Thursday, January 13, 2011

Bali Tour: Of coffee, honey and erm, volcanoes?!

After the afternoon of visiting two temples, we then made our way to Kintamani Mountain, where we made a pit stop at a coffee and spice plantation!

plantation

It was a nice walk through the showcase garden, where the owner keeps a small sample of all the plants in his actual plantation, further up the mountain.

We were especially fascinated with this…

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The plantation has many of these wooden boxes… filled with honeybees!

After the short walk, we tasted some of the fresh products the plantation has to offer – Bali coffee, honey lemon tea, ginger tea and even fresh hot chocolate!

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As promised, the owner also let us sample fresh honey, hot off the hive, literally!

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There were even honeybees flying around, and this is an actual honeycomb! The honey, unlike the one we are normally accustomed to, was a little tangy. But Jayvon LAPPED IT UP.

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He ignored the small honeybees and slurped every last bit of the honey goodness! The owner told us that honeybees were not dangerous, though they do sting. Thankfully we all escaped unscathed that afternoon! Haha!

We also had the chance to try a “special” type of coffee. For the life of me, I cannot remember what this is called, but the animal is fed premium coffee beans. Poops something that resembles coffee beans. And coffee powder is made from that. The animal poop, I mean.

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The animal in question.

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Yes, that is the poop. Nic even gamely tried to smell it! And, he even paid good money to try a cup of this “premium” coffee. All the other drinks and honey was free of charge!

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This is a potent cup of caffeine! Truly “kopi-o GAO”! Ask Nic if you want to find out how it tasted. I sipped but the mental thought of animal poop truly gave me amnesia of that moment.

Finally, after a long morning, we finally made our way to our lunch destination! And what a treat it turned out to be!

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A pretty affordable buffet lunch at a nondescript restaurant…

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With a fabulous view! Check out the volcano!

Nic enjoyed the lunch much more than Jay and I did. My stomach was still recovering from that sip of coffee!! Haha! It wasn’t the taste, ya know… it’s the mental image!

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After that we made our way down the mountain… and the lull of the car coupled with afterlunch buzz led to…

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A good 90-minute nap for ern, Bear-bear and Jay!

And while he was asleep, he missed these sights…

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Beautiful rice terraces and…

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Flooded roads!

We ended the day by asking the driver to send us to Jimbaran Bay so that we could have dinner there! Look out for that in my next post!

2 comments:

Jus said...

OH, that must have been civet cat coffee (kopi luwak or something?)? Must have been really strong tasting! Looked like your family had a great trip, thankfully the flooding didn't affect your trip! :)

Unknown said...

@Jus: Oh ya! That is the name! Kopi luwak! :)