Wow! still behind on my blogs and we are leaving tomorrow so I don't think I will catch up. So I'll just some up what I can.

Day 4 was equal parts amazing and nauseating. We scheduled ourselves for a snorkeling tour in Talumben, which is a black volcanic sand beach on the east side of the island.

We are staying in Ubud, which is in the middle of the island so nothing is really over 40 miles from here.
Little did we know that the ride would be almost 2 1/2 hours of winding roads, bumps and stop and go traffic. By the time we got there, both of us were green with motion sickness and too nauseated to want to do anything other than just sit down.

Thankfully, at least we had some good company. Stephanie and Tim. She's a social worker from France and he's a pediatric kidney specialist from Germany. Both of them are currently living in Paris. They are coming to California in October or November so there'll be a good chance that ya'll can meet them.

We had tons of time in the car together so we commenced in the usual travel talk, swapping travel stories, talking about good places in the world to live or work, ragging on George Bush, etc, etc. By the time we got to the beach, we were all talked out but we were too motion sick to really talk any more anyways.

Mike and I had to sit a while on the beach just to get to the point where it didn't feel like we were still moving. And once our stomachs finally stopped churning, we actually had to get in the water! Which wasn't exactly pleasant because, for a while there, it was hard to even look at the water! I just wanted to sit on land and stare at things that weren't moving.

But we had limited time and really couldn't miss the snorkeling so we kind of just dragged ourselves in and went for it.

There's a shipwreck down there. It's a sunken supply ship from WW2 that was sunk by the Japanese. Of course, now it's covered in coral, barnacles and other sea life. It's absolutely amazing. It's so huge, you can barely believe what you're looking at. Swimming around, you can still make out the stern, the propeller and other parts that still vaguely resemble a ship.

The sea life is abundant and colorful. Hundreds of tiny yellow fish that spiral downward in large, flurried schools, lots of little flashy blue ones. Huge gray ones, bigger than your face that surround you by the dozen, some random blue striped ones, some little sharks etc. etc.

On the drive back from the dive, Stephanie and Tim mentioned that they wanted to stay in Ubud rather than driving back to their hotel (which was something like over an hour's drive away) so we invited them over to our hotel to shower and hang out with us.

We went into town for an excellent dinner of lemongrass oxtail soup and seafood stirfry and then walked up the street to catch a kecak fire show afterward...

Poop! the lady says the internet cafe is closing now.
Gotta go! - later! - S