Monkey Forests, MUCK diving and the Bunaken Cha Cha

 

Contradictions...life is full of them.

For example, how can the world be sooo BIG yet seem so small. That one has been on my mind a lot since we left Alaska four months ago. In that four months we have been from Alaska to California to New York, halfway around the earth to Indonesia and back, and are now traveling back to Alaska.

Amazing...only 100 years ago it would have taken at least that long just to go from New York to Alaska (which is also a contradiction because 100 years ago does not sound like a long time ago but must be considering how much has changed since then). You might be wondering by now what all that has to do with monkeys, muck and the cha cha, and if you read on, you will find out.

A quick note: I can't seem to post my videos on this blog but if you click on any of the colored text, it will let you watch them. 

Lori socking away nuts for winter ?!?

But first, let me offer thanks to all of you who have encouraged me to keep posting about our lives on this blog. Sorry it has been so long since the last post but I have excuses...uh...reasons. Mostly it's because I was working so much this summer and fall that all I did was work and sleep...BORING!! What a contradiction, came to Alaska to goof off working in an RV park and wound up as superintendent/surveyor/SWPPP manager working 70 hour weeks for a roadbuilding company. The construction season (summer) is short up here so you work like a squirrel socking away all your nuts so you can take the winter off, which is exactly what we did.      

View from the back deck of the AMHS ferry at sunset 

We started our "snowbird season" - which apparently is the same as being a "winter chicken" to some - by loading our truck on the AMHS (Alaska Marine Highway System) ferry for the four day trip to Washington. If you want to see what that voyage was like, click on Our ferry tale and watch it on youtube. It was a spectacular trip down the famed Inside Passge that we had always wanted to make.

When we decided to be snow birds for winter our minds went to traveling and diving somewhere with warm, clear water. We had been saving our credit card rewards for 5 years and now had enough for 2 round trip tickets to Indonesia and one of our "bucket list places to dive". Indonesia is an island nation made up of over 17,500 islands divided into 34 provinces. We arrived in Bali, one of the main provinces after 36 hours of travel from Los Angeles.

This is Gunung Kawi Temple, built in the 11th century in the bottom of a river valley.
It was 280 steps to get down here and which seemed like 280,000 going back up. 

 

Bali is a beautiful and amazing place. Most residents are Hindu and therefore show tremendous respect to every living thing. Every village has at least 3 temples with the main one built around the largest and oldest tree in the area. They have very strong family bonds and most live together in “family compounds” comprised of a huge, walled lot with many 20’x20’ houses for each member’s separate family.

 

 

All over the island, every morning people made offerings with flowers, incense and other small gifts (money, cigarettes, candy)  to put out front of their homes and businesses to bless them with good luck and keep bad spirits away.
 

 

 

 

The four days we had on Bali we stayed in Ubud - a town considered the cultural center of the island - at the incredible Hotel Tjampuhan Spa built in 1928 . We spent one afternoon at the spa where you can get a one hour massage by the edge of the jungle river for 200,000 "rupiahs", about $20.



This is the hot & cold jacuzzi surrounded by carved stone



 

Now...back to our title and one of the subjects of this post...Money Forests!

The monkey forest sits on the edge of town and is actually the Hindu temple Wenara Wana - built in the 14th century - that is literally run by monkeys. We bought a bunch of small bananas and quickly had monkeys jumping all over us, which is quite startling the first time as you can see in this video of monkeys in the forest temple.
 

We got to visit this monkey forest on Bali in Indosnesia.



No, that's NOT the Gieco pig on a motor scooter

The first thing you notice on the roads in Indonesia is the traffic…trucks, cars, ox carts, bicycles, tricycles, and zillions of motor scooters…some carrying families of 5 and 6! The second thing you notice is the constant use of what must be the most important operating part of all Indonesian vehicles…the HORN ! To us foreigners, the honks all sound the same…annoying.

But to Indonesians, it is like another part of their language. One or two taps on the horn seem to mean everything to them - it’s not OK to cut me off…it’s OK to cut me off…I’m going to pass you…don’t pass me, you can pass me…you go first…no, I go first...I almost hit your scooter…I’m going to hit your scooter…walk…don’t walk – and they all seem to understand the difference of each honk.

Lucky for us (and everyone else on the roads) there was no need for me to try and learn that language as we hired a car with a driver for our sightseeing. For $40 Mr. Goodday drove us all over Bali for 10 hours while we visited ancient temples, volcanoes and the famed rice terraces at Tegalalang.

The rice terraces of Bali are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and date back hundreds of years. They are irrigated by a system of canals known as subak and are controlled through each areas local temples by a cooperative of the villages. We took the opportunity to trek through the best of them as you can see in our video on YouTube.



The temple pictured below is the Supreme Water Temple of Pura Ulun Danu Batur on the edge of Lake Batur whose crater lake is regarded as the ultimate origin of every spring and river used to irrigate the main food source of Bali.

 

Supreme Water Temple of Pura Ulun Danu Batur

  Bali is also the home of Kopi Luwak, a very expensive coffee made famous in the movie “the Bucket List” with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

I thought it tasted kind of crappy.

The coffee is made by feeding the coffee beans to mongoose, waiting until they crap them back out, washing them, drying them and then roasting them. Supposedly the animals stomach enzymes “enhance” the beans before they are ejected almost intact. It makes it either the best coffee in the world or one of the best con jobs ever on tourists by a bunch of laughing Indonesians.

 

MUCK diving ?!?!

After 4 days of sightseeing on Bali, we were ready and anxious to get on to the heart of our trip, the main reason we had flown so far around the world…MUCK diving in Lembeh Strait. After a 4 hour flight to Manado - the second largest city on the island of Sulawesi – and a 2 hour car ride, we were finally at Black Sand Dive Retreat where we would spend the next week diving…MUCK diving…3 times a day.

That's a Giant Frogfish staring at you

At this point, let me attempt to explain what MUCK diving is and try to convince you we are not crazy to have dreamed for years about coming this far to MUCK dive. Most people think of scuba diving in clear water with beautiful coral reefs and lots of colorful fish. MUCK diving is a contradiction to all that. We dove in areas with black sand/mud bottoms with scattered piles of various debris (iron scraps, coral heads, tires, logs, garbage, etc.) in visibility that was usually 20 feet or less…you know…MUCK!

Now  you might be asking…???...which is what we both were asking ourselves a few minutes into the first dive. Soon we had our answer and were seeing all the creatures that made us dream of MUCK diving this place – the Mimic octopus, Ambon scorpion fish, Hairy octopus, Frog fish of all sizes and dozens of different kinds of spectacular Nudibrachs - many of which are found no place else on earth, and here they were on every dive!

 

 

 

 

 

 



Nudibranchs come in many brilliant colors



 

 

Many are quite small with fantastic camouflage making them hard to spot and even harder to get good photos of them. We used our magnifying glasses all the time to get a good look - like a scuba version of Sherlock Holmes and Watson – and by weeks end we had seen all the creatures we had dreamed of seeing and were hooked on MUCK diving.

 

 

 

 

Now if you want to try MUCK diving without getting wet you can watch our mucky video by clicking on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch mucky

 

And now...the Bunaken Cha Cha !!

With the week of MUCK diving behind us we were ready for part 2 of our dive trip - a week of diving the coral reefs of Bunaken - a small island off the northern tip of Sulawesi that sits in the middle of the Bunaken Marine Preserve which was established in 1989.

Lori flies off the wall over the 1000' deep blue ocean

The diving here is quite different – clear 84 degree water and very healthy coral reefs. The entire island is fringed with reefs that have vertical walls, some plunging over 1,000 feet deep only a few hundred yards from shore. Check out our video by clicking on this Cha Cha diving. 

North Sulawesi can almost seem like a separate country from Bali – a much poorer country. Hundreds of years ago it was known as the “Spice Islands” – one of the only places for Europe to get Nutmeg, cinnamon and clove. Most of the population is Christian and most seem to survive from their own farms and livestock.

Flying dogs or dinner??

The local markets are outdoors, where you can find anything you might want and also some things you don’t even want to see. They think of most plants and animals as food…including dogs…which is a contradiction for me because I think of them as friends. So it is gut wrenching (literally) to see a friend roasting on a spit while the other friends are in cages nearby waiting to be bought and roasted. Makes you re-think the whole hot dog thing.

 

Sulawesi is mostly Christian which is very obvious in every village.

Tourism is still fairly new to this island – less than 20 years – and therefore very undeveloped. The local people work very hard just to survive and jobs would be very few

 

While planning our trip we had heard through email from the Cha Cha resort that they and the village had built a new children’s library and would be grateful for anything to help stock it since the government does not fund any of it. With help from our grandchildren we were able to bring a duffle bag full of books, pencils, crayons and candy to donate.

The muddy trek in the rain through the jungle from the resort to the village felt like another Super Dave Adventure Tour. After mud gushing for 30 minutes, we popped out into "downtown" with it's concrete "road". We had fun playing a kind of “reverse trick or treat” handing out “gula gula” (candy) to anyone we saw.

 

It’s always an adventure to get to these remote places and this was no exception. The two resorts were going to arrange all the transfer details and assured us in their broken English “not to worry”. But when it involves 2 boats, a car with a driver that speaks no English and unknown connections…you worry anyway.

After the 2 hour ride back to Manado, we were dropped off at the smelliest, dirtiest, crowded little boat harbor we had ever seen by a boat with some guys who did not speak English. See if you can smell it in this stinky video.

They only phrases we all seemed to understand were “Cha Cha” (the resort’s name) and “20 minutes” (when they said we would leave). After a nervous two and a half hour “20 minutes” wait we were underway for the hour and a half boat trip to Bunaken Cha Cha Nature Resort…we hoped.




 

We had one last night back in Bali where we lived it up like rock stars with our own private villa.



Our villa even had it's own private pool

OK, maybe not rock stars since it only cost about as much as a "Motel 6" back in the good ole USA but that's what it felt like to us. We even got another hour massage (in our villa) for $20 to ease all the old muscles from 2 weeks of floating in the warm ocean. To take a tour of the room with us, check out our video with this link Rock Star living in Bali

 

Now you know what monkeys, muck and the cha cha all have in common...US!

 

The saddest part of this whole story is that it is over for us and now we are headed back to Alaska, reality and that four letter word (I don't even want to say it)...you know...the one that gives us money so we can do things like the monkey muck cha cha.