Friday, November 26
What a day! Yoga, an elephant ride and a white-water river raft trip! After yoga and breakfast, our driver picked us up and drove us to one of several elephant safari locations. The elephants are rescued from work in the teak forests of Sumatra. We went for a 30-minute bumpy ride around a fixed circuit with our driver, Araka and his elephant, Mumoon.
Mumoon is a male Asian elephant, 15 years old. He was born with only one tusk. Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants and have smaller ears. Araka has never left his village and been to Ubud. Every morning he walks one kilometer to the elephant park, cleans Mumoon’s stall, gives him a bath, and takes tourists like us for a ride.
After the ride, Araka had me and Barbara feed Mumoon and pose for pictures.
Barbara said I’m not doing that!
After the elephant ride, our driver picked us up and drove us to the Ayung River, where we met our guide for the raft trip.
We rode in a raft with our guide and a couple from Australia. The two-hour trip down the rapids was exhilarating and beautiful. The river bank was lined with banana palms and exotic flowering plants. We saw beautiful kingfishers. My camera was stashed in a waterproof bag, so I was not able to take any pictures during the ride. We stopped at one of several places where the rock walls had been carved with images depicting the Ramayana.
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