Year 2 – 27 September 2025 Guest Blog - Benoa Marina

Today, the crew booked a day of exploration, hiring Hari to take them around. Since it was a Sunday he came with his wife and delightful two-year old daughter. He knew the best places to go, starting with a 700-year old village called Penglipuran. The architecture of the buildings and land management still follow the concept of Tri Hita Karana, the Balinese philosophy of the relationship between God, humans and the environment. It's one of the cleanest villages in the world! Though it may be touristy now, it's calm, and the people who live there are not pushing their wares, though most of them have shops. We were dressed in Balinese clothes, which were rented to us, but we liked them so much, we bought them! Hopefully we'll wear them again soon enough.

Next stop was Temple Tirta Empul, an enormous complex where people go to pray and work together. We decided to join them for the purification process. The holy springs here bubble up into a large, crystal-clear pool within the temple and gush out through 30 waterspouts into the two sacred purification pools. Local Balinese and Hindu worshippers stand in long lines in the pools waiting to dip their heads under the waterspouts in a purification ritual known as melukat. Bathers start in the pool on the left side standing in the pool to the waist under the first water spout. Once they have cleansed themselves under the first spout they join the next queue. This process is continued until they have cleansed themselves under each waterspout. It is a long process, and we left after the first three fountains, hopefully a little purer than when we entered. 

After that we needed a little refreshment and went to visit a coffee plantation. Now this is a really odd thing they have here. Their best coffee beans are actualy extracted from the faeces of the animal called the Luwak. They eat the coffee berries for their fleshy pulp, and through the process of digestion, the seed is separated from the fruit and is fermented. After about 24 hours, the Luwak will poop the seeds out, and somehow they then remove the seeds to make the coffee. Didn't fancy trying it tbh, but the other coffees we tried were delicious, especially the avocado one. 

We then went to cool off in Tegenugan waterfall, which is a powerful and very touristy waterfall; impressive all the same. 

We returned to the boat more than twelve hours after we'd left, tired but happy.