September 10,

We had quite a stormy night – long, rolling peals of thunder and lightning that lit up the whole room! I wouldn’t have thought the sky could possibly still have that much moisture! 😆 When we awoke it had stopped. But by 0900 it started misting, then stopped and we even had a brief time of sunshine with little patches of blue sky.

We had our Javas and breakfast of Muesli & yogurt. Jeff returned to trying to book us transport in South Korea. He finally figured out the way to get us bus tickets for some of our “gadabouting.” These tickets are refundable if the train opens up. It is still work in progress, but this is what he does. He’s like a dog with a bone… chawing at it until he gets what he wants.

Anyway after this Eureka moment, the rain stopped again. It looked like it may be stopped for a while?? So we went out. I was stir crazy! We went up to Tegallalang Rice Terrace. It was a 7.7km drive, or 4.78 miles. We took our time and took in the new areas we had not seen yet. The town is less built up, traffic is better, and we see more rice paddies. Some paddies are being worked and planted. We found the parking – after one falsely advertised “free parking.” We paid 25,000 IDR ($1.52) each to enter. The terracing is more of an Instagramy place with swings, and ziplines as such. But we could walk through and down the one side of the v-shaped area. To go to the terracing on the other side you had to pay more money to walk across a bridge or pay by doing a zip line across. One zipline was “riding a bicycle across. The swings were very long roped and you went over the edge of the terrain. We took a couple of pictures, but mostly just enjoyed the scenery and no rain! We watched some zipliners and swingers.

We loaded backup in our vehicle and started back. We pulled off at the Coffee Garden shop, as I will need some coffee in two days. It turned into an experience. We were toured through a garden and told of various plants including coffee, and tea. Then we came to an area of a demonstration of roasting coffee and our guide showed us a Luwak, a nocturnal animal. The animal excretes the beans and this is where they get their coffee. I did not want this kind of coffee… and I said as such. The guide assured me they had other coffee. Anyway, we were finally taken to the tasting area. I ordered a cup of the Bali coffee- “non Luwak variety.” She came back with a huge sampler of all their coffee and tea varietals! For Free!! Well, okay. I tried their black, non-Luwak coffee, and nope it was not for me. We did try all the varieties though. Many of the samples were creamy and sugary. This was how Jeff was able to sample the coffee ones. We both liked the ginger coffee and tea. There were a total of 16 kinds to sample. After we finished, we went to the shop. We were thinking of getting a bag of ginger tea, but it was a power form and expensive for the amount. We opted not to get it and Jeff just paid for my cup of Java 35,000 IDR or $2,13. I’ll have to look up roasters in earnest, especially non-Luwak ones. We loaded up and left.

We left and drove to a supermarket and bought stuff as we seem to be making more of our own food due to rainy days. As we left it started raining again. We had almost been able to get out and back without it affecting us! The rest of the afternoon was sitting and watching it start pouring again! Amazing!! We both wondered just how much rain there has been these past two days!

We made a ribeye steak with sauteed onion & red pepper. We also had some bread and red wine. It was still raining… a lot! But we were able to get out – Yeahh!!!