2018 S.E. Asia: West Bali

At 2:45am on October 11th an earthquake shook our Ubud, Bali room. It was the second quake we've experienced in 11 days. The first occurred while we were at Mount Kinabalu in Borneo. That one had been a big ☆bang☆, and resulted in the devastating Sulawesi tsunami and horrific mud flow in Palu. The Bali one was a sustained shake and slight roll, which lasted about 10 seconds. We stayed awake for half an hour, until its epicentre was posted on-line and a tsunami was not apparent. The epicentre was in the Bali Sea, just north-west of Bali, very close to our next destination, West Bali National Forest.

We expected the drive to the West Bali National Forest to be through countryside, but almost the entire way was built environment. This caused us to reflect on Vancouver Island equivalents. We calculated that Bali is 20% the size of V.I. Taking the 4 million resident people on Bali and factoring up, results in 20 million people, which is more than half the population of Canada equivalent living on V.I. On top of that, at peak tourist season in Bali results in about 3/4 the population of Canada on Vancouver Island. Sure! There would be a lot more built environment on Vancouver Island if that were the case!

Our five-hour travel day included a stop at Pura Ulun Danu Bratan (Shaivite water temple by Lake Bratan), where Bob took a few bird photos down by the lake at the shore, as well as a snap of the famous temple tower.

We arrived at our Batu Ampar room in Banyuwedang (West Bali), and found it to be similar to our Ubud, Bali room, with outdoor w/c and gauze curtained bed. Already a few lizards have been chirping a welcome. Bob booked a 6am-5pm birding outing for the next day and then we walked to the beach past a busy bunch of birds in bushes - including a few new ones for Bob's i-Naturalist data base! Dinner was late, as usual, with service from 7-9pm only (once the sun has set and the air starts to cool down).

In the morning, having departed at 5:50am, by 8:00am Bob and guide Hery from Java had spotted over 19 bird species, though some were not photographed (np). They saw Green jungle fowl, Delineated barbet, Bali starling, Collared kingfisher, Coppersmith barbet, Black tie falconette, Black winged starling (np), S.E  drongo, Black drongo, Javan spangled drongo, Rocket tail treepie, Wood swallow, Long tailed shrike, Pied fantail (np), Javan flameback woodpecker, Olive sided sunbird, Olive headed taylorbird (np), Chestnut headed bee eater, and Scarlet headed flowerpecker (np)!

Shortly before noon, they spotted the elusive-so-far-from-us  Hornbill! The ones they saw were Oriental pied hornbill. They went on to also see Asian dollar bird, Laced woodpecker, Javan banded pita, Yellow vented bulbul, Bee eater, Green pigeon, Black Nape Fruit dove, Savanagh nightjar, and very rare Black-wing starling (np). By 1pm, 28 species; by the end of the day over 40!

Yolanda spent the morning enjoyably re-reading and editing typos on the past six weeks of Blogs (so the typos you noticed should be corrected now :-) and doing the final hand-wash of laundry before the K.L. washing machine. In the afternoon she worked on drawings of shells found at the beach the previous evening, and imagined Bob's happy face at seeing and photographing so many birds today, including the Hornbill!

Bob booked a snorkel excursion for the next day and we ended the evening with a tie game of Bananagrams.

Bob's snorkeling was a great success! He saw many fancy fish, a sea turtle, and sea stars. Yolanda worked on another drawing and spoke again with Erma from Colorado, who very much reminds us of our thoughtful niece Christine! Erma is headed to Sumatra soon to do a 5-day trek in the jungle to see Orangutan and other animals found in the north of Sumatra, possibly a tiger or pygmy elephant. She is then off to Nepal and India. She spoke of the UN paper on climate change, released two days ago, and we (including Bob, who returned elated from his snorkel outing) discussed elements of current global challenges. Irma introduced her ideas about abundance and disparity, and the need to shift to a framework of gratitude and greed. In Bali, their gratitude is apparent in so many ways. Daily offerings are everywhere in shrines, temples, and doorsteps in multiples.