Sau Paulo to Lumajang

Hello everyone! glad to hear that none of you were caught up in the London bombings, though some people still have'nt got in contact so hope you and anyone close to you was unaffected. I would liek to apolgise for the lack of updates but i tried on a number of occasions to put on a blog whilst in Australia and in Indonesia but somehow everything i wrote and the images i uploaded disappeared. It has been a long time since we have commented on our progress so i have a lot to fill you in on, i willdo my best to summarise this now but unfortunatley the computers are too slow here so no pics just yet.

We left Brazil about a month ago now flying first of all to Chile for one day, then on to New Zealand, Australia and now Indonesia so it has been a pretty busy month as you can imagine. Santiago, Chile, was beautiful and a nice little break. We only stayed there for a day but felt we conquered most of the city, got to go to a nice market and ate some traditional Chilean food it definitley seems like a country worth visiting, though not quite on the top of my list just yet.


"Team leader" my tushi, I had to show him whose really boss-POWERSLAM!


Andes painted in the background!


Cool Santiago skyline


Secret agent



The flight to Auckland went suprisingly smoothly, 14hours but felt a lot shorter. Pretty small city centre so we got to see most of what it had to offer in a day. It wasn't much. On the third day we took a bus to Matamata, which is a small town, 14000 people, in stunning countryside(it was the place where theu ilmed the Hobbit village in Lord of The Rings). We were really lucky with the weather and although it was cold the views were amazing. Our old head of 6th form Stuart and his wife Lynda had moved here at the beginning of the year and after Oran corresponding with the prior to the trip they offered to put us up for the night. We could'nt have asked for better hosts, they fed us like Kings and made us feel right at home, a big hello to their neighbours Alan and Claire too. On our second and final day there they treated us to a tour of Rotorua which is a town with a few traditional Maori villages set amongst the natural volcanic Geysers which were an amazing sight too. Had a really good time there and cannot thank Stuart and Lynda enough for their hospitality!!!!!!!!!


Rotoruas Geysers


Stuart, Lynda, Alan and Claire


Maori Warrior


Spooky

Early the next day we caught a flight to Sydney. Got to a hostel rather easily and then slept for about 20 hours. We hadn't really noticed how jet lagged we were and for me at leat it took most of the 5 days in Sydeny to get over it, as well as a cold which Oran had picked up and kindly shared with me and Zenna :)
Oran got to visit some family in Sydeny he had never met before which he was quite made up about and randomly we bumped in to Paul Thomas on the highstreet (Paul had been at Wilson's with us since year 7) spent a couple of days with him before he departed for Auckland to meet u with Liam, so hope you two are enjoying yurselves. Sydeny is a pretty cool city i would say. Very modern and clean, it even has a mono rail which i was amazed at. Everything is run smoothly there and jsut like their olympics everything is well organised and they jsut tend to do things better than us, but 5 days was more than enough considering we were'nt travelling any othere parts of Aus so i got a bit bored by the end of the week.


view from the Zoo


opera house


Harbour bridge


So on to Indonesia, flight again was pretty smoothe but longer than i expected, something like 6 and a half hours, we had been expecting a lot less! After joining the longest queue in the world for our visas we dove straight in to an integral part of Indonesian culture and begun haggling for a taxi fare. Turns out Zenna has a natural gift for it. With his help we got one driver to take us by taxi to a less westernised tourist town called Ubud, about an hours drive out of the capital Denpasar, for Rp60,000 just under 4BP. He was origially offering 100,000Rp and we discovered later than no one goes for less than 60,000 and for most tourists not less than 80000, so we felt we did well but i am sure we still paid 5 times the indonesian price! Had a good time in Ubud though it was HIIIGHHHHLY touristy, but still a little traditional (unlike Denpasar and Kutar which we did not want to stay in). Went on a Balinese cooking course the second day and saw a traditioanl dance called gamelan on the third. Gamelan consists of a precution band playing xylophone like instruments, recorders and drums. They play music which is supposed to immitate wildlife and people based around a story which you are given a summary of, the show lasted about 1.30 hours and consisted of maybe 8 stories. During some stories there are dancers who help to tell the story through a very angular dance where the women move there joints in very sharp actions and they add to effect by moving their eyes in the same manner. By the third day we were as sick as dogs and stayed in bed all day. We still have'nt figured out what it was but more than likely it was the ice in our drinks. So we ended up staying in Ubud, and Bali, longer than we had hoped, one days sickness and one day to recover meant we left on the fifth day taking an 8 hour bus to a town called Jember in Java.


Temple in Ubud


View of rice paddies


Gamelan dancer


I call this one "Monkey eating banana"


The bus was quite an experience, first of all like any form of transport in Indonesia it gets rammed, in every bus, bemo (public people carrier) or mini van they have tiny wooden stools to provide extra seating! It felt liek every five minutes a guitarist would run alongside the bus as it was driving at a slower speed, jump on play a song or two ask for change then jump off in the same manner, it was entertaining if you have the patience for it but it got a bit annoying after the 20th person came round asking for some spare coins. Then you have the human supermarkets who jump on, possibly 10 at a time, at the ferry ports all selling drinks, peanuts, crackers or a pre cooked meal wrapped in banana leaf, which was something we later decided was a pretty neat idea and are especially prominent on the trains. Got to Jember late and then had to drive around in a mini van and look for a placeto stay, found one relatively quickly but the guy driving the van tried to rip us off asking for Rp40,000 for about 10 mins work. Baring in mind we got an hour long taxi ride for 60000 in Bali we were not happy and settled on 30000. It was still a rip off but for 1.80BP we werent too bothered.

We did'nt even bother with Jember, the next day we just asked how to get to the train station and began to work out our route to a town called Probbolinggo, the closest town to a group of mountains infamous for their sun rise views. So we jumped in two rickshaws but made the fatal error of not asking how much it was to the train station as we had already been told by the receptionist it was 3000 each. So we got there paid the two men 6000 and ended up getting in a row with one of the drivers who said he wanted 4000 more for the two of them. Everyone in the train station was joining in and it ended up being split pretty evenly. Finding the situation mildly amusing we carried on with the argument until we finally decided if he wnats to stand there and argue his point for this long he probably desereved the money. So we gave him the money and begun our 4 hour wait for the train.

One thing i have falied to mention up to this point is the stares EVERYONE gives us especially in Java which has no tourists when compared with Bali. I am not finding this particularly strange as i got it a fare bit in Brazil, but for Oran and Zenna who tended to blend in in Brazil more easily, this is something new and at first they were not too pleased with it. However after talking to one man on the train, he spoke very good english, he mentioned that everyone was staring only because they want to talk to us but didn't have the confidence in their english to do so. Most people have never seen a foreigner before and more than anything just want to know what would possess someone to come to their town, what we think of Indonesia and its people.
I should menton the mans name now as meeting him on the train resulted in the best week of our trip, and i think we would all agree possibly the best week of our lives. His name is Zainul and we initially began a conversation because his son thought Zenna looked like a Power ranger! (at the time he did quite suprisingly resemble the White Ranger) We spoke briefly to him and his siser who were coming back from visiting their brother in another town and they told us about an English school they work at which holds a club for practising Englsih on Sundays (we were travelling on a Saturday). So, quite randomly, we decided to get off the train two stops early and go to a town we had never heard of, Lumajang, to have a talk with the members of this English club. The following week we spent in Zainul's home town was so busy and special special for us i just don't have time to write my thoughts on our week there now, only to say that at the moment i am very sad we are not still there! Hopefully we will find a better internet cafe soon where we can upload pics and fill you in on LUMAJANG - the best town in the world!


Mr.Zainul and sister Luluk