Bali - Indonesia

Jimbaran is a fishing village and tourist resort area, and you can have your fresh seafood served in one of the many beach shack restaurants on the Bay, choosing your fish or lobster straight out of the salt water display holding tanks.

Jimbaran Hills Resort

We own one week timeshare in a two bedroom apartment at the Jimbaran Hills Resort and another week at a studio apartment at Club Oasis Jimbaran Hills in Bali.

Club Oasis, Jimbaran Hills

Both are in the same complex and there are lots of in-house facilities. There are 3 swimming pools, one with a 66m waterslide, a couple of bars and restaurants as well as an authentic style Irish Pub! The resort is not on the beach, but not far from it.

We took lots of tours from Jimbaran.

Kintamani is where you can see the Batur Mountain active volcano and Lake of Batur and look out over its surrounding panoramic valley.

On the way there you can visit the silversmiths and batik makers shops and factories.

Ubud, known for its beautiful art and craft, furniture and wood and stone carving, is about 35km from the Bali airport. At around 200-300m above sea level it is a lot cooler than other parts of Bali and also very quiet as its away from the maddening crowds of the touristy beach areas and only surrounded by rice fields and local village life. You can stroll around the streets all day looking.

Uluwatu Temple (Pura Uluwatu) is set on top of a steep cliff 70m above the ocean with steep headlands on either side. The location is pretty amazing. Before entering the temle grounds, you should be kind and respectful enough of the beliefs of the people and be properly dressed. You can rent sarongs and sashes at the entrance. There are a lot of monkeys living in the temple and its grounds who are quite the professional theives! One stole my hairclip and then proceeded to chew it up ... ouch .. bet he didn't enjoy it some much when it came out the other end! They will pinch anything they can get and will run and snatch. I was told to take off my glasses (thank goodness) because they nick those too. If you want to get something back, if it hasn't been chewed up, you are best offering locals or the temple priests a tip rather than trying to swap fruit with the monkeys for your stolen goods as it just encourages the little ratbags to take more stuff for the rewards. They can get really cheeky.

The 2 hectare Elephant Safari Park in Taro opened in 2000 has beautiful landscaped gardens and is surrounded by National Forest. You can take a ride on the elephants and then seem them take a relaxing and cooling bath in the park lake. You are allowed to hand feed them and touch them and there are so many photo opportunities. The elephants are very intelligent and actually paint … just watch them and then look at the displays of their paintings! This park is very well administered and meets the standards of International Zoo authorities. All the elephants at Taro have been rescued areas of deforestation in Central & Southern Sumatra. There is a gift shop, kiosks and restaurants and also a museum. It is a very worthwhile tour and you really get some amazing photos.

We also stayed a week at the Royal Bali Beach Club at Jimbaran Bay.
This resort has only 16 beautiful apartments and is in the quiet boutique style with one small pool and a bar. You can have a traditional oil massage in your room, which is a lot more relaxing than on a beach or poolside chair. The resort is adjacent to Jimbaran Bay and the beach and about 15 mins from Kuta or Nusa Dua. Directly across the road are the luxurious Intercontinental Hotel and the Four Seasons Resort (among the world's finest hotels). There are so many things to do at Jimbaran Bay. You can shop til you drop, eat until you can eat no more and you can do it cheaply, or conversely, get high quality expensive goods and services if you like.

New Zealand 2003 - North Island

For this one week trip in 2003 we hired a campervan and drove around the North Island of New Zealand, starting in Auckland and ending in Wellington. New Zealand is a very actively volcanic group of islands.
A special highlight was visiting the town of Wakatane where we caught a boat, the PeeJay, out to Waakari / White Island, currently New Zealand's most active volcano.

It is is a stratovolcano with an elevation of 321m and is located 48km offshore in the Bay of Plenty.

The volcano has lava eruptions and phreatic explosions or eruptions which involving the island's ground water interacting with magma.

Smelly, hot and steamy sulphur gases are always spewing from the craters and fumaroles on the island and can be dangerous and unpredictable, so as required, we donned gas masks and signed all of the waivers and then walked around and explored with a very informative guide.



The water level in the lake has been rising and the guide was indicating this may one day form part of a phreatic explosion. The last big blow up and eruption was around 2001. The colour of the water is amazing like a green mineral.
A fumarole is an opening in the earth around the volcano and you can clearly see all the steam and gases spewing out of them.

Atmospheric gases initially come from the earth's interior. Gases within magma are dissolved because of high pressures beneath the earth's surface, but reduced pressure at the surface allows dissolved gases to expand and escape. 70 to 95 percent of all eruption gases are water vapour which is beneficial, adding to the earth's water supply.

Other gases emitted are carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and traces of nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, sulphur, argon, chlorine and fluorine. These gases do good and bad with their complex re-inventions.

Sulphur dioxide emitted by volcanoes can help cool the earth's surface as the gases are converted by the sun's rays reacting with water vapour, forming acid rain and sulphuric acid aerosols (volcanic ash).

The aerosols reflect the sun's rays, having a cooling effect and they remain in the air long after solid ash particles have come back to the ground, but also contribute to global warming by in turn giving off carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to the greenhouse effect. These gases, in particular, sulphur dioxide, are said to have the greatest impact on Earth's short-term weather patterns or long-term climate change. Every time there is an eruption rich in sulphur dioxide, the aeorosol layer is replenished. Emissions of the volcanic ash aerosol and sulphur dioxide may cause an impact on air traffic and eruption monitoring is peformed via satellite based instruments to assist in planning air line routes if gas emmissions exceed an acceptable limit.

The carbon dioxide behaves like a glass shield over the Earth. The sun's rays can penetrate the carbon dioxide gas but the carbon dioxide shield stops heat from escaping. Volcanoes contribute around 110 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year via their eruptions and activity. Man then is worse - his contribution is about 10 billion tonnes per year!




There was a sulphur mining plant on the island until closed down in 1914 after a crater collapsed and the lahar killed 10 of the plant's workers.








The waters around the island are understandably warmer than normal and the sea life is thriving. The boat had an underwater camera giving us a different view of the island with very healthy waters housing kelp beds and schools of fish and many seals bask on the warm rocks during the day.

We also visited Rotorua and its 'boiling mud' sulphur pools at Waiora Spa, Hell's Gate, New Zealand's most active thermal reserve.








Our travels also included visits to the Waitomo Caves, where you can see the amazing glow worms, a jet boat ride at Huka Falls and the City of Auckland. We saw the Kea birds and the New Zealand Kiwi, a nocturnal and very endangered native bird. We visited the Auckland aquarium and watched penguins playing about there.



The scenery is amazing on the North Island and supposedly not as pretty as the South Island, so maybe that's another visit at another time. Hiking or 'tramping' is one of the favourite pastimes in New Zealand and campervan trips are another popular NZ habit.