Bali, Indonesia

After a very long trip from San Francisco to Bali and skipping the 29th of November because of the timezones, we finally managed to get to an hostel in Padang Padang, close to Ulu Watu in the south of Bali, to wake up on the 1st of December for my birthday, very close to the beach! Life was getting very hard from then. Our days were mainly filled with relaxing and sleeping on the beach, snorkeling, driving around with the scooter, visiting some temples and watching at beautiful sunsets streat away from our balcony...
After few days in this little paradise, we decided to go up to Kuta, which is way more touristic and not as beautiful but we knew we could enjoy a maximum 2 very nice surfing days and full body massages... ;)
Kuta was way too crazy for us so we got into a bus to go to the center of Bali, to Ubud, way more quiet and very typical. People are very nice everywhere, very polite, smiling and super respectfull. We are also pleased with the food which is mainly based on fried rice with vegetables but pretty tasty! We kept renting a scooter for few days so we were able to drive around and discover a bit more the country by ourselves buying gas along the road in empty Absolut Swedish Vodka bottles and ending up very lost in Banana plantations, rice terraces and chili or cabbage gardens. People were looking at us with a lot of interest like it was the first time they saw foreigners getting lost there.
One morning we woke up at 2am to go hiking on the Mount Batur, little volcano still active at only 1717m, but with Josefin very sick and started throwing up after 10minutes walking... but she made it all the way to the top, to admire this very cloudy sunset, very pale and wondering what the hell was she doing here! We finally got back to the hostel in the morning and that was it for the day! We're now hanging around a bit more and getting ready to go to the Gili Islands.

 

                                               A bit shocking, but this is originally an Hindu symbol.

Yosemite Park, USA California

Before flying out to Indonesia we had a couple of days in San Francisco that we weren't really sure what to do with. Antoine, a friend of JC told us about Yosemite National Park, only a couple of hours away, that was supposed to be very beautiful and that we should go if we could. Said and done, we took a bus, a train and a bus again and ended up in a fantastic little valley set between sharp mountain walls, waterfalls and forest in every direction. The sky was deep blue above us every day. It was truly fantastic! We spent the weekend camping, walking around in the calm valley, grilling sausages and marshmallows over the fire at night and just relaxing. The night's we're a bit cold in the tent as this was the end of November/beginning of December, but because of this the park was not nearly as crowded as it is in the summer and we were really happy that we decided to go! On the last day before going back we woke up early, packed a lunchbag and set out to hike up to Glacier Point, 2800 meters above sea level and about 1000 meters above us. The hike was pretty steep uphill but with great views all the way and 3 hours later we found ourselves finally outlooking the AMAZING view from Glacierpoint. The valley lay just down below us and we could see all the mountains, peaks and waterfalls surrounding us. Watch the pictures and you'll understand, even though they don't really make justice to what we saw. We had lunch in the sun and then eventually started walking back down again. That night we slept very good...
As for going back to SF we hadn't really decided how to, beacuse on getting there we felt that it was very expensive and complicated with public transportation. We figured that since this was the end of Thanksgiving weekend there would probably be someone from the park driving down towards the bay area that we could get a ride with, so we asked our closest tentneighbours. Turned out they were driving down there and they could make room for us,  only they wanted to do some climbing first but we we're more then welcome to come along if we wanted to. We did, and so we spent the morning with this great group of friends having a really nice time watching them climb the steep mountain wall. At the end they encouraged JC to give it a try, wich at first he was not sure if he could do (it was not an easy climb) but of course, in the end decided to give it a try even if he would only make it a few meters. And that's how JC ended up climbing El Capitan, Yosemite, one of the most famous climbingspots in the world. Need I say he made it all the way? (At least to the end of the line...)

Thank you Dr T and Scott for the ride back down to the bay, we really enjoyed your company and the interesting discussions!