Author: drewwfaust@gmail.com

After a couple of days in Perth, we took off on a road trip south down the coast. We spent two nights in Dunsborough, two nights in Margaret River, and two nights in Denmark before returning for a last night in Perth.

The first stop was at Lake Clifton to see thrombolites. The thrombolite building micro-organisms resemble the earliest forms of life on earth. So, here’s a peek at the primordial ooze. You’re welcome!

From small to big, the next stop was the Busselton Jetty, the longest pier in the world at nearly two kilometers long.

After our first night in Dunsborough, we set out to see the start of the Cape to Cape walk. It’s a trail from Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin. It’s over 135km long and typically takes about six days to walk. We set out on the start of the track, a very well maintained section that’s a combination of pavement and boardwalks.

The scenery is stunning.

After 6km we came to our endpoint for the day: Sugarloaf rock.

After our walk, we grabbed an excellent late lunch at Wise, a beautiful winery with an ocean view. The post-lunch tasting included a Zin with the highest ABV we’ve every seen for a wine. (It was… not very good. Very raisiny and as you might imagine, super hot on the alcohol. But plenty of their other offerings were good.)

We visited a few wineries in the afternoon, had dinner in Dunsborough, and enjoyed some wine with our AirBnB hosts, Simon and Melissa. Their place is just off the third fairway of Dunsborough Lakes Golf Course, and as you might guess, Simon is a golfer. We got up early on Monday to get in 9 holes before he left for work at Clairault Streicker winery.

We were off to Canal Rocks, a bit further south down the coast. Really fun to climb in and around. I wish I’d brought a mask and snorkel.

We drove a bit further south, hiked a bit more, and enjoyed another incredible beach with waves crashing on some rocks just off shore.

After all that work, we headed to Clairault Streicker for lunch. Simon then hosted our tasting.

On the drive down to Margaret River that afternoon, we enjoyed one more tasting at Amelia Park wines. Wonderful wine, and not a bad view from the “office” window.

As we do in most cities, we spent our first day in Perth walking the city. Leena blew out her flip flop (after ~7 years; nice job, Nike) getting off the plane as we arrived in Perth, so we started by heading to a Nike store in the downtown core of Perth. They’d never seen a “Retired” Nike badge like mine and gave a discount on a new pair of flip flops for Leena. We continued to Kings Park and climbed quite a hill to get to the top of the park.

The view back to central Perth:

The view towards the ocean:

Now starring Leena!

We walked through the park ready for a late lunch (and some water). Unfortunately, not knowing the city, we ended up in a university area. We walked on and came upon a large hospital campus. (Both of these areas have food for sure, but likely in student/employee cafeterias.) We finally found a nice cafe and got our order in just before they closed the kitchen. That was a delicious burger!

We grabbed a bus out to Cottesloe Beach and I took a dip in the Pacific. The water was, of course, chillier than Bali, but not too cold. We caught a train back to Perth and grabbed some Mexican near our AirBnB for dinner. We got “home” about 9p and our host Neil treated us to a glass of wine on his lovely back patio. He gave us great information in planning the next day: Rottnest Island.

We caught a train to Fremantle in the morning and had just enough time to buy tickets and board the 11a ferry to Rottnest Island. It’s an island about 20km off the coast. We bought tickets to a hop on/hop off bus that circuits the island all day. We hopped off many times for walks and beaches and amazing scenery.

Rottnest Island gets its name from the Dutch Rotte Nest (rat nest). It seems Captain Willem de Vlamingh mistook the native quokkas for giant rats. We found a nice family – I didn’t even notice the baby (lower right) until I looked at the picture later!

We caught a 5p ferry back to Fremantle and enjoyed the sunset at the beach.

We returned to Bali after our quick weekend in Singapore and headed to Nusa Dua to meet up with our friends Matt & Galina. It’s an area of beautiful beaches on the very southern tip of the island.

It’s also near Bali National Golf Club, and I headed out Monday afternoon for a round. It’s a very nice course, and was in good shape, though there were some flooded areas from very heavy rains the day before. I had hired clubs and hit the driver really well, finding 10 of 13 fairways (half is a good day for me normally) which was very helpful on a course with plenty of trouble beyond the margins. Unfortunately, with hired clubs, I don’t get the best fit and didn’t hit the irons well. Score could have been better but it was good fun to get out and hit a few.

The 6th was a lovely par 3 up the hill.

And the 17th had an island green (and construction on a new hotel in the background). Yep, I hit the green and made a par.

Back at the end of December, while in Seminyak, I did a 3-day SCUBA course and became PADI Open Water certified. Matt’s been certified for years, so we went to Tulamben (just north of Amed) on Tuesday and did two dives at the wreck of the US Liberty. (Leena and Galina enjoyed a beach day.) The USS Liberty was a troop transport ship that was damaged in WWII and scuttled on Bali when they realized they couldn’t make it to Jakarta for repairs. An earthquake (I’m guessing associated with an eruption) in the 60s tumbled the ship into the ocean. It’s a shore dive; the wreck is just 50 meters off shore. After 50 years in the water it’s got coral all over it and plenty of fish around it. We did some fun swim through passages on various parts of the wreck.

I added to my certification by doing a Deep Water Adventure dive on the first dive, going beyond the 18m I did in the Open Water course. We went close to 30m deep. I also dived on Nitrox, and completed my Enriched Air Certification.

We headed back to Ubud for a couple of nights to meet our friend Sandy. We caught a taxi to check out a temple called Elephant Cave. I had to don a sarong.

Our taxi.

The taxi driver talked us into a second stop: Tegenungen Waterfall.

From Ubud, we (including Sandy) headed to Sanur, another beachtown in the southeast of Bali.

After six weeks in Bali, we headed to Perth on the 31st of January.

We’ll get a post up soon covering the last couple of weeks. In brief: we stayed in Ubud through the 18th, did a quick 36 hours in Singapore to reset our visas (good for 30 days), met our friends Matt & Galina in Nusa Dua (Bali) upon return, headed back to Ubud on the 25th to meet our friend Sandy, then followed Sandy to Sanur (Bali) a couple of days ago.

We’re heading to Perth, Australia on Wednesday the 31st. And we just booked all of the following:

Saturday 2/10 Perth to Melbourne
Tuesday 2/20 Melbourne to Auckland, New Zealand
Wednesday 3/7 Auckland to Fiji
Wednesday 3/14 Fiji to Phoenix

So that’s a week and a half in Perth where we’ll explore the city and plan to make our way down to Margaret River (south on the coast) and back.

We have a week and a half in Melbourne where we plan to make our way south to Tasmania.

We have two weeks between flights in and out of Auckland which gives us time to explore New Zealand for a second time.

Then we have a week in Fiji before heading to Phoenix to meet friends for Spring Training. Let us know if you’re interested in joining the fun!

From there, Drew heads to New Jersey on a Sunday night red-eye to be reunited with his golf clubs. Oh, I’ll also see my Dad & stepmom along with brother David and family. I’ll drive with Dad down to Hilton Head on the 24th/25th where we’ll get in some golf before heading to Augusta for the Monday practice round for the Masters (April 2nd).

Leena’s plans after Spring Training  are TBD…

We did a quick weekend in Singapore to reset our 30-day visas to Indonesia. Our flight arrived around midnight and we grabbed a cab to our AirBnB. Except the cabbie didn’t use GPS and couldn’t really find the place. We finally got him to call our host to successfully navigate the last couple of blocks.

We found a great breakfast Saturday and set out walking to the Gardens By The Bay. Singapore is a beautiful city. Here are many pictures!

 

The downtown core. On the very left is the Helix Bridge (for pedestrians). The three-tower building with what looks like a surfboard on top is the stunning Sands hotel and casino.

The Helix Bridge.

Gardens By the Bay “skyline”.

Leena on the Skyway walk in the Gardens By The Bay.

Two more views of the Sands.

We walked a lot (over 13 miles on the day!) and explored a bit by train as well. We tried to catch a ferry to some islands in the harbor, but we missed the last ferry by about 15 minutes. Then we tried to head to the Raffles hotel, home of the Singapore Sling, but it was closed for major renovations. So we found a rooftop bar and a lovely (but pricey) bottle of bubbles at the end of the day.

From Ubud, we headed to Amed, a sleepy town on the beach in the northeast of Bali, close to Mt Agung, the (recently) active volcano. We stopped at a water temple, Tirta Gangga, just outside of Amed. Tirta Gangga means “water from the Ganges” which is a holy river in India. This temple is important to the Balinese people as it is on the royal palace grounds of the region’s former king.

I carefully traversed the walkway…

Among the many fish

Mt Agung is shy, but it did come out of the clouds a few times.

Though the beach was rocky, we took a number of walks in both directions accompanied by the famous Bali dogs.

We stayed in a lovely villa on the beach with an incredible pool.

The food in Amed was delicious. This is where we discovered Rendeng, as in Pork Rendeng, Beef Rendeng, or Chicken Rendeng. It’s a savory sauce for meat with a bit of conconut milk and just the right amount of spice.

One of my favorite blogs over the last couple of years in planning our “big trip” has been Never Ending Voyage. They’re carry-on travelers and have been on the road six or seven years with no plans to stop (as their blog name implies). We learned plenty from them on how to sell/donate everything from a “normal” life and how to pack for the road (we seriously have the exact packs and packing cubes they use). We also leaned that Ubud, Bali is one of their favorite spots on the planet.

We got a ride to Ubud on Tuesday. We have a room with a private bath and terrace at a home stay a couple hundred meters off a busy street. It’s a family’s property, and they’ve built it out like a compound. There are multiple buildings, some for family residences, and some for guests. The $25 a night price includes breakfast on the terrace each morning.

Sunset from the terrace:

We took a cooking class. Lots of slicing, chopping and stirring. This will be fun to recreate someday.

Ingredients.

Action shot!

We enjoyed the dishes for dinner.

The class was at the back of the Cafe Wayan property which included a restaurant and extensive garden with dining areas.

We’re staying near the Monkey Forest and saw plenty of monkeys on a walk past it.

Today, Sunday, we felt recovered enough from the motor bike accident to take on a hike. We did the Capuhan Ridge walk. It was about 40 minutes from our place to the start of the hike. The hike is 4K total – 2k out and 2k back.

You pass a temple at the start of the hike.

From a cafe at the end of the hike:

We had a couple of juices at the end of the hike. A mango smoothie for me and a mint & lemon juice for Leena.

By the way, the juice offerings are great here. The other day at lunch I had carrot/ginger/orange and Leena had, uh, something green (mint and lime?).

We’ll be in Ubud through the 18th. Then we’ll do a quick weekend in Singapore to reset our 30-day tourist visas.

You’re supposed to ring in the New Year with a bang, but we did it with a crash.

New Year’s Eve was lovely and low key. We went out for a couple of champagne cocktails (French 75’s), then to Naughty Nuri’s for ribs. The plate of Balinese-spiced ribs was large and excellent. The atmosphere was a bit like Hooters for ribs. Very amusing. Upon request, the DJ would play a part of “Shake it Off” by Taylor Swift and the waitresses would gather and perform a line dance for the requesting (and paying) table. They’d scream out “Shake, Shake, Shake” during the chorus and the chorus climax of “Shake it Off!” Because, of course they would.

The decor included pigs.

We headed home early and enjoyed some wine with our host while watching the Sydney celebration (three hours ahead). I turned in a bit after 10.

For New Year’s Day, we took a day trip to Nusa Lembongan, an island southeast of Bali. It was an easy half hour boat ride. We grabbed some juices in town when we arrived, then rented a motor bike for the day for about $7.50. We had lunch at Dream Beach which really was pretty dreamy.

We then headed to Sunset Beach which was even better. It has an out-of-the-way (i.e. not too crowded) beach club with an infinity pool overlooking the ocean.

We needed to be back to town at 4 for the 4:30 ferry home, so we left around 3:30. The motor bike had gone pretty well all day. A bit unsteady at times, and some trouble turning, but no accidents.

Well, that changed quickly. We’d stopped at a small intersection to wait for traffic to clear. It was uphill, and as I accelerated into the right turn (note that you drive on the left here), things got a bit wobbly. Not a big problem; I figured I would just stop, get us settled, then continue. Well, you pull back on the right grip to hit the throttle and accelerate, and you also pull back to brake. I managed to turn the throttle full blast as I went for the brake. The throttle won and we crashed hard into a knee-high wall on the left side of the road.

Ouch, ouch ouch. No good. We both scraped up our left legs from the knee down pretty good. The wall was a rock wall with a very rough and uneven cement finish. The kind of wall that will scrape you pretty good! I also got a deep gash on the front of my knee, and Leena badly bruised (at least) her foot.

We picked up the bike and managed to drive it very slowly back to town. While neither of us was bleeding much initially, we were pretty messy by the time we got to town. I paid the rental place the ~$60 they asked for damages to the bike. We cleaned up as best we could by washing up in the ocean, then found some gauze wraps in the ferry office’s first aid kit. We were quite the sight with our bloody bandages on the ferry ride home.

It was pretty clear I’d need stitches, so we looked up a clinic that was just a couple of kilometers from where we’re staying, called to confirm they were open, and I hopped in a cab. I walked in to a nice receptionist who was behind a desk and couldn’t see below my waist. So she asked what’s wrong. I said I was in a motorbike accident and pointed to my leg. She came around the desk and, well, sprang into action. I was immediately taken to a room with a bed, and while I filled out a consent form they started cleaning the wound and explaining that they’d be giving me stitches. They were stitching me up about 10 minutes after I walked through the door. I also got a tetanus booster for good measure.

The cost? About $200 for stitches, tetanus booster, pain medication, and antibiotic pills and ointment. And this is the first day on traveler’s insurance; my Nike insurance ran through the end of December. We’ll see how the claim goes.

Leena will go for an X-ray on her foot tomorrow since it’s very painful at this point.

WARNING: I’m going to post a couple of nasty injury photos below, so stop scrolling if you don’t want to see those.

It’s a deep gash below my knee.

To fill some space, I’ll tell you about my experience the last time I got stitches in the US. I banged heads with a guy playing hoops, and had a cut on the line of my cheek bone. I entered the ER a bit after 8p (because all the urgent cares had closed) and was stitched up almost six hours later (just before 2a). And the bill was a bit over $1100.

I might have been lucky this wasn’t directly on the knee cap or shin but just in between.

The doctor and nurse were amused that I took some pictures.

OK, here’s my knee before and after four stitches.

We landed in Bali about 8p on Wednesday night, had an easy trip through immigration and customs, and were met by a driver from our rental unit. It was about an hour ride home and he was playing some great cheesey pop songs. How had I never heard this before?

We’re staying the first week in Canggu, a beach town on the south side of the island far from the volcano. We’ve caught some nice sunsets here.

A nice gecko joined us for dinner a couple of nights ago but he (she?) needs to do a better job. Too many moths flying around that place.

We hired a driver recommended by a friend and toured some of the island yesterday. The first stop was a temple in Denpasar.

That was followed by a temple on a lake that’s at a high elevation. The lake provides fresh water for many of the seemingly endless rice paddies on the island.

Speaking of rice paddies, our last stop was a late lunch followed by a walk through terraced rice paddies.

We got caught in some rain showers along the way. I took this from a hut where we covered up while it came down pretty hard.

Christmas Day has been rainy most of the way, but it’s cleared up a bit, so I guess we’re off for a drink, a sunset, and some dinner. Merry Christmas!