Another short post–we still don’t trust Typepad.

Our past few days have been largely spent getting from Jogjakarta to Denpasar, the capital of the province of Bali.  But we had to make it fun, so we stopped at Mt. Bromo in East Java on the way.  It was a nine hour minibus ride from Jogja to Probolinggo, then we changed for another minibus ride up to what we thought was the town of Cemoro Lawang.  Turns out we were a couple kilometers short, but that’s OK.  We stayed in a very nice hotel, so it was cool.  The weather was amazing, so comfortable, at night it was about 60 degrees.  For the first time since May, we didn’t need a fan or an air conditioner, and we actually needed blankets to sleep.

We left at 4:00 AM to catch the sunrise at the summit of the volcano, but to make a long story short, we had another one of our misunderstandings/miscommunications, and didn’t make it to the peak until 5:40 or so.  It was other-wordly up there.  First off, it was downright chilly.  Our long-sleeved shirts finally came in handy.  Plus, the landscape looked like something resembling Mt. Mordor in the Lord of the Rings.  You’ll have to check out our pictures when we put them online. 

After that, we had breakfast, descended back to Probolinggo, sweated in the heat for two hours, and then hopped onto a direct bus that put us in Denpasar only 8.5 hours later.  On the way, we took a ferry, which the bus drove straight on to.  The last 128 kilometers from the harbor in West Bali to Denpasar took 3 hours–we’ll let you work out the average speed in miles per hours.  But when you’re on a two-lane road and you’re stuck behind a slow-moving dump truck full of coconuts, there’s not much we can do about it.

So we made it to Denpasar, split a cab to the tourist resort of Kuta, and found a cheap room.  This place reminds us of South Beach…aside from the Indonesian faces on shop owners, you wouldn’t know that this isn’t some other beach town in the West.  Loud Australians in loud surfer wear with sunburned faces and Bintang Beer tanktops.  We don’t particularly like it here too much, and are looking forward to our transfer to Candi Dasa later today.

That’s all for now, we’ll be in touch again later.