Exploring Ubud – Part 2

Continued from yesterday”¦ The next stop was the Ubud Palace and Puri Saren Agung, which is a large compound in the heart of Ubud. The compound has several areas. One part of it is the temple with various ornate buildings and altars around a courtyard. From the temple there are a couple gates. One leads to a complex of low, decorative houses where the royal family lives, and the other to what looks like a community area with several open buildings and a kitchen. The first shot is the main part of the temple and the second is one of the royal houses. This is the traditional Balinese architecture we have talked about over the last few days.

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Across the street from the palace and temple, on the south side of the street, is Continue reading

Seeing Wildlife in Komodo National Park

This morning when we got up, we were greeted by a monkey sitting on the mud in front of the mangroves near Kosmos.

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He was still contentedly sitting there when we went into shore. We met our ranger friend from yesterday at the ranger station at 0700 for a longer trek around Rinca, where we would hopefully see more animals. There were three Komodos under the cabin this morning, including a young one only about three and a half feet long.

We started off Continue reading

Komodo Dragons, Monkeys and Buffalo

Continued from yesterday”¦ There were four Komodo dragons lounging under one of the cabins. One of them was huge at least 9 feet long. They are the exact same color as the dirt, so despite being huge, they are actually kind of hard to see. Kind of like the whales in the ocean when we swam with them. The bodies look similar to a crocodile and the head looks like a lizard.

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They have scaly skin that looks like Continue reading

The Crater Lakes at Kelimatu Part 2

Continued from yesterday”¦ There were a handful of tourists up there, and we were all disappointed that we missed out on the sunrise. A few left right away. We had been told that as the sun rises higher in the sky the colors continue to change from what they were at sunrise and that we should hang out for the morning instead of leaving at dawn like most of the tourists. We waited, along with a couple more stragglers, for the sun to break through. Instead, Continue reading