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| me, Adit, Dita, Damar just arriving with our welcome drinks |
My travel buddies Adit Comma and Dita asked me to join them to go to
Klungkung for rafting by the end of October and I said yes. So there we
went, along with Damar, friend of Dita at #Melaligen. We arrived at Bakas Levi Adventure at around 11.30 p.m. They served us welcome drink and escorted us to meet the elephants. Damar and I got to ride a male elephant named Doni while Adit and Dita had a female one named Elsa.
Actually I didn't really want to post this elephant tour stuff because I had to lose a friend because of this. He was being very cynical about me posting pics with the elephant on Instagram because he thinks it's a torture for the poor animal. I actually considering his thoughts about exploiting the elephants and stuff but I don't appreciate his way to quip me on his account instead of telling the matter right on to my face (so much of a man huh).
Anyway: If you're one of those who think that elephant tour shouldn't be done in the first place, if you really want to make a change, please protest straight to the tour facility, raise an awareness, fight for a cause, or make yourself heard in any other proper way instead of sulking around on people. If you think it's important for your friends not to support such thing, please tell them right away--if you consider them your friend. They'd accept any input/critic as long as it's a right thing, is positive and delivered with good deed. Don't satirize and dramatize things because it would just make yourself lose friend(s) due to such 'heroic' act of yours.. And by what I saw, the elephants here weren't being tortured. They could eat and do things they seem to enjoy. If I saw the tamer being hard on them I wouldn't agree with them and told them on the spot.
After the bumpy trip around the compound with Doni and his tamer, Pak Andi, we got to meet Jenny and Johnny the baby orangutans. They were both three months old and were so cute.. they act really like toddlers actually. Hey, don't stare at me. This was my first encounter with both the elephant and orangutan. Ever. So, yeah, they impressed me but I just don't think I fit in their world. If you know what I mean... LOL. I'm not too fond interacting with animals actually.
We had lunch and then we carried on to do the 5-kilometer rafting along the Melanting River. It was both exciting and mesmerizing because of the stone walls and the trees on both of our sides were so beautiful. The view was absolutely breathtaking and I kid you not. Seriously. And we had two spots where we can do the cliff jumping (but I skipped that) and a small waterfall where we can pose like we did on our pic below.
You can watch the whole rafting session on Adit's travlog at the end of this post. I couldn't bring my camera but thankful that we had the waterproof action cams for wet activities like this (mine is a Brica Pro-5 and Dita's is Go Pro Hero 3). After the long wet but fun trip, we were picked up with a big truck to go back to the facility.
We changed
our clothes with the dry ones and carried on to ride the ATV. I was
paired with Damar and turned out he was kind of an expert with the ATV
so the ride was all speedy, bumpy and dangerous, but I feel safe. We went around the facility, going a bit off the grid for about 30 minutes through the rice field embankment and all the muddy roads. This
was also my first experience with ATV and it was super fun indeed!
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| group selfie before we go home |
We left the facility at around 5 p.m. and carried home with us the whole new experience. It was really fun and you should consider especially for the rafting experience. The water is clean, not perfectly white but a little brownish (perhaps because of the rain) but the whole rafting journey was indeed cool and you just have to try it yourself.
Contact the Bakas Levi Adventure here for information and bookings.
