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| This appears to be a Balinese boat, called Madurai, one of many designs that we spotted in the fishing harbor in Negara which is quite a site to see. |
“Sightings on the Beach in Bali”
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| At first, we thought this might be a log or debris, but when we saw it moving quickly from left to right, we knew it was a sea creature. |
Our lives are filled with milestone dates as we continue to travel the world. Whether it’s an anniversary of the date we first left Minnesota, first left the US, embarked on our first safari, walked the hills of Tuscany, wandered the lost city of Petra, or sailed in the dangerous waters of the Gulf of Aden in the Red Sea.
As our journey continues, we find the true meaning of our passion and purpose to become one with the world in ways we can maneuver based on our personal desires, our ages, our health, and our financial considerations.
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| This appears to be a Muslim Madurai boat design. |
In our minds, we’re doing it well, better than we anticipated, better than we dreamed possible. It’s not a case of flattering ourselves for a job well done thus far.
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| A similar design is common on these Madurai boats located in the fishing villages of Pangambengan and Perancak. |
It’s merely a matter of acknowledging to ourselves and to one another that we’ve reached the pinnacle of our intent…fulfillment, happiness, and knowledge of a world we never knew existed until 43 months ago. How naïve we were. How educated we’ve become, and yet, with so much more to learn in the future.
Today is a milestone that in one year we’ll be back in the US, arriving in Seattle, Washington after a 24-day cruise from Sydney, Australia. For the time being, we’ll have scoured the South Pacific as much as we desired and may, with so much world yet to come, never return.
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| Smaller boats docked along the breakwaters. |
We’ll stay in the US for two months visiting family and then, off we go again, bookings and plans already intact with the same degree of excitement we’ll have begun, at that point, almost five years ago.
As we peruse our travel map located to the right of today’s post (feel free to click on it for details), good grief if the completion of seeing the world were our entire objective, we’ve only experienced the “tip of the iceberg” so to speak…and that, too, coming up on January 23, 2018, on our booked Antarctica cruise.
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| Its hard to conceive of the time and effort to create these detailed decorations. |
But then, seeing the entire world is entirely impossible, even if one began decades before us. It’s a big place. Does spending time in a few cities in a country, on a continent constitute really “seeing” it? Or, does living there for two or three months at a time determine how well we’ve come to know the life, the culture, and the treasures it offers for us to behold?
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| Many of the boats are similarly designed with attention to religious detail. Some are of Hindu design and others are of Muslim design. |
To us, none of this matters. What matters is the fulfillment, happiness, and knowledge we glean along the way, at times with a degree of angst and discomfort and even, at times a degree of disillusionment and disappointment.
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| This appeared to be a maintenance/utility boat. |
Then again, even these types of perceptions are all part of the process of learning and growing as human beings, of stretching our wings to soar above these vast lands with grace, humility, and awe.
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| The number of fishing boats in the harbor is astounding. |
Yes, we are in awe of it all even with the biting flies, the relentless mozzies, the muddy paths, the steep roads, the hours-long harrowing drives, the scorching heat, the suffocating humidity, and at times the seeming to never end cloudy and rainy days and nights. It’s all a part of the experience. If it were perfect, it would have little meaning after a while.
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| We couldn’t believe how much creativity was required for the designs of these fishing boats. |
So, yes, we’re in Paradise here and again in Paradise wherever we may be at any given time, for the experience, for the selfish joy, for a starlit night like none other where we need only reach to the sky for a handful of stardust we sprinkle in our own eyes as we smile in pure wonderment.
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| Some of the boats in the harbor were small and less decorative. |
Today, we share more photos of that joy we’ve encountered here in Bali, Indonesia in a remote location far from the popular tourist points of interest making our own way to see that which becomes closest to our hearts, a simple beauty, a profound opportunity, to discover what life is really like in faraway lands.
Gratefulness. It prevails.
Photo from one year ago today, May 16, 2015:
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| As we were winding down our time in Kauai, the albatross chicks born in early February would begin to fledge within a month. It had been an amazing experience to watch them grow over the many months and finally to see their fluff fall away as their feathers suitable for flying grew in. For more photos, please click here. |