Merry Christmas!!!

So it's the 27th of December, which makes me a little late in my holiday tidings, but better late than never. We spent our Christmas in Lovina, a tiny beach town in the North of Bali, renowned for it's dolphin watching, an activity we decided to skip. Apparently you pay $15 to head out in a fleet of boats that chase around a gaggle of fleeing dolphins, and we didn't feel like that would jive with the holiday spirit. Instead we rented motorbikes for three consecutive days and careened along the North coast.
Bali is possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been. Everything looks like a Bob Ross painting. It's almost cheesy how gorgeous it is. I would be only slightly surprised if we saw a unicorn galloping up a rainbow. So generally speaking, that's what we were driving through.
Christmas eve was our first day on the bike and we took a road along the coast towards a thousand year old temple perched over the water. So far the temples here have all been about the same, which is not to say they aren't beautiful, but if you see one, youv'e seen enough. This experience was special, though, because we were the only people there, except for the self-proclaimed "guardians of the temple" who prepared us for entry by dressing us in sarongs, flowers in our hair, rice on our foreheads and throats, and then annointing us with holy water. Atypical for a Christmas eve, to say the least.
After the temple we shot over to Art Zoo, an outdoor gallery/ homoerotic fantasyscape of the American artist Symon. We explored the grounds, again as the only tourists around, checking out Symon's massive canvases of Balinese landscapes, and, of course, his assorted blue reclining male nude sculptures. After the self guided tour we talked with Symon for a while before plopping back on the bike and riding through a two thousand year old village (according to Symon) and then home.
Back in Lovina we set out to fulfill a personal dream we've harbored since our time in Cambodia. Regular readers might recall mention of the durian fruit, the locally beloved fruit that smells like an armpit. We tried it back in Cambodia, and actually liked it, and even thought that because of its semi-savory taste and avocado-like texture, it might be made into a tasty guacamole, that if successful, we would name durcamole. So we went to a grocery store, picked up a medium size durian and all the regular guacamole accoutrements, and snuck everything into our room. In some countries in Asia durian is banned in public places and we thought our hotel might not smile upon us cooking with one on our balcony. Long story short, durcamole is some of the most foul tasting garbage I have ever eaten and our room smelled like shit for hours. Under no circumstances should this experiment ever, ever be repeated. I had to wash my hands about 20 times before I went to bed, just to ward off vomiting. We still had a lovely time making it, listening to Christmas tunes and decorating our makeshift tropical tree with seashells and flowers.
For dinner Ashley suggested we find a place that does pizza, as pizza is the Trottier family traditional Christmas Eve meal. Sadly the place we chose apparently boils their pizza, because it came out disturbingly wet. We also ordered guacomole which was actually thousand island dressing with shrimp in it.
Christmas day, we woke up, oredered coffee and tea to our room and opened presents. We put a five dollar limit on each other, but both made off with one nice gift and a chocolate bar each. Day two on the scooters took us up the side of a volcano to a massive waterfall, and then back down to some springs favored by the locals. When we came back to town we settled in for a beer on the beach at sunset and ended up meeting a couple guys who we hit it off with, and spent the rest of our Christmas with them eating loads of delicious Indonesian food and drinking cold Bintang into the wee hours. It turned out to be a very memorable and special Christmas day.
For Christmas Ove, as we are now and forever calling it, we tooled back up the volcano, tyo another set of falls that, honestly, were too good to be true. It's sad, I suppose, that this kind of gratuitous beauty always seems fake to us, but once again, it just looked like a horrible velvet painting. And I mean that in a good way. We hiked trails between a handful of waterfalls, and every time we thought we had come to the headliner, we crested a hill and stumbled onto one even more incredible than the last. So that was a good day.
Last night we met up with our Christmas pals for a few final drinks before parting we parted ways, and Ash and I made last minute deigns on getting to Padang Bai, where we currentyl find ourselves. It's nice here, but not spectacular. We snorkeled for a while, but there's very little else to do, so I think tomorrow we'll hop on a boat to the Gili Islands, just off the northwest coast of Lombok. Gili Trawangan has a reputation as the party island making it our hopeful spot of residence for New Year's Eve. Otherwise, none of the Gilis have roads, meaning no cars or motorbikes for a while, and they also have no freshwater showers, so we will be living a la Swiss Family Robinson for a while. I don't know if there's Internet or not, so if you don't hear from us, happy New Year's!