The next morning after breakfast, we rented motorcycles and cruised up to Senaru to check out the waterfall but just got information enough to know that we needed to come back when we had more time. Because after the 3-hour drive there, we still needed time to return to Senggigi before dark in order to avoid the bug in the face attack that is a serious consequence of driving a motorcycle in Lombok at night. The drive from Senggigi to Senaru and back is an amazingly narrow, windy and steep up and down road with vista views of the ocean, cliffs and sandy shorelines, the rice padi fields, farmers and villagesall the while dodging goats, chickens, cows, children, other bikes, and cars that are too big to fit in the lane that was just a nice size for motorcycles. The drive would not have been nearly as fun in a car.
After 2 nights in Senggigi we took a bemo (like riding in the back of a covered pickup truck, basically) to Bangsal where we rode in a horse cart to the marina to catch the public boat to Gili Trawangan. We had to wait a while for enough people to arrive to fill the boat.
After dinner, our first night on the Gili Trawangan, we took a little stroll down to the end of the jetty to sit on the edge and watch the water and sky. I coughed a little and a Trawanggan woman who was also wasting some time on the end of the jetty came over and started doing some black magic/prayer/healing physical therapy to me. She was right in my face and talking very fast and loud in either Sasak or Indonesian language. It was difficult to remember how to speak in Bahasa, although I could pretty much understand what she was saying to me. She massaged my head and neck and hands and prayed multiple times facing each direction, then took my scarf and twisted it up and wrapped it around my head and pulled it tight while mumbling some voodoo mantra. While sitting on the jetty with my legs straight out in front of me, she pushed on my hips with her foot while pulling and moving my leg around with her hands. Then she asked me if Clint was my boyfriend or husband. I said no, just friends. She looked at my palm then ran over to Clint who was sitting quietly in the corner by himself, grabbed his hand and checked his palm. All the while she was talking loud and fast, and of course he couldn't understand a thing she was saying. She came back and told me that I must marry him because our palms are the same. She continued to tell me about herself. It was hard to understand, but what I got out of it was that she was married and her husband was at mainland with another of his wives. So she was alone that night just killing some time on the jetty, helping sick tourists.
The next morning after breakfast we headed down to the beach with our snorkel and fins. After swimming around for a while, checking out the fish and coral, I saw a guy paddle by on his canoe and decided I'd rather be on top of the water rather than in the water. He cruised by and asked if I wanted to rent his canoe for 20,000 rupiahs for the whole day. So I took it. I paddled around for a little while and then went back to check on. We sat on the beach for a few minutes looking across the way to the next island, Gili Meno. I thought since I had the canoe and all, I might as well head over there and check it out. As I was preparing for my voyage, the 'Pard' Ketut, who I rented the canoe from came by and asked where I was going. ('Pard' is a hick talk nickname meaning 'pard-ner' given by Clint to all the people who went way out of their way to help us.) I told Ketut I was heading to the other island, and he asked if I wanted him to go with me. I didn't mind the company and the supervision, so I agreed and we paddled out across the channel. Rather than just going straight across, Ketut wanted to go all the way around the island. It took a few hours to get around, so by the time we got back to Clint, I was pretty pooped.
The next day we moved down to Ketut's guest house and hung out with his friends for a couple of days. We decided to canoe around Gili Meno again, but this time bring Clint along for the ride. We stopped for lunch at Meno. While relaxing in the gazebo and looking at the sea and Gili Air, I got the bright idea to buy two canoes and take them back to Perhentian so I could play with them there and also rent them out to customers while I'm busy wakeboarding. I just so happened that someone next door to the restaurant had some canoes that they wanted to sell. So that was the day that I dropped a couple mil (rupiahs, that is) on 2 canoes. Pard tied them to his canoe and towed them back to Gili Trawanggan with us. We were about half way back when Clint had the painful realization that we were going to have to deal with hauling them all the way back to Pulau Perhentian. Together with Pard's friends, we brainstormed a few options for shipping the canoes to Malaysia in order to avoid having to haul them ourselves.
We headed back to Lombok the next day to rent motorbikes and go back to Senaru to check out the waterfalls. Pard asked to come with us in order to take us to some cargo shipping companies in Mataram and we said okaythat was a mistake. We rented 2 bikes in Bangsal. Pard Ketut rode on the back of my bike, which I think was a little too exciting for him. When we arrived in Senaru, on the beautiful foothills and rice paddies of a huge volcano, Pard Joe, whom we had met several days earlier at the Senaru marina, saw us cruising up the hill and led us to the guesthouse where he worked. The porch of our room overlooked a deep canyon of rice paddies and had a great view, when it was clear, of the volcano.
Joe took us to the waterfalls on a trail that hugged the steep canyon wall with an irrigation canal running along side. More than half of the canal went through tunnels in the cliff side, with windows built all along the way so that the tunnel diggers could see what they were doing. The first waterfall was pretty, but had no swimming hole, so we continued on to the second falls. This one was probably the best waterfall I've ever seen. It was truly amazing, with a couple of great swimming holes and nice rocks to jump off. As we were walking back down the trail, Joe asked if we wanted to walk through the tunnels. Of course the answer was yes! As we walked in the canal through the dark tunnels with the occasional bat flying past our faces, Clint and I got the bright idea of floating the Senaru canal on inner tubes. So that afternoon Joe took me into town to buy some tubes in preparation for our inaugural float of the Senaru canal the next morning. Everyone at the mechanic's shop where we filled the tubes told me I was crazy. I just smiled and said it's true.
There was a bit of an incident when Ketut woke up in the morning and couldn't find his wallet. We searched the room to find nothing so he went and got Joe. Joe came in the room for a minute to help us look, then went and got his boss. The boss came down. I randomly decided to lift up the mattress because sometimes that's were I put my valuables, and low and behold, there was his wallet. Ketut freaked out and threw it against the wall. Joe and boss left and the crisis was over. Ketut asked if I had put the wallet under the mattress. I'm pretty sure I did not. So he thought that Joe took it and then when he complained that it was missing, Joe put it under the mattress when he came in the room to help us look for it. I had given Joe some U.S. dollars as a partial payment for the canoes. Later he told me that $20 was missing, so I'm not sure if Joe was the offender or if Ketut was the offender.
After breakfast we headed back up to the waterfall with our tubes and floated most of the way back down the canal. It was like a spook alley water park ride, and a really long one at that. That inner tube float was definitely worth the 5 bucks it cost for the tubes!
From Senaru, we decided to take the scenic route to Mataram, around the north and east side of Lombok and up over the high volcano mountains. It was an amazing and beautiful drive, with incredibly steep and windy, narrow roads through the jungle and over the mountains. It was amazing and beautiful up until we hit the cloudburst. We and all of our belongings were soaked within seconds. My hands started to get so cold that my fingers were going numball the while with Ketut still on the back of my bike. We were pretty much out in the middle of nowhere and there was no shelter to stop and wait out the storm so we just kept driving.
Finally the rain cleared up, but the roads were still wet, my fingers still numb. Far from any villages and high in the jungle-covered mountains, as we cruised up over a steep slope and around a sharp bend, three guys jumped out in the middle of the road waving their arms and shouting, "Stop! Stop!" I thought they were up to no good because they had no vehicles there with them. I wasn't going to stop and just cruise by until Ketut said to stop. When he said that, I turned my head back to look, thinking that maybe they actually needed help or something. As I turned my head back to the front, I was heading straight off the road. I couldn't straighten the situation out fast enough to keep from crashing. The bike went down and I landed on my side. Ketut landed on top of me. I know because I heard his helmet hit mine. I was laid out flat in the middle of the road. The first thing that hurt was my hip that had been broken before in my car accident and I thought, "Great, what did I break this time." Clint drove up around the bend to find me lying next to my tipped over bike. It took me a few minutes to gather my senses and stand up. A couple of guys came by on their bikes and stopped to help me pick up the bike and move it off the road. As I squatted next to the bike, warming my hands on the exhaust pipe, Ketut was up talking to the 3 guys. I asked the guys that helped me with the bike why those guys had stopped us. They told me it was because they wanted to take our money. Then Ketut came back down and took out his Leatherman, pulled out two of the blades and hid it in his jacket before heading back up to talk to the guys some more. Clint and I didn't know exactly what was going on, but the situation was getting a little less than comfortable. A few vehicles passed, including a bike with a family and a car with the village elder inside. They stopped to see if we were okay, and I think that caused the offenders to back off a little bit. I just wanted to get the hell out of there so I told Ketut to get on and let's go. We hauled ass down off the mountain to the nearest village to relax, warm my hands on a cup of hot water and clean up my wounds (which aside from the black and blue on my hip and thigh, only required one bandage). Everyone in the village gathered around to find out what happened to us. Man, has the sunshine never felt so good.
Due to that little delay, we didn't make it to Mataram in time to check out the cargo shipping company, which was the whole reason we brought Ketut with us in the first place, so we just headed straight back to Senggigi for the night. I slept while Clint and Ketut went out to party it up with the locals. The next morning when I woke up, I found Pard sleeping on the floor and foaming at the mouth so much that it was bubbling up in an inch high dome out of his mouth. It almost made me hurl, but then it was pretty funny later when I told Clint about it.
We headed back to Gili Trawanggan to pick up the canoes. We stayed there for one night, rigged up the canoes with sarongs as shoulder straps to carry them, and headed out the next morning for Bali. We loaded them onto the public boat early in the morning, then onto a horse cart at Bangsal, then onto a mini bus to Senggigi, then onto a small boat out to a bigger boat, then on the big boat to Bali, then on another mini bus to Legian, where they stayed for a week while we cruised around Bali.
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