Day 2- Water Rafting and Animals!

Today was possibly one of the best days of my life. We woke up pretty early. Okay, we woke up REALLY early. We are still trying to adjust to this whole 15 hour time change. After a lovely breakfast in our villa, we set out to Ubud to go to an elephant safari and white water rafting tour.

Ubud is about 1 1/2 hours away from our Villa. The drive there was beautiful, we got to see a part of Bali that is completely undev

eloped and rural. There were many

rice paddies , temples , and small villages that we passed on our way up the mountain. Ubud is the spiritual center in Bali, and we were advised it would be the exact opposite of Kuta. It was, and gladly so! When we arrived at the Elephant park, we were in complete awe. Lush green forests surrounde

d us and all you could hear were birds chirping and roaring rapids in the distance. We met our elephant, Sen Sen , and started our journey around the forest. Sen Sen was a 20 year old female elephant who was very cute and a little crazy! She kept ripping shrubs off of the hillside - i guess she was very hungry! She also almo

st pushed a tree over at one point ( see picture) . During our walk with Sen Sen we saw a ton of monkeys in the trees. The whole experience was very surreal and awesome. After the 30 minute ride we got to feed Sen Sen

. We literally put a whole pineapple in her mouth and she crushed it! Awesome. There were two baby elephants at the park as well ( eeee!) . We got to play with the babies!! They were so precious. looking directly into an elephants eye is like looking into a Human eye- you can just see so much love and personality. I've always loved elephants, but now I am a real big fan.

Just as w

e thought this day couldn't get any better, one of my lifelong dreams was about to come true.... The park also hosts a friendly little bear named Honeybear. Honeybear looks to be about 75 pounds and is very friendly. He is so friendly that you are allowed to cuddle, play, feed, and take pictures with him! I'm mildly ob

sessed with bears... I will not go in the water past my waist in Malibu, but cuddling a baby bear in Indonesia ? No problem. This was a life changing experience. Honeybear was SO cute

and was all over us in our laps and hugging us. I've never been so happy and excited- baby elephants and baby bears all in one morning?!!

After the excitement of the elephants and bears, we were whisked off to begin our white water rafting adventure. We began the trek down the jungle to get into the rapids. I've never climbed down ( and later up!) so many stairs in my life. By the time we got to the bottom my legs were shaking. We rafted the river for 2 hours. On either side of us were lush jungle. There were some very steep and fun "boom booms " as our river guide called them. Some of the guys in the boat had fun teasing me about the Anacondas in the river. Even though they were joking, I remained in the boat drinking Bintang ( indonesian beer) while the rest of the people took some breaks to swim. As we were floating down this misty river in the middle of a jungle all I could think about was how I used to dream of visiting a place like this and now we were actually here doing all of this cool stuff. It was truly amazing, thrilling, and peaceful all at the same time.

We finished up rafting at about 2pm. Even though we were exhausted, we wanted to maximize our time in Ubud , being that it was so far away from the villa and we might not make the trek back there again. We spent some time walking around the village and tried to brush up on our negotiating tactics in the various shops. We were told that as obvious americans we'd automatically be taken for fools, so to really negotiate hard. They said to start by offering 50% of the asking price. We failed both attempts! Its just so awkward and foreign for us to try and haggle price- especially when things are so cheap already. It makes it especially difficult that nobody deals in US currency and we're constantly converting in our heads...But we will keep on trying. Hopefully by the end of the trip we'll be experts.

By the time we got back to the villa we were spent. Our legs and arms were sore and we could barely stay awake. Hurrah, our massages were scheduled for just about the time we came home! Oh. My. God. The massages in Bali are like none other. They use just the right amount of pressure and the last 10 minutes are focused on a face/head massage. Heaven! Dinner was served right after our massages ended. Im sure one of these days we'll have the energy to venture outside of our villa for dinner but for a day like today it was great to just be able to go to dinner in our bathrobes.

Another amazing day in Bali! We dont exactly know what we'll do tomorrow. We've ordered pancakes for breakfast, and then the plan is to lounge around all morning. We might make it to an ocean water park later in the afternoon. Or possibly turtle Island ( a sea turtle conservation center, Yay more animals!).