It has been a full two days since I wrote last! Yesterday morning we went river rafting. Lena stayed behind and relaxed, and the rest of us got picked up at 9 to go to the rafting place. They didn't let five of us sit in one raft together, so Ben and Jonathan took the first boat and Seth, Josef and I took the next. Our guide was incredible. He knew exactly when to have us paddle, where to pivot, and how to get us out of every tight spot we got stuck in. There was a boat with a family of four fairly overweight people in it, and they started first, followed by Ben and Jonathan and then the three of us, so we were always in not-so-secret competition with the fat people, and we finally overtook them at the end. We stopped halfway at a waterfall and took some pictures, and then we carried on. Right before the end, we went over a four meter waterfall in our raft, and that was definitely the highlight of the morning. I sat in the front with my feet over the top of the raft, and Josef and Seth sat behind me. When we hit the bottom, I was bounced up so high I was nearly standing on my head! After we finished, we were fed a great buffet lunch and then drove back to Ubud.
Lena met us back at Nick's Pension, and we found a driver to take us to Seminyak, where we're staying until we leave. We unpacked our stuff, walked to the beach (about 15 minutes away) to see the sunset and got some dinner at a cafe close to the beach. I got fish tacos, and they were fantastic! The exchange rate is 9000 to the dollar, so my food cost 40 some thousand rupiah. It feels like you're a millionaire - I withdrew 900,000 from the bank my first day! Crazy.
Today we were at the beach most of the day, and Ben and I got haircuts in the afternoon. The beach has rental chairs and umbrellas for about a dollar, and we rented surfboards also. The current was fairly strong, and the waves weren't the best for surfing in the morning, but it was fun body surfing and fighting the ocean. We also rented scooters for five days for 100,000 each - $2 a day! It's my first time on a scooter, but I feel comfortable on it already. Too comfortable, really - going 60 km/hr in shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops probably isn't the safest thing to do, even with a helmet. This evening we rode to Tanah Lot, a temple up the coast a little ways. There's a huge market selling all kinds of touristy goods surrounding the temple; the temple itself wasn't very big, but the sunset view was fantastic. We missed the actual sunset by a few minutes, but we still got some great pictures. Josef and I climbed onto a cliff protruding out into the ocean with huge waves crashing up onto it every few minutes, and the view from there was incredible.
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