A motorbike mission (Mar. 11/09 - Ubud, Bali, Indonesia)

We had a mission today to ride a motorbike along the east coast of Bali to figure out where we want to spend a few days diving. Unfortunately, the first half of the day was miserable for me, as I still felt horrible from whatever sort of food poisoning I picked up yesterday. By the time we were climbing over to the eastern part of the island, I was feeling considerably better. The scenery through the pass between Gunung Agung (Bali's enormous 3100m volcano) and a smaller one on the east point was spectacular. Terraced rice fields stepped up the valley bottoms and part way up the slope as the road twisted through a jungle-covered tunnel along the hillside. The northeast coast soon became visible, and soon we were pulling into the little coastal town of Amed.

There's not much to Amed except bunch of hotels, diveshops, and long crescents of black pebbly beach. The offshore reefs sound like they're teeming with life, with crystal clear 28°C water and very little current. Perfect! There's also a US cargo ship sunk nearby and several other sites that you can swim to from shore, which will made for some great (and cheap!) shore dives. We found a dive shop that sounded good and reserved a room nearby, had some lunch (well, Ken did!) and hit the road. We drove back the way we came, and did surprisingly well with navigating the sometimes confusing roads. Ken has become a pro motorbike driver, using the horn, passing with oncoming traffic, and jumping right into packed roundabouts - just like a local!