This morning, Luciano and I rendezvoused with another group of backpackers and hired a cheap car to show us around for the day. One van, six backpackers, and five countries; let the adventures begin.
(Little kids were also selling tourists random things.)
With no clue of where to go, we had our driver decided where to go first. When you're crammed into a van with five other people, you get to know them very fast, whether you like it or not. Aside from Luciano and I (Italy & USA), we had two guys from Argentina, one girl from Holland, another girl from Germany, and a litany of stories to fill a thick book.
We first arrived at a famous temple in the area, Tanah Lot, which is actually out in the ocean and only accessible during low tide. Unfortunately, we were there during high tide but it was still an amazing sight. The coastline was a jagged steep rock face that has been molded by the massive waves that pound it day in and and day out with occasional gust of water spraying up over the rocks.
(This is the Tanah Lot Temple. Now you can see why they only let you walk out there during low tide.)
We hung out in the area for a bit, exploring the coast and the tourist shops, and then made our way back to the van. While we were outside, there were these old ladies selling these fruits wrapped in a banana leaf.
I still do not know what they are, but they were absolutely delicious. She had sprinkled coconut shaving ontop of them, and the inside of the round fruit was a caramel tasting sweet goo. I could have eaten her entire stock of these fruits, and for 50 cents a banana wrap, it was hard to resist.
After we all chowed down on these fruits, we made our way to another temple. Not really sure what the significance of this temple are, but our guide said we must see it. During our ride, we saw many parades and locals dressed up in ceremonial attire.
Our driver informed us that it is a routine religious festival that is held two days after the full moon of each month. "Where are they going?" I asked, "to the temple," he replied, "haha... okay." He kept responding to the answer with the temple throughout the day, so now you see why it was so hard for us to find the temple yesterday... they are everywhere, but I assume the locals use that term but know in their mind which temple they are talking about. It would be like me asking a friend back home if they were going to the pool. More likely than not, I am talking about the Olympia pool, not only because I lived there but it is the most popular in the college realm, so my friend would know that I meant the Olympia pool, yet I never said it.
There wasn't much to see at the temple, just another temple...
We then made our way to a coffee plantation. It is starting to get late into the afternoon, so the first plantation we visited was closed. Luckily, the second one allowed us to come in. Since it was so late, we didn't actually get to tour the plantation, just sample the variety of things they were growing. One of the things they had was cocoa; unsure of what natural chocolate really looks like or how it is made, I was thinking that I could just cut the fruit out of the tree, slice it open, and spoon pure chocolate out of it... Yeah, thats not how its done. Inside the fruit are loads of cocoa beans; you cook the beans and then make chocolate from that. However, there is this white slime that surrounds the beans that tastes good. You just pop the bean in your mouth and eat the white stuff off the bean, its sweet and a little sour.
The lady told me not to bite down on the the seed because it tastes very bitter and I wouldn't like it, so I bit down on it. It was pretty terrible and the inside of the bean is a dark purplish color, not at all what I was expecting.
My question is, how in the world was chocolate discovered? Did someone one day just say, hey lets cut down that thing down thats growing from a tree, throw it on the fire and see what happens? Hats off to whoever suggested that!
Once we finished up with the coffee plantation and chewing on bitter cocoa seeds, we made our way back to the hostel. While we did spend the majority of the afternoon in the van, we did get to see a good amout of Southern Bali, even though it was just through a window.
That night I decided to rest, exhausted from a day of getting sloshed around in the back of a van on the windy hectic Balinesian roads.
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