Lost in paradise (Mar. 9/09 - Ubud, Bali, Indonesia)

We had great intentions today to follow a suggested route that would take us on a 6 hour scenic walk through the outskirts of Ubud. Things started out fine, following a main road west out of town, past a temple, over a creek, and up some stairs into the rice fields. But after another temple, the book gave some misleading directions that had us walk about half an hour in the wrong direction before we finally asked someone for help. Yup, we had gone the wrong way. So we turned around and backtracked, looking for a particular street. A local guy noticed we looked lost (our map totally sucked!) and so he gave us the "short cut" to where we wanted to go. It did end up putting us on the right street, but the long path through the rice fields was way longer than if we had just gone one block farther down the road! For our next wrong turn of the day, we turned left on the street instead of right since the book didn't say which way to go, and our instincts said left. Wrong! Half a mile in the wrong direction, turn around, another set of wrong directions from a local guy pointing down a long trail that led nowhere, and then sure enough, the path we were looking for was only a few minutes past where we took the wrong turn in the first place. When we finally got to the bottom of the stairs, the "rough, rustic dirt trail skirting the gorge" looked more like a vague mud path through a landslide. We contemplated giving it a try or not, and just after we started down, a local guy showed up who said that the whole slope was gone just around the corner in just that - a landslide! Just our luck. So after all that hassle, we never did get to follow the trail along the river that we had hoped for.



After four hours of walking in the hot sun, we decided to retrace our steps back (minus the wrong turns of course!) and have some lunch at a little restaurant we had passed in the rice fields. It was actually a pretty short walk back from there, thankfully. We spent the rest of the day in the pool, shopping, and napping - resting up for another adventure tomorrow: biking down a volcano!