There will be blood (Pemuteran, Bali)

It was a massacre.  They outnumbered us and came while we slept.  They got exactly what they wanted, and what they wanted was our blood.  I awoke at about 3 am, and noticed some blood on my pillow.  I figured it was a bloody nose, attributing it to our rigorous travel schedule.  I inspected my nose, found no problems and went back to bed.  About 2 hours later, Kristin and I both woke up, and our sheets had numerous blood stains.  We looked up at the netting that draped our bed, and what we saw made us shudder.  Mosquitoes, everywhere.  We had been eaten alive while we slept.  A fleeting attempt at genocide was made at this point.  We went around the room like desperate banshees smashing bugs in our hands, spraying 100% deet bug juice around like an assailed woman wields a bottle of mace.  There was panic and deliberate attempts were made to kill, but our comfort would not come.  We had to wash our own blood from our hands.  This is never a good thing.  We laid in bed smacking at our arms and bodies, waiting for the morning to come. A rooster jestfully crooned on in the distance, and our Indonesian innocence slipped right through the cracks in the floor of our lavish bungalow.  Staring at the ceiling, both of us realized something, mosquitoes suck.

"I dont know, maybe 60 or 70 bites," I told Kristin as we sped away from our villa the following morning heading towards the westernmost point in Bali.  I would try and count them, but it was a futile endeavor.  We both knew which appendages were peaking out from our sheets because our bodies told the tale of their feast.   We pictured mosquitoes sucking blood until they exploded, swerving around the air like drunk maniacs, stopping only to high five.  We must have been fun, two exhausted american travelers, too starry eyed to notice that pitfalls of Indonesian living.  My face looked like that of a 6 year old with chicken pocks.  Kristin's shoulders looked like she spent a whole day wearing a backpack with straps made from poison oak.  We looked like a couple of freaks, and we were about to be right at home.  We were on our way to Gilimanuk Bay, a driftway between Java and Bali, home to some of the strangest creatures that the world has to offer, essentially an ocean freak show.

Our dive was great.  We saw a bunch of weirdos down there, and Kristin even liked it.  Our dive partners were an Italian couple from Paris, and we had a good time talking with them at a local warung for lunch.  The dive site was like a desert, littered with small oasis of quaint villages filled with odd residents.  I will let the pictures explain it below.

After our dive and lunch, we returned to the Amertha to settle our bill with the hotel and dive shop.  We spent millions.  Gusti returned to pick us up and take us to south Bali.  He took one look at us, and said, "You need Bokasi."  Bokasi is apparently an all natural salve popular in Indonesia.  He told us to rub it on our bites, and we would be bagoosh (good).  We were informed that people even use this antidote for stomach aches, with a few drops in a glass of water.  I have no idea what sort of alchemy is going on in this bottle, but it works.

Gusti took us through the rice terraces and mountains to south Bali.  It was a very long but beautiful journey.  We even stopped at a real Balinese department store on the way, and were very impressed with the deals.  They also had super nintendo and sega genesis games for sale, as if they were new.  This brought back fond memories for me.  We arrived at our hotel, Le Meridien Tanah Lot, just in time to watch the sun set over the Indian ocean.

A young Lionfish

Some slugs

Nice camo buddy

A village of weirdos

The big ole mean mug of a frogfish

A cagey abode

A sunken ship

A family of lion fish

Maybe friends, maybe not

The strangest creature that I saw, Kristinfish

Gross

A large school

A bunch of urch

Mean looking clams

What are you looking at punk?

Orange frogfish

Kristin sat out the second dive

These creepy things were everywhere

Large star

Seahorse

Pretty colors

A fish hauling by

An eel face

Very weird creature of some kind

Close-up of creature

Cuttlefish

2 cuttlefish which look like squids

Another ship

whats up man

Bottom dweller

Luxury accommodation

More underwater scenes

from a very weird place

Last day of underwater pictures

Coming up in Secret Bay

My bites

Rice terraces on the way through central Bali

Just nerding along

A random roundabout statue in Tabanan

Tanah Lot at sunset - more on this place tomorrow

Chanteek Menjangan Island, Bali

Today, Kristin and I hired a driver, boatman, and an underwater guide to take us snorkeling at the Menjangan Island Reefs.  Menjangan Island is part of the protected area of West Bali National Park.  It is a very famous dive and snorkeling site in far West Bali, and many people place it on their shortlist for best in the world.  We can both see why.

 

Java mountains

On our way to Menjangan

Our little boat that we had all to ourselves

Some corals

Yellow fish that would not let me get close enough

The drop off to the ocean below

Lots of life down here

Clown

My nemo shot

Dinner time, hard to tell in this pic, but this was a big fella

So much to see, obviously, this place blew our minds

A big clam

Pretty black, white, and pink fish

They looked like they were on their way somewhere important

Such beautiful colors

I think these are some kind of batfish

Thanks for the pic, Geda

It goes down really deep

Scorpion fish - very poisonous

Can you see him?

I saw this freak on my way up, he let me in close

Geda (our guide) and me taking a break from the chanteek (beautiful)

Bali

A bat cave, click through for all its batty glory

The temple on Menjangan Island

On our way to site number 2

The bigger red guy would climb right into your hands

A Moorish Idol

Some of the coral is so intricate you have to stop

and admire it

I took about 300 pictures underwater, most look like this

An exotic lobster

A weird large fish

Geda cradling a sea cucumber, man those things are weird

 

A fish cruising by

Medusa looking

This fish came to check us out, very friendly.

A Blue clam

Some crazy

This fish had the prettiest markings

Chasing the fish off

Another sea cucumber

Another cool fish escaping my lens

Other-worldly

The deep beyond

We surface to this, wow

Docked

Our pool

Young Balinese girls practicing dance

Tomorrow, we have to get up real early to dive Secret bay, which is in between Java and Bali.  We will hopefully see some serious Strange there.