Our tour on Wednesday was interesting. Started out at a water taxi pick up from the boats then off to a market by bus. The market is on twice a week and sells just about everything you can imagine from fresh local food to pink plastic junk toy items - very crowded. We then were driven to Mataran, a near by city (if you could call it that) where we all got into little pony drawn carts to go to a typical village to see some pottery making. Oscar made a little dish he was able to keep. All unbelievably poor. There seems to be no shortage of food but hygene is almost non existent with the water ways clogged with rubbish and no central or organised collections. A very high infant morality rate from water borne disease. The mosques, temples and other religion related buildings are in top repair and clean and tidy. The various religions, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim seem to live well beside each other. We stopped for lunch and had a traditional Sasak meal and a very strong rice wine! (25%). From there we went to Lingsar Temple then Namarda Palace which was the ancient summer palace for the Balinese royal family. it was a full day followed up by a BBQ on the beach organised by he Marina guy, Ray. We've now met just about everyone in the rally from the various boats. All very nice and friendly. There are three kids on "Aretha" who have befriended Oscar.
Thursday was the scheduled refuelling day for us. A bit of a fiasco as there is no fuel jetty or anything. A tanker arrived after being delayed in a road jam for a few hours and filled drums on the stone wharf which was then piped down to us via an extremely long hose across two other boats into our tanks where we were anchored stern on to the wharf. There was fuel spilled everywhere! Then it seemed that there was not enough to go round - but eventually it all sorted out and we have full fuel tanks again. Hoping of course not to use much on this next leg! In the evening we went ashore to the Secret Island Resort. (the word resort used very loosely). A quirky building with a very eclectic variety of decorating styles. No wine for sale (apparently they got one bottle in especially and it went the first night). I had a gin and tonic in a wine glass and the others drank Bintang beer. Oscar, Huw and Pete played pool. We've got a Rally dinner here tomorrow night.
