Uluwatu Festival (Photos Added)

Yesterday I checked out of the hotel in Legian and taxied down to Benoa harbor. It was the same place that we had docked in 2001.

About thirty minutes after arriving, RV Infinity's masts appeared above the trees of the spit of land that encloses the harbor. The ship made a gentle turn and slowly slid into Benoa. It is a much more elegant ship that the RV Heraclitus – longer, with sharper, cleaner lines. The hull is a deep blue and does not have the lumpy, rounded look that gave the RVH the aspect of a ceramics project. Inside it is much roomier and more polished; in Singapore the crew finished the woodwork, sanding and varnishing all the floors, doorframes, etc.

I spent much of the afternoon with Heather, and then around 4 pm I headed to the Uluwatu temple at the western tip of the peninsula that dangles to the south of Bali. Riding on the back of a crewmember’s motorbike, keeping up with Orla and Michel in front of us, we quickly moved through touristy strips, between rows of furniture makers and wholesalers, past new developments, and out into farmland.

We arrived at the temple for the final day of a three-day festival. Hundreds of Balinese had come to pray and give offerings. Temples in Bali are not covered, and instead they consist of a complex of courtyards with chest-high stonewalls and small towers and thatch pavilions inside. Even though foreigners are denied access inside the inner gates, we could still listen to the gamelan orchestra, and hang out between the courtyards as people came and went and left offerings in tiny, square, palm frond baskets filled with flowers, bits of crackers and intricately cut and tied palm leaf ornaments.
We were going to leave before it got dark, but we started talking to a lady whose son was performing in the Kecak fire dance put on nightly. Balinese dance, no matter how abridged for tourists, is fantastic and instead of gamelan the music for the performance was made by the percussive chanting of an all-male chorus seated in a circle around the dancers.

I have been absolutely loving being around music and dance. I arrived in Ubud today and wandered into a book exchange attached to a cultural center. After brousing, I hung out and watched a dance class for young girls. Near where I am staying there is a temple and I listened to people playing the gamelan all afternoon.