Bali Cycling Tour

Our breakfast view of Batur Lake (8/20/17) 

For the next four nights, we stayed at another location in Ubud in our own private little cottage with an outdoor-ish bathroom. 

The pros: The staff at Pajar House was awesome; accommodating, friendly, and fun (more on this later). Also, free shuttle rides to and from Ubud Center and we were equipped with a personal cell phone to call the driver. 

The cons: Try sleeping to a symphony of squawking, disabled chickens from the hours of about 4am-8am. It literally sounded like five different kazoos playing non-stop in the wee hours of the morning. 

However we walked into our room to find more towel swans and a flowery surprise! 

Hasn't every woman always wanted to do this?! 

Breakfast was brought to our porch every morning

I signed us up for an eco-bicycle tour of rural Bali which was a nice escape from the city center (the traffic in Ubud is pretty bad). Before hopping on our bikes, we toured the awesome rice paddies before heading to breakfast overlooking Mt. Batur...There are tons of rice paddies in Bali and we learned that they only grow and harvest rice for the island; they do not export it to any other countries/cities.

Lucky for us our tour group consisted of only one other couple (we were told a family of 5 dropped out last minute), which made for a more personal and fun experience.

 Mt Batur Volcano

Next up we visited a Balinese plantation and coffee shop. This is one of the locations where the infamous Lewak coffee is made; the most expensive coffee in the world. Lewak coffee is basically made from the poop of a catlike animal called the Asian palm civit. I wasn't really a fan due to the way the animals are treated and Kiel tried the coffee and said it wasn't anything special, but it was still neat to see the coffee bean process and sample some other coffee and tea.

Us and our tour mates who were from Spain, by way of San Diego and Germany.

Coffee and tea sampler!

This coffee tastes like crap! Oh wait...

After the coffee plantation it was time to hop on our bikes and tour more of Bali! First stop was a traditional Balinese home/compound. A lot of families all still live together in different rooms/buildings within the compound. In this particular one we visited, the eldest was sorting coffee beans, there was a man slicing palms and wood, three children in the back yard playing on a homemade swing, and a few pigs that we were told were basically used as collateral.

The home temple

 More rice paddies

This Banyan tree is over 500 years old 

We made a pit stop and shared a tasty lunch with our tour buddies before continuing our ride through the countryside with our trusty guide.

The weather that day was great and the best part was riding through the back roads (and mostly downhill!), children waving and shouting "Hello!" as we rode by, and just seeing what everyday life looks like in Bali.