A Fateful Feast

Today, we woke to a cloudy sky but no rain....yet. While packing up our bikes, both Richy and I started slowly began to do the itchy dance. We quickly realized we were covered in giant red ants and they were crawling all over us! We both ran around looking like idiots trying to swat the ants off while the kid working at the reception desk whacks us with a duster. So now I have ants and dust, which I am severely allergic to, all over me. After that little episode, we head out to Tirta Ganga. Tirta Ganga is known mostly for The Royal Water Palace and its vast rice terraces.

When we got to the water palace we hired a guide to show us around the place.... BIG MISTAKE. This guy was terrible. There was one point were Richy and I both started laughing out loud because we were both bored out of our minds. Several times through out the tour I contemplated the humor of leaving Richy alone with him to suffer. Before we finished, we paid him, thanked him, and finished the tour on our own. The rest of palace was beautiful and just as we finished it began to rain. We waited for a while to depart but then realized this rain was inevitable. Along the way we passed several process ions of people celebrating the coming of a full moon. Tons of people dressed in traditional attire and walking the streets singing and playing music. The rain was on and off for most of the ride but it wasn't as issue because of the picturesque landscape we rode through. Tier after tier of paddies covering every hill in sight throughout the Valley's. After leaving the paddies it had just begun to rain really hard and I spotted our next rest stop.

Outside this small eatery was a giant pig on a bamboo stalk that had just finished roasting. I was a calling for us to stop there and get the first cuts of freshly roasted swine. The massive pig was stuffed with large beer bottles for moisturizing the meat and was covered in a solid glaze of rub. The family that served us was just as excited as we were because they don't get many tourist's in this area. They served us massive slabs of pig with more crispy-crunchy skin than we could handle. Along with the meat came a big bowl of rice, the best sambal (a Balenise hot sauce) I have had yet, coke's, and finished with endless array of exotic fruits. They had no limit to the amount of food we could consume and allowed us to keep eating till stuffed. By the end of the feast, our bill totaled at $7.50 between the two of us! After filling our stomach's to the point of "Eli-Full," we waddled to our bikes and made our way further up the coast.

We only had to stop one more time because of the down pour and just as we cleared the mountains, all the rain stopped and there wasn't a cloud in front of us. We finished our day finding another beachfront bungalow where we can walk less than 30ft to the black sand beach, warm ocean water, and chill in our hammocks.