Sunnyside Canyon

Back to exploring the Gardens of Stone area the other week. Sunnyside Canyon this time, which is approached along Firetrail No.8, off Sunnyside Ridge Rd.

It's been a bit windy lately, so Harold's chainsaw came in very handy. There were several obstacles needing to be removed from the road on the way in.

Off into the bush here

In the canyon proper now














One of many fabulous scenic caves to explore

Heading on down through a wide bit

Negotiating some of the narrow bits



















And the slightly precarious bits






And having lunch above the canyon, in a pagoda paradise, overlooking the Wolgan Valley

Makassar's rusty wreck

Parepare waterfront

As I said, I really enjoyed my short off-the-tourist-track stopover in South Sulawesi's port city of Parepare. Here are some waterfront scenes.

Parepare market scenes

I love visiting places where I'm the only tourist. My overnight stay in Parepare was a great such stopover experience. It's a port city about half way up the south western leg of Sulawesi, and a good place to break a journey between Torajaland and capital city Makassar. I stayed at the well-located Lotus Hotel (pictured above right).

As ever in Indonesia, a stroll through the market is a pleasant and photogenic experience. Stallholders are universally friendly, and generally love to have their photos taken by strange foreigners like me.










This girl was putting on an act for me. She was actually fine about the photo!

And so was this one.

Candylicious Kuta

The last few hours of our Bali trip the other week was spent in Kuta. It's an entirely different place from the one I first visited in 1984. Look at this air-conditioned shopping centre, for instance. Looks like it could be on Queensland's Gold Coast.

But there's still all the same stuff going on on the beach: hair braiding, massages, coconut quaffing, beach football......

And still an excellent sunset most evenings.

Pay as you go

Policed entirely by an honesty box, here's the price list for the Lovina public toilets. (I was completely honest, by the way.)

Amazing place

In Bali you can get comfortable accommodation for $20 or less, and a bit more buys you a little luxury. But in Lovina, we went one step further. We lashed out and paid what we might have paid for a pretty standard Australian motel room, and look what we got!

Lata Lama is a unique resort, consisting of a collection of amazing designer hippy houses, which look like they would be more at home in Byron Bay or Mullumbimby.

Our 'Rumah Beryl' (Beryl's House) was rather magnificent. Every room, and every detail of every room, could have been at home in any of the 'Home Beautiful' type magazines, we thought. And we even had our very own nicely sized swimming pool.




It was a bit of a walk down to the beach, but that added to the charm, we soon decided.

Lovina's daily dolphin chase

One of the big attractions of Bali's Lovina is the dolphin watching cruise. Most people do it at sunrise (6 am), but there's an 8 am alternative too.

I wandered down to the beach just before six, and as expected, was soon aboard one of the outrigger fishing boats (perahu), and being motored out across the pre-dawn waters. We went a few kilometres out, and it was quiet for a while as we searched for any action.

Before long a big group of other boats was sighted though, and clearly that was where it was all happening. We roared off to join them.

Then there was an hour or so of frantic dodging, weaving, chasing, outmanoeuvring each other. And occasionally getting great close up views of the dolphins too. I actually thought the best part was just the spectacle of all the colour and movement and all the shapes and sizes of different boats and tourist groups.

There's much discussion of whether this does the dolphins any good. Locals point out that they do keep coming back every day, and I was inclined to think that they'd be pretty skilled at avoiding the boats if they wanted to, and maybe they enjoyed the daily entertainment anyway.

But then there was a story on the news in Australia today about how the dolphins in Adelaide keep getting hit and killed by speedboats there. So now I'm not so sure.

Lovina sunsets

We spent a very pleasant few days in Lovina, on Bali's north coast. It's come on a lot since I first visited many years ago, but it's still pretty quiet and relaxing compared with say, Kuta.

You can enjoy the beach, the fine food and local sights. Or you can go on a dolphin-watching boat ride. (More on that later.) The food is good and inexpensive. The sunsets are pretty good too.

Bali Geckos and other night monsters

The one on the right is a Tokay gecko (Gekko gecko). He lived in and around our Ubud accommodation unit, and had an amazingly loud and almost menacing call. He's very pretty though.





This other one is actually a day monster, and he's a skink. In fact, he's a Many-lined sun skink (Eutropis multifasciata).