A few recent pictures

This is Jon checking in with a picture post.

After I blogged yesterday, I decided to go out and have another surf. I ended up getting hammered by two waves in a row and got water in my ear. I wasn't wearing my earplugs because I often talk to people in the water, and also because my ears have been OK with surfing for the past five days.

I paddled into a wave that turned out to be way bigger than I thought, and I didn't have the experience or skill to ride it. I bailed, and got pounded twice...the first time pushed me underwater, and the second pounding spun me around and around once I was down there, holding me under for a while.

Water got forced into my ear, and I came to the surface all dizzy, with my throat hurting. I tapped out after that, but not before getting worked by another big wave that I tried to ride into shore. Ouch. It's normal to have big wipeouts, and part of the learning process I guess. It's so painful though!

So, I'm taking the day off today because my ear is acting up Carol-style. Hopefully not as bad as hers though. The doctor flushed it out, but I don't feel an improvement. I will give it some more time.

I won't surf today, and will hide from the sun. While I do that, I'll post some pictures from the last few days. Kir will have posted some similar ones already.





Here is Kir and I with the monkeys at the Uluwatu temple. Kir got nervous and threw her whole bag of bananas to the monkey on the left. He didn't share with the approaching monkey on the right.





Here is my shot of the cliff-top temple, along with a shot looking away from the temple. The temple is on the southern tip of Bali. It's important to not fall over the cliff, since the next piece of land you'll hit is Antarctica. If you don't hit rocks on the way down, of course.



We also went to Padang-Padang beach, which has one of the world's best (consistently breaking, consistently big) left handed tubes. A boat crashed into the coral really close to the wave, but the wave is OK. I didn't get a picture of the wave, because the tide was out with no swell, so it was flat when we were there.





The boat has been there for six days, and there are plans to tow it off the reef when the tide is right. Apparently it was an illegal fishing boat that Greenpeace activists were searching for. These days, it's not very difficult to find.

Those are all the pictures for now! Remember to click them to make them bigger, especially the scenery ones.