Almost made it......

Backpackers are always leery about drinking foreign water, eating food off of questionable street vendors, and other factors for the sole reason that they want to avoid becoming ill while they're traveling.

Well, I made a good run at it.

After more than 3 1/2 months, I'm finally sick, just shy of the finish line that is the 22nd of November. I've been actively taking my anti-malaria medicine, so I would say it's hardly possibly to have malaria. Rather, I think it was just my turn to catch your run-of-the-mill flu.....something I've just come down with in the last 24 hours. And, maybe it's even the big man's way of saying it is finally time to come home.

But enough of the Debbie Downer talk. This all comes after a pretty productive 5 or 6 days since I've last updated the blog. so let me share away....

On Wednesday, an English buddy and I set off the see some of the famous temples that dot the Bali landscape. Well, due to an afternoon thunderstorm with rains that refused to let up, we only made it to one temple. It rests on a small island that sits just a few meters off the Bali mainland, but it is accessible by foot during low tide. Pictures won't really do the thing justice as it was a dark, gloomy day, but the temple itself was quite amazing, clinging to the natural rock formations as it sits high above the waters below.

What was brilliant about this day may not have been the actual destination but the scenery along the way. Terraced fields and abundant rice paddies comprised the landscape--local farmers could be seen wading through the muddy fields tending to their crop. It made for a beautiful trip.

On Thursday, we set off to the Gili Islands, a set of 3 small islands that lie between Bali and Lombok here in southern Indonesia. The big draw to these islands? Diving and a quiet place to find tranquility from the madness that can sometimes overtake the more touristy Bali. There are no motorized vehicles on the islands, even on the largest of the three (Gili Trawangan, its name) where we stayed. The only form of transport are pedal bicycles and horse-drawn taxis on the small network of dirt roads that make up the island.

As I have made clear before, I've become a bit addicted to SCUBA diving over here, and these islands were just the place to expand my experiences a little further. We managed to do three different dives in all, two of which will count toward the five courses needed to become an Advanced Open Water diver: a night dive and a deep dive.

Imagine going 60 ft down under water with just a single-beamed flashlight to guide you around. A little freaky? Definitely. But the art of night diving definitely opens the doors to seeing new types of marine life that you wouldn't normal see during the day.

On Friday, we went down to 90+ feet (30 m) to satisfy our "deep dive" requirement....at this depth, we managed to see some large sea turtles, a spotted shark, an extremely venomous sea snake, and several other large fish species. Yes, I think this whole diving thing is getting a bit addictive. I don't know how much practice I will get in the landlocked Midwest, however....

After a weekend of diving, logging some beach time, and playing sand volleyball with some local islanders, we headed back to Bali yesterday. It was sometime mid-afternoon when I began to feel like garbage, and I spent my night in bed...from 7pm until Noon today (Monday). How can someone sleep that long?

I'm flooding my body with water in hopes of shaking this bug in the next 24-48 hours so that I can squeeze in a couple last activities before the jaunt home on Saturday. If all goes as planned, I'll have the chance to see Mount Bromo in the next couple of days--it is an active, ever-smoking volcano that sits in a very strange, I-feel-like-I'm-on-the-moon type terrain. If I can make it there, I think I can say I've done about all I have set out to do on this trip. If not, well, I won't complain. It's been an incredible trip.

So for now, enjoy the few photos I'm putting up, and we'll look forward to one or two more posts before winding this journey down in the next week.

1:-2 The rice paddies of Bali
3: One of the hundred of wood sculpture shops in Bali. I particularly liked this one.
4: Local school bus, Bali.
5: Farming in Bali
6: Hindhu temple on the sea
7: Blessed by the Hindhu gods?? At the temple.
8: Local transport, Gili Islands
9: The women are strong on the Gilis Islands!
10: Scuba heaven.
11: View from the beach on Gili Trawangan
12: Kids of the Gilis
13: The backroads of Gili Trawangan
14: Captain Kopacek, leaving the Gili Islands on Sunday