Day 359: Fish feast

We were up quite late this morning and eventually made our way to Sam's for breakfast. While we ate, we were chatting to a trio of young French travellers at an adjacent table when one of them spotted a large monitor walking along the rocks on the other side of the river. When we took a closer look, we realised that it was incredibly fat. It was later joined by another equally corpulent varanid – they had obviously been gorging themselves on fish left stranded by the raging river yesterday and last night.

We had a very leisurely breakfast, sitting watching the lizards and using the wifi – we didn't end up leaving until almost 11am. We then went for a swim – just me and girls. The level of the river had dropped significantly, although it was still higher than before. The water was greeny grey, rather than the brown it had been yesterday evening and colder than it had been pre-torrent. It was also moving quite a bit faster. 

Before lunch, Zoe announced that she was craving banana fritters, so she and Kate walked back down to the other end of the village to get some. For lunch we went to the Jungle Inn, where we chatted to Julie and Tony from southern Sydney. She speaks fluent Indonesian – indeed she teaches it - but what particularly got my attention was the news that they were looking to do a one-day trek tomorrow. I've been trying to organise another day in the forest with Sinar, but it would be far too expensive to go alone and he hadn't been approached by anyone else. We sang Sinar's praises and told them how to go about hiring him and they seemed to be convinced.

After lunch we went for another swim in the river and then went back to the room for a rest. Kate and I were sitting out on the balcony reading when a macaque appeared and climbed up onto the railing. I tried to scare it off but it just bared its teeth at me and held its ground; a second attempt had the same effect. I didn't want it to think that it could intimidate us, so I made a more concerted attempt, jumping up and waving my cap at it and it finally jumped off the balcony and away over the adjacent roofs. 

Later in the afternoon we went for another swim. Kate left first, heading back to the house, while I swam with a Danish guy and his young son, and the girls played among the rocks on the river bank. I eventually joined her, leaving the girls alone with their game. On the way back, I met Sinar, who told me that he had spoken to the Australian couple and we were all on for tomorrow.

In the evening, we all went to the Jungle Inn for some beer and chips. As we ate, Kate spotted the guy from whom we had bought the sweet sticky rice a few days ago and sent the girls down to get some more from him. They returned with the news that he was all out, but he had some rice balls left. Kate ordered some and the girls returned with some odd-looking spheres that proved to be delicious if disconcertingly coloured.