After a disagreement last night about what we’d do today, it was raining this morning. So we lay in, took it easy and enjoyed walking slowly along the garden path with a big umbrella arm in arm.
We luxuriated over our breakfast, enjoying the fruit, granola, and cooked courses. They really produce some incredible looking and tasting food here, we have been absolutely spoiled. This is our last full day at Pita Maha so it was nice to take the morning easy as tomorrow we are up and out. We took our time sipping coffee while enjoying looking out at the damp jungle. And once breakfast was done, we lay in the villa and watched the rain till it stopped. Well, I did. Aimi snoozed on my chest. I love it when she does that.
Once the rain had cleared we took a long stroll thru Ubud and up into the rice fields where we had ventured before. But today we went further. The weaker willed tourists dropped off and pretty soon it was just us and the locals. We were on tiny single track pathways, but still motorbikes would be found next to someone working in a field. Out here we can see why people love bali. Its quiet, there are gorgeous curved rice terraces, dotted with little houses. The only noise is the occasional motorbike puttering up a track or ducks paddling thru the rice fields.
We walked a good way up following a track alongside one of the many deep gorges that flow down the hillside. Eventually the track turned into just the concrete wall of an irrigation channel. And then the ground beneath the irrigation channel fell into the gorge. It was quite a way down, maybe 10m and the channel was just hanging there. About 4m of it was unsupported, but the water kept flowing and people kept walking across it, so, over we went.
Not long after, we started back towards Ubud. This was when we passed a group of people harvesting rice. We have mostly seen what looks to be fallow fields or small and newly planted rice in neat rows. These rice plants were fully grown and look like small ears of wheat. Dry sandy colour grass with stalks holding a bunch of rice bent over at the top. These were being cut in handfuls and then thrashed into a net to collect the rice grains.. further down the hill we saw tarps with all the rice spread out, drying in the sun.
We found a nice restaurant with the whole structure made from chunky bamboo. It had a spiral staircase up to a balcony and air conditioned room. This is modern jingle living! It was decorated simply and had the look that I think most of the modern minimalist designers are going for. Really simple, concrete floor, bamboo posts, metal frame tables with large wooden tops and tropical pot plants everywhere. The food was spectacular too, especially sitting in the shade, looking out at the view with a cold drink. After a few days not quite feeling like we fit in here, mostly because of all the traffic and rubbish, this was much nicer.
This evening the hotel was putting on the Balinese dancing again. It was fun and something new, but we didn’t feel like we needed to see it again. The music is distinctly difficult to enjoy, as we like to enjoy music. So tonight we had dinner in the villa and watched more movies while eating chocolate. This is the last night we are here, so it was nice to be on our own, enjoying the room and a bath big enough for 2.