More Friday/Saturday

WINSLOW Today was our first full day exploring. I woke alone early to join a local guide for a 2 hour trek around the hotel valley area. Erot was from the village Sayan, where our hotel is located, and really enlightened me as to how traditional Balinese life is intimately and sustainably integrated into the natural environment. We started off with a discussion on rice, the central food source in Bali for both man and ducks/chickens. The typical family lives in a compound that may house as many as 3-4 families. Up to 800 people live in a village and manly villages have a doctor a dentist and a midwife within their village or perhaps shared with a neighboring village. Each family compound usually has it's front along a street with doors that usually number the number of families that live in each compound. Each family compound has several structures within, some are shared and some are private. People sleep in their own families shelter, one is for a bathroom, one is for cooking and towards the front of the house there are many altars that compromise the family temple. In the back of most compounds, there is a livestock area with a small flock of hens with only one rooster, 2 pigs, a family dog (look like dingoes from Australia) and if close to a rice paddy, ducks. Further behind the streets are vast areas of mixed forest with sweet potatoes, vegetables, fruit trees coconut trees banana trees and groves of bamboo as well as some wood trees all used in daily life. Therefore, what looks like forest is really usable farmland.

MountBatur Originally uploaded by DonnaM123.