If you've watched Avatar: The Last Airbender then you'll know what I'm about to talk about. King Bumi is the king of the Earth Kingdom in the show Avatar. He is wild, care free, yet balanced. In the Indonesian language Bumi means earth! So now you know why he is called Bumi and you know how much I like a children's cartoon show. Which is one of the best shows I have ever watched. It is more of an experience watching it than anything else. They delve into philosophy without making it overbearing, incorporate martial arts, and it's just funny. So if you haven't seen it then watch it!

King Bumi by Reh-Kitz                             reh-kitz.deviantart.com/ — King Bumi by Reh-Kitz reh-kitz.deviantart.com/

I experienced what the bumi is like here. It is lustrous mountains filled with green top trees and powerful waterfalls, calm and serene fields of rice patties, and the smooth sandy beaches that line the coast.

Yesterday Ingela took us on a hiking trip to mountains in the northwest of the island with her trekking company, Bumi Yatra. It is about 1.5 hours from Ubud and an amazing scenic drive! While the other people on the trip slept in the car ride there I simply couldn't. I was just like the dog from UP. Everything I saw was just too amazing. I had my head glued looking out the little window of our car - by the way all the cars here are small, the biggest things they got are hatchback sized Toyotas and the occasional flat bed pickup truck. The way the scenery changed from the flat rice fields to the terraced rice fields to the incredible mountains overlooking the entire island was so fresh!

Before starting on the hike we stopped by a mountain school that Ingela supports. There we donated a suitcase full of children books given by the folks back home that Robin had collected for them. The faces on these kids seeing these books was so cool. For a lot of them it was the first time they had seen so many books in English. The only English book they had was a dictionary with some pictures in it. It was quite the upgrade to say the least.

After getting an emotional high from seeing those kids going nuts over the books it was time to get physically high up in the mountain trek - you potheads thought I was gonna talk about weed...shame on you. The trek is called The 7 Waterfalls, well because there are 7 waterfalls that are on the hike. Now having growing up doing outdoors stuff all my life pretty much I knew that I was going to love every dam second of being out there. I've hiked the mountains in Korea, North Carolina, California (Lake Tahoe when I took a wrong route on my snowboard and hiked an hour to get back on course), and now Bali. I wasn't fully prepared like I am when I actually do go hiking for real as I didn't have my CamelBak, knife, rope, etc...but most importantly I didn't have my hiking boots. Epic sadness for not having those babies with me. All I had were a pair of white Nike Frees. Quite ideal for hiking I know...I said fuck it whatever I'm not gonna have many opportunities like this anyways. Those shoes provided me with no traction on the mountain. So I had to use my cat like skills that I've honed over the years to walk around as nimbly as possible.

The first of the 7 waterfalls that majestically pops out from the forest.

It was a two part hike with the first half being the "easier" half and the second half being the more difficult half. I'm an experienced hiker, and I'm gonna be real...that shit was hard. However, it was absolutely well worth it. Being out there was so amazing I that time flew by. The second half of the hike though was definitely harder and well worth it. The last waterfall we saw from that was by far my favorite. When you stand underneath them and feel that power on top of you it's incredible. The wind generated from all that falling water makes you feel like your in a hurricane. Not to mention the water itself is about 69 degrees Fahrenheit, which is close to the fresh water springs back home, definitely wake you up.

Our guide Komang that had no problem scaling those mountain sides.

Back in Ubud we visited Ingela's house that she built in the middle of some rice fields. Her house is one of those that you dream about. It has no walls and is completely open. It's three floors of amazing. I'll post more pictures of her place when we go again, but trust me when I say, "Oh My Glob!"

That's all I pretty much got to say for now. So I'll leave you all with a beautiful Bali sunrise.

King Bumi!