Deja Vu All Over Again -- Pelabuhan Ratu Day Three

Start at Day 1 below if traditional chronology is your thing. The whole area has been blessedly empty because sadly people are still afraid the sea will rise up on them again... but we weren't phased...click on the pics for larger versions...

And wake up to... a day just like yesterday... and tomorrow. Except today the waiter brings you a pen and asks you to underline your choices... and you get nearly what you hoped for!!! Time to swim again... no, it's time to drink more tea and read more... this will be a lazy day. Maybe a massage? No... let's do a LITTLE something... like maybe...

Drive up the coast about ten kilometres to where the surf begins to get famously high, hit the beach of a socialist-style hotel that bizarrely is identical on the inside to all the places I went for haircuts or a decent cup of coffee in Poland... needless to say, you don't stay indoors there... hit the beach, play in the waves, and don't stop til you drop, even when the monsoon rains come out of nowhere (more or less) and cool you off up top while slamming your skin like tiny needles.

You'll sip one of these 50-cent fresh coconuts when you get tired of playing in the monsoon...then, having worked up an enormous appetite, go back to that wondrous sheltered restaurant to wait out the torrents that didn't stop when you came out of the waves. The staff by now is deeply appreciative of our business... you seem to consume more and more there everyday. After lunch, you head to Tita's Jeep Tank... she wants to show you something away from the water...

The first of a few towns here in "Foggy Mountain" land... click on the pick and note the variety of plant life...

That's a town down there...

And here you are, 5 kilometres and 1 hour from the ocean, high up in the Javanese jungle. Hundreds of decent-looking homes built on stilts into the sides of mountains around countless varieties of vegetation, forming villages every few minutes on this road. There across the hills you see a little village. Zoom in and you'll notice the mosque, visible when everything else no longer is...

Quick pose...

What a beautiful view from here on high!. Better hurry...

...or it'll disappear on you...

They don't call this "hill" by the sea "Foggy Mountain" for nothing...

Sunset's coming... you gaze across these hills to the foggy sea that disappears out there in the sky... zoom in and you might see the dots of fishing boats...

Not quite as pretty as the one at Sepa Island back in September, but we realized later (and you'll see from the pics), that we was fuled... just got really cloudy for awhile. That's why they call this area Foggy Mountain... and that sun sure moved quickly... or was it the cloud?

Hmm, there's one, a ways off among the hills...

We saw so many on the way up -- how come we keep missing them on the way down? Ahh! Finally. There at the bottom of the hill, the famous terraced rice paddies, and this is a big one. Very impressive to appreciate the work that goes into maintaining one of these. and I DO eat tons of the stuff every day...

You ate too much too late for round three up the road, so tonight you lounge on pillows in another area of the Bunga Ayu restaurant, snacking on fried delicacies from street vendors, sipping tea and then beer... Later you move out to the bandstand near the beach, empty tonight, and play that woodblock- stacking game from Thailand and swapping stories deep into the night. In the morning the waiter will bring you only half of what you ordered for breakfast, but he'll have the tea and you can sort the rest out later... then it's time to reisit the road home to Jakarta...

Blue Moon -- Pelabuhan Ratu Day Two

Don't forget to click on the pics for a bigger version

And you wake up to this... a waiter has already brought the tea, you've chosen your breakfast, and the water looks SO nice... after breakfast (why did the waiter bring you TWO of everything??? Your roommate ordered glass noodles...) take your roommate down to the water to get hammered by those waves... then wake up the lazy gits next door to get the day moving... and what a day it will be.

walk along the beach from the bungalow about ten minutes, climb up over a pier, pick your way through an admittedly dank and unattractive market (closed for mid-morning siesta -- much better when it's bustling later in the day), you emerge to this spectacular harbor. Nearly all the boats sport flags supporting one political party or another... and they all seem to get along... Maybe I'm missing something.

having negotiated a boat and crew with this group, waiting for it to be readied... we learn they actually rest in this perch and signal to their colleagues on boats in the water when they spot telltale signs of fish from that perch...

The view towards shore...

Out in the bay all the way to the sea, the fishing rigs...

The crew of the Mentari is getting ready to drop anchor...

Reasonably close to shore... give in to the temptation, jump into the ocean, then pose by the boat (check out the joins!!!) before you...

swim to shore and play with the locals (and those waves -- every seventh or so is mighty fine -- this is the real Indian Ocean out here!!!

You SO wanna know where those stairs are heading... maybe another time... right there to the right is a little cave... definitely another time. There's so much more to do here...

Next to the stairs, there's a perch up that tree which you could, if you were able, climb to to watch for fish. That's what those kids do for the local fishermen when they're not goofing with you... do you notice the rocks?

Next to those stairs the rocks and jungle are immediate... you're defintiely not in Maine anymore...

frolicking-full, feeling famished, a feast of a lunch is suddenly a long wait away... you ask your 2-man crew to ready the Mentari for the return trip, and this time that means opening that blue tarp... you're a little pink, despite the Level 30 sunscreen...

coming home now, the fishing rigs must be returning (that's the Indian Ocean out there) for a shift change...

Let the ssmentari drop you right on the beach of your Bunga Ayu bungalow... and notice how the light has changed on the nearby village... the meadow above it seems so much greener.

doze and read until well after sunset when the fresh seafood you convinced the ladies to haggle for at the market is waiting for you, gently barbecued, here...

Hard to tell if the view is better at breakfast or dinner, but looking out at this, over those crustaceous lobsters, barbecued (whole, and I do mean "whole") fish, and the tenderest grilled squid my mouth has ever dissolved, with the sound of those waves crashing just below... having just joined the house band to serenade a pretty full dining room with "To Love Somebody"...

...on a night like tonight, after a day like today, you have to get out and walk in it...

The Rainy Season: Pelabuhan Ratu Day 1

Don't forget to click on the pics for larger versions...

So now it really is the rainy season... and every year it looks like this in Jakarta. All you want to do is escape... 3 hours later, on the morning when all the goats and cows overtaking the city are slaughtered in the mosques and distributred among the general populous... a friend of mine and I have slid out of town unnoticed (unnoticed because my friend drives like everyone else here, perhaps?)...

Your hostess isn't around to show you to your room, yet? No problem, Mister. Up the road are any number of spots where you can unwind, gaze back at the town...

...and down at the menu in this sheltered windowless Japanese-style perch on the beach. Around the corner from Bunga Aya, we wasted no time in finding a place to stuff ourselves. I learned after three days that no matter what it said in English, everything on the menu here (a page each for fish (mostly snapper), prawn, squid, and lobster (a bigger distant cousin of Maine lobster)) leaves the guest figuring out how to get back here again.

You've done all the driving, through floods and rains, up and down tall hills and even mountains, over and around craters in the too narrow by half "highway", you've driven in their lane while they drove in yours, you've gone too fast, too slow... 3 hours of that and now you're here, feasted, and sated; time for a pot of tea on the verandah, a good book, and maybe one of Ben's cigars.

After dinner in the terrace restaurant overlooking the sea, drive up the road about a mile, where the jungle and hills begin, and find this resort where you can perch in the treetops...

...and relax among new friends on this first peaceful wondrous night free of the beast Jakarta. In the middle across from me is Tita, manager of Bunga Ayu, who invited us all down. On either side of her are Lars and Eva, old friends from Bali days, whom Putri and I met this very day...