We are so excited to be arriving in Bali! Week 1 of our journey.
TEXT BY JESSICA BLACKMUN // IMAGES BY JACKSON GROVES & JESSICA BLACKMUN
Arriving in Bali means we’ve finally made it. All of our planning and dreaming about traveling around SE Asia has slowly but surely become a reality. The journey for us started in Bali, Indonesia with Jackson’s family in celebration of his Dad turning 60! We stayed in Satriya Cottages and enjoyed some of the major tourist attractions that Bali had to offer. They are endless!
Our two big tourist adventure days in Ubud (the furthest we went) were spent quad biking and whitewater rafting. The quad biking turned out to be even wetter than the rafting due to a torrential downpour on the day we booked. The quad biking excursion took us through some back jungle roads, muddy puddles, and small streams. Within the first few minutes of getting on the bikes, the rain began. The company we went with provided ponchos and rain boots, but in the end we all ended up soaked. Jackson’s parents had a few mechanical difficulties with their quad bike. Our tour also got cut short because of how heavy the rain and lightening was, we still had a blast though!
The whitewater rafting was done along the Telaga Waja river where quite a few rafting companies launch from. Along the 2 hour trip we saw a constant stream of colorful rafts from the other companies. However, many of the guides seemed to know each other and even cheekily splash eachothers groups of unsuspecting tourists. Overall, it was much easier than we expected, a big part of this was due to the fact that our guide was an absolute expert and kind of took over paddling for the whole raft. It seemed like he just had us paddle every few minutes so that we would feel like we were doing something but we still really enjoyed the ride, the splashing wars with other rafts, and going down the 4 meter waterfall at the end of the route.
Another tourist attraction that we got to experience was Waterbom Park. We had planned on checking it out for an hour or two but ended up spending the whole day enjoying all that the park had to offer. We started off on a water slide called the boomerang and slowly worked our way up to some of the crazier and more thrilling slides as the day went on. Jackson and his dad even gave the FlowRider surfing simulator a go. We enjoyed an amazing lunch at their new restaurant Thaitalian which even had gluten free vegan options!
This week we visited the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, explored off the beaten path beaches, and visited numerous temples.
We chased health restaurants with gluten free, vegan, and vegetarian options, we went in search of Instafamous acai bowl huts, and ended each night with a drink as we watched the sunset from various beaches, rooftops, and restaurants.
All in all, this week and arriving in Bali was amazing and we couldn’t be more thankful to have spent it with Jackson’s awesome family!