mushy peas and I thought it was just a poor word choice on his part, but apparently it's a thing.  And they're good despite their unappetizing title!  I have been craving this pie since I left.  This and the sausage rolls I mentioned earlier.

Sydney: Weird Birds

One of the things I found most interesting/amusing/foreign about Sydney is all of the crazy birds they have flying around there.  Their more common birds are not little brown sparrows, but big, exotic and crazy-sounding birds that Americans would be more familiar looking at in a pet store window.

Here are some examples of what I am talking about, although this is only a small sample of what we saw, as I am no birder.  I wasn't able to capture photos of the brightly colored lorikeets and rosellas that flew by us from time to time.

1. Adam called these birds below trash picking birds (for good reason, as they were congregated around the dumpster behind the local pub in his town).  In reality, they are the exotic looking long billed Australian white ibis, which I only discovered after Googling "sydney trash birds."  Crazy.

2. This puffy, not-so-little guy in the two photos below (photographed hanging out at Sydney's beautiful Botanical Gardens) is a kookaburra.  The kookaburra has a strange sounding call- to me it sounds like a combination of a person laughing/cackling and a monkey of some sort.  We heard it a couple of times in Adam's family's backyard while we were staying with them... it made it feel like we were in the middle of the jungle or something, not in suburban Sydney.

3.  These guys below were particularly funny to me.  Roving in packs around the city and 'burbs, these big, white, sulphur-crested cockatoos make a terrible racket- their squawking was pretty intense. Below you can see them hanging out in the trees in Sydney's Botanical Gardens, but also poking around on the roadside on the way to the Blue Mountains:

4.  This little guy below (sorry for the long-distance photo) is the distinctively black and white magpie, which also has a bit of a crazy warbling call.  They're also known for dive bombing people during mating season, which sounds intimidating.