Tag Archives: beach

Expressionistic sky

by

Spectacular is the only word to describe sunsets in Bali. I have never seen anything like those in my life. Every night, hundreds if not thousands of people gather on the Kuta Beach, the famous surf beach of Bali, to enjoy the heavenly show which is far better than an average Hollywood movie. And in better technicolor!

The magnificent flaming colours are not only due to the tropical climate and humidity but also Indonesia’s high volcanic activity. Volcanic ashes in the sky reflect the light and make the colours so powerful. When Krakatoa exploded in 1883 the sunsets were screaming orange and blood red as far as in Europe for a year or two. I remembered this while watching the show, and remembered something else too. There was one painting in my mind all the time. This:

The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893

The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893

The Scream (all of its versions) has been painted about ten years after Krakatoa sunsets. I remember from my Art History classes from uni a heated debate about weather Munch painted the real sunsets of Krakatoa or not, a debate which has hottened art circles ever since the painting was fresh. Some claim Munch is an expressionist and wouldn’t have had painted anything realistic but express his inner feelings. True, yes, but in this case bullshit. I claim now after seeing the volcanic ash sunsets that this kind of powerful views ink to your mind so strongly that it will come out some day in some form, especially if you are an artist.

Munch writes to his diary himself in Nice in 22.01.1892 about the birth of The Scream: “I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

In Kuta Beach, late December 2008 the sunsets were as intense. Close to winter solstice, when the sun is close to its lowest point, a huge bright red-orange sun will approach the horizon of Kuta like a giant juicy blood orange, descending ever so slowly. The water reflects the gold and orange, the sky is painted first to more impressionistic flashes of honey, gold, rosy pink, malva and forget-me-not blue, then the colours intensify to expressionistic level: to burned sienna, flaming orange, blood and burgund, indigo and azure. Broken pieces of cotton clouds march across the sky like soft silk fabrics, and rays of the dying sun colour them with a thick brush.
When the sun has disappeared behind the horizon, the sky and the sand still reflects the colours for a long time.

The feeling was really strange, like sitting on the last beach of the world, or just minutes before the world’s end. We joked about that, and felt like living in a sci-fi movie setting. Always when the sun went down I held my breath for a moment for something bad to happen, but it never did. But the hold of the sun was like a magnet, and I understood well why the ancient people were sun worshipers. Well, in many temples in Bali they still have the special sunset rites and offerings even today, and the local people also came to beach to put a small, floating offering of flowers, incense sticks, fruits and snacks to the Gods.

Sunsets were definitely the best time in Kuta. When your eyes were fixed on the sky, you didn’t see all the trash which was floating all over the shallow water. Plastic bags, ice-cream papers, water bottles, used condoms, broken flip-flops, even dead fish. You name it. The colour of the water reminded of watery oatmeal, gray and more solid than water should be, and foul-smelling.

Water was so disgusting I had no intention to swim in it. I was planning to get some surf lessons, but after seeing the water (and smelling it!) I decided otherwise. An English couple we met in the hostel pool had had some lessons but cut them short when they discovered a dead, rotten fish size of their surfboard almost floating nearby. Locals say its only now on Western wind season, when the wind blows everything into the bay, and other times of the year beach is clean, but I don’t know. I have my doubts. Even the local hospital warned on its fliers not to swim on rainy season, especially near the street-water sawyers. So much for the famous surf beach, then, and we spend most of our time in the pool.

I will try to put some more photos from Bali to Flickr soon. When the connection here in Borneo allows…
Maiku

Merry Christmas!

by

Merry Christmas to all our dear friends and family back home, we miss you so much! Happy Holidays also to our readers all over the world, where ever you are. Hope you enjoy this video greeting!

Video diary from Phi Phi

by

A bit sunnier days from Phi Phi. This post is dedicated to that unknown Swedish couple who dropped/forgot their sun tanning lotion in front of our bungalow and thus saved us from serious sunburns. We didn’t have money to buy our own…

Ps. Due to the slow connections, I had to resize the videos heavily and now they are a bit blurry. Sorry about that.

Towel Thief

by

We have been again too lazy/sick/busy/whatever to update the blog. We will write soon, promise, but in the meanwhile enjoy this funny video. Its from the Karon Beach in Phuket in Thailand, where this adorable vagabond wanted our towel. Sasi had a heroic fight, though.

Birthday in the Paradise

by

I had a working day from Hell: busy, nothing seemed to go right, story collapsing, panicking under the deadlines… and in the middle of all that, I got a phone call: you have to come now, the babies are hatching!

So we left everything, jumped to a taxi and speeded through the highway from Beirut to Southern Lebanon to see sea turtle babies. The driver was speeding like 150km/hour and I looked desperately the reddening and lowering sun. We had to get there before sunset, since darkness is dangerous for the newly hatched turtle babies due to predators.

After Tyre there was no highway but a narrow village road in the midst of banana plantations. We drove and drove, and Army checkpoints started to be more and more frequent. Until we came to a huge sign which said that all the foreigners passing this point should have security clearing from the Army intelligence headquarters at Saida. Of course I didn’t have one, and the soldier looked at my blond hair quite suspiciously when Sasi insisted that we are Lebanese, all of us. This was the way to the Israeli border, which was now about two km away, and also the way to the huge UN peacekeepers (Unifil) base close by. We were let by though, only to realize that we had driven too far anyhow. Our destination was before the final checkpoint, in Mansouri.

Finally we spotted the Orange House – which was surprisingly enough orange in the middle of green banana and citrus plants. Darn. And before we even got our bags down, we were hurried to the beach since the baby turtles couldn’t wait any second longer. Sun was down now, and it was getting dark. So we ran after Habiba, one of the two ladies taking care of the nests voluntarily. She dropped to her knees on the sand and stared to dig, and indeed: there was already a few turtle babies on the sand.

We had totally 56 alive loggerhead (Caretta caretta) turtle babies which were let to the sea. Later Habiba and her partner Mona told us that two types of sea turtles come to lay eggs to the beach: in addition to loggerhead, the big and rare green turtle (Chelonia mydas) also nests in here. Green turtle has been declared critically endangered by the World Conservation Union. They can live for more than 100 years, taking about 30 years to start producing eggs, loggerheads a bit earlier. So these babies we would come back to this beach in about 25 years – but only one out of thousand will return, added Mona.

The turtles have been safe on this beach since the area was under the Israeli military surveillance during the Israeli occupation until 2000. Also, because the areas next to beach are agricultural area, there is no bright lights and noise of residences and beach resorts to scare the timid reptiles away. This is one of the only still existing natural sandy beaches (without buildings, resorts, army bases or just plain trash dumps) in the whole country – the only ones turtles can come to lay eggs.

Mona and Habiba are truly incredible women. Orange House is Mona’s family home which was abandoned during the Lebanese civil war in 1980′s. She lived abroad for decades, only to come to have a holiday in the house in 1999. That was then when she saw a turtle for the first time. Says Mona:

“I was walking in the beach, when I heard noise. It was this huge, beautiful turtle creeping through the sand, coming to lay her eggs. I toke a picture, and the turtle screamed to me. She went back to the sea, and never returned back because I scared her – what did I knew, I was a tourist. I still pay that back now. That was the start of me and the turtles.”

Mona contacted a marine biologist to get information, went back to Netherlands, left her job and life in there and returned to take care of the nests. Habiba teamed her about a year later to help in the work. Together, the ladies opened Orange House as bed&breakfast, and its truly a paradise with lush garden.

Ladies didn’t even leave the turtles alone during the Israeli aggression in 2006, when the missiles kept whistling down from the sky, except for two utmost hottest weeks, when Hizbullah was shooting rockets to Israel just behind the house. When they come back after 16 days, two Israeli missiles had hit the house. Mona says they ran directly to the beach to see what happened the turtle nests. She admits it was a bit stupid thinking afterward. “We didn’t know if there was unexploded bombs or something. Luckily, there wasn’t.” Most of the turtles survived even during the war – the irony is that the nests were protected from humans who were scared to come to the beach during the bombings.

Now, after 8 years of work, Mona and Habiba have sent about 5000 baby turtles to the sea. Local fishermen say they see more young turtles now than before. I can’t say how much I admire the ladies and their work. It is really touching how they have dedicated their life on that.

Early every morning, they walk the beach to find the tracks of mummy turtles in the sand. Then they search the area, and once found, the nest is carefully excavated and  the eggs checked. After that, the nest is reburied and the women put a protective grid of wire mesh on top, as well as a final layer of sand. The grid will protect the eggs from hungry foxes and wild dogs. And after about 45 days, the babies start to crawl their way up, and then Mona and Habiba come to the rescue again.

Another task the ladies do is to clean the beach, every single morning. The sea spits back to the beach all the garbage people throw to it – sometimes Habiba and Mona find bottles with Hebrew tags in them. Nowadays also they find a lot of rubbish from the Unifil base – Italian water, French mustard, Spanish candies… But thanks to their hard work, the beach is now pristine clean. We enjoyed really our time in the sun in there – the whole 2km beach was empty but us and 3 other Orange House guests. Marvelous!

We really had a good break from Beirut hectic life in there. I simply loved the beach and the house itself: its beautiful, airy and well decorated rooms, the garden with its all animals: dog, cat, parrot, goats… My beloved husband surprised me even bringing a cake to the beach on my birthday. The only problem was, the candle didn’t lit in the wind!

Maiku

Ps. You find the contact info of the Orange House in our Top picks page, and more pics on our Flickr.