Wednesday, Gulangan Day

WINSLOW The perfect wave- yesterday morning I took a hotel sponsored nature trek along the cliff side beachfront south of our hotel. After leaving the hotel we walked along a construction road where 80 private hotel villas were being constructed on the ocean side, and a shanty town had arisen on the inland side f the dirt road. The construction workers were hard at work on this holiest of Bali holidays which was surprising. My guide Wayan (which means second born) told me that most construction and manufacturing jobs that are under contract from overseas companies are filled with non Balinese workers due to the Balinese religious way of life. The shanty town was comprised of Javanese workers who are more productive as they don’t have the rich family and village rituals and ceremony of the Balinese workers. This is the Balinese paradox- what makes Bali special is the social order and ceremony of the people who maintain their strong allegiance to gamily and village. At the same time, this is what makes the Balinese less competitive from a world economy productivity point of view. Finding the right balance becomes the key to success and is a challenge for the young villagers growing up in a more global and computerized society though to this pint, traditional values have largely survived other than in the more modern city of Denpasar. We climbed down the 182 steps to the hotel beach which has a resident troop of macaque monkeys and back up the steep ravine to yet another beach which is used almost exclusively by local surfers who carry their boards on their motorbikes- quite a feat of its own. Here the thick grains of sand cause you to sink ankle deep with each step and 200 yards of slowly curling 8 foot waves cycle onto the reef about fifty yards out. I saw one boogie boarder catch a wave that took him from the far end of the beach to the other, a 200 yeard ride just in front of the perfect curl. The surfers tended to tire after about 50-75 yardss and woiyld bail out of the wave to shorten their return to the far and of the beach where the best waves were forming.

WinslowGulangan3 Originally uploaded by DonnaM123.