Now, why on earth would we set out on our trip thinking it would be uneventful, given the series of events that has occurred thus far? Maybe because we’ve figured we’ve seen and have experienced every possible thing that might go wrong… Guess again.
Midway up the mountain, our motorbike decided to just quit. Again the Balinese came to our rescue. Noticing us stranded alongside the road, they helped us to the nearest repair shop. One carburetor rebuild, one air filter cleaning, one spark plug check, diagnose, all removal, replace, and adjustment, one hour and $3 later, we were back on the one lane mountainous road! Not only was I amazed he only wanted $3 for the entire job, but he was in the middle of six motorbike repairs with six customers waiting, when he stopped all he was doing to help us! Wow, what service! The other customers surprisingly didn’t even seem to care!
Also along our beautiful ride, we spent more paying off the police, than we did on the motorbike rental, fuel, and rebuilding the carburetor… combined! The officer didn’t seem to want anything else from us other than a little “help” out. I quote him, “You help me, I help you”. So we paid him his $5 as he slyly slipped it into his shirt so his partner hanging behind couldn’t see. Then they wished us a good trip and waved as though they were saying goodbye to old friends. The whole thing was pretty crazy and something we will never forget. It is too bad we were so shocked by the corruption at the moment to take a picture. Maybe that would have dissuaded him?
We made a few detours along the way and saw amazing views of the volcano which erupted in 1900 and 1967:
The nearby village seemed a bit eerie like a ghost town. Evidently they had begun building many villas, hotels, etc. but following the terrorist bombings of 2002 & 2005 in the tourist capital of Kuta, all construction and tourism abruptly came to a halt before finally picking up again this year. See empty foundation after foundation after foundation:
Wow, I wish it was dirt cheap to fix the Harley. $3 would be amazing! Instead it is going to cost about $300. Oh well! It will pay for itself in gas savings. You guys look like naturals on the motorbike!
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