Exploration by Moped.

29.10.11

I was really excited about today because Martin was feeling brave enough

to hire a motorbike so we could revisit the beaches Gemma had showed

us on our orientation tour. We were both a bit more nervous than

we had been last time we went travelling,I'm not sure why, so we made sure

we had helmets and Martin drove at a cautious speed!

There is such a sense of freedom that some with riding a moped/motorbike.

Something about the wind blowing your hair, whizzing past a beautiful beach.

We visited the first 2 beaches Gemma had taken us to. Each beach was

just as deserted as the first time we went, we had trouble finding any

shade. At the first dounble-barrelled bay we did find some shade in

a little cove created by the rock between between the 2 bays. This was

great because all we could see was our little cave and the sea, along with

teems of gleaming black crabs shuffeling around. At this beach we made the

acquantance of 'Linda' and her crack team of very smiley, rotten-toothed

friends who managed to team sell us 2 sarongs. One of which Martin is

rather smitten with!

On the second beach, which is really good for paddling and exploring

rock pools, we enjoyed a coconut each. It was so good to be sat on a

near empty beach tipping cool, sweet coconut milk in to our mouths

(or all down our t-shirts, in Martin's case). There was an amazing

amount of milk in each coconut, Martin was glugging away at his for

about half an hour and I gave up. When he had finished the seller

came back and chopped the coconut in half and chipped of a couple

of spoons out of the shell. So we took it home to enjoy.

I went for a little paddle and a clamber on the rocks to spot star

fish. The star fish seemed almost to mark the path of higher sand that

you could walk on between the rocks out to the rock monolith still

surrounded by water. I had never seen star fish like this before.

In their centre they have what looks like a limpit shell, not sure

if it's hard or soft and then five spindly, wavy arms that grope around

them. There was hundreds of them, some half buried beneath the sand.

It was slightly trecherous driving away from the beach as there was

deep sand in places and lots of pot holes, but we made our way back

to Mimpi Manis.

Early evening we drove back in to Kuta for dinner and found a couple

of little warungs. We chose Warung 2, for no particular reason and

had a very cheap and tasty dinner, with a good view of the

kick around going on across the road.