Numnum Waterfall and Sangeh Monkey Forest

The day after we arrived at Wayan's house, we went on a long day tour. First stop of the day was a chocolate factory. Guess whose idea it was to go there? :) Anyways, we got to see the whole process, from harvesting the cacao pods (yellow) to stripping out the fruit in the middle, fermenting the beans, roasting them, sorting them, crushing them, smashing out the oil, mixing it with oil, sugar etc., tempering it, then finally eating it! These guys had a dark chocolate which was fantastic, then a super dark chocolate which was 80%. Not for the weak of heart chocolate lovers. 

After the chocolate factory, we went to the Numnum waterfall. It's not the tallest in Bali, but it is the most powerful with the most flow. The pic immediately below is of the baby waterfall just to the left of the main one. We had walk down 500 steps to get to to the fall. I think it was only about 300, but who's counting. 

The nice thing about the falls is they were really untouristy. We saw this group of guys here, then one other couple at the end and that was it. 

We also went swimming at the base of the falls! It was amazing how powerful it was. Eventually you'd get too close; the water would be spraying in your face, wind would be pushing you backwards, and it would almost hurt to stand there. I've never swam at the base of a waterfall before, so that was awesome. 

After the falls, it was time to stop for lunch. I had a grilled fish, freshly caught in a pond by the restaurant called a garumi. Delicious! I also had a coconut juice drink. There was so much in there! I couldn't even finish it. Note: Mom the coconut juice is light and sweet, not like that awful bitter stuff you call coconut water. I think they press the meat of the coconut to get that. 

The third stop of the day was the Sangeh monkey forest. This is an old temple that looks like something from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The temple is surrounded by these really tall straight trees; we never saw trees like this anywhere else in Bali. The monkeys, finally, are the warriors of the temple, protecting it. While it seems like just a tourist spot now, the temple is still used for important ceremonies. There are priests who take care of the temple and know the monkeys. You can't touch the monkeys, but the monkeys can touch you. One of the priests calls a monkey over to you and makes it sit nicely on you before it will give it a treat. In this way, the monkeys are almost trained to be nice and calm. That is apparently not the case for all monkey forests in Bali. In those other forests, the monkeys are really aggressive. Old men train them to steal your stuff, the monkey delivers it to the old man in exchange for a banana, then you have to pay the old man to get your stuff back. Luckily, that wasn't happening here. Instead, we had a blast. It was so cool to have a monkey sitting on your hand or shoulder. They are actually kind of heavy. Their hands were the craziest parts. Just like ours! 

The priests were very good about only allowing the friendliest monkeys to interact with us. The priests knew all of the monkeys by sight, so they would not encourage a monkey they knew was aggressive over to us. 

Just chillaxin.

Baby monkey! He actually cuddled with me for a few seconds while he was eating his treat.