I wasn’t kidding when I said a well-trained dog. Just stick your arm out and Wally will approach looking to get a slippery brush across the side of his blue scaly body.

I, personally, was obsessed with this large tropical dog like fish. When I first offered him a pat he swam to my hand, but rather than letting me give him a brush across the side, he wrapped his lips around my now, very tense hand. I’m all too lucky he didn’t take a finger along with him, for Wally does have some teeth. Thankfully with all my digits in tact, I would follow him up and down the reef looking to get another encounter; but he was bored with me and swam to give some other snorkelers a chance to pat the famous Wally.

Try and search Wally the fish on the Internet and you’ll get a bunch of images of this extraordinary animal. Or better yet, come visit yourself in Wally’s fantastic home.

Dad and Tuck hanging out with Wally!

Wally likes to get really close to everyone!

I had gotten to the edge of the coral and from there it cut off, plummeting straight down into the sandy bottom that I could barely make out. I dared not go over the edge, I understood Nemo’s friends. Then, looking ahead, coming towards me, was a school of shiny green fish. The vast number of small bodies all swimming together was enough to make me hold my breath in wonder, though I noticed a few of them abruptly change their course of direction… and then their color. Soon, one after the other, each guy slowly began to go from green to blue following the newly set path. I didn’t understand. One of the Marine Biologists aboard the boat had said you could see these color-changing fish and it had sounded cool even then, but to actually witness it was beyond anything. The Great Barrier Reef just kept getting better and better. I wonder what next I’ll find….

It was cool to be this close to the fish!

So, our story begins at a sickening hour in the town of Ubud at the Rumah Cinta. At the spike of 2 o’clock in the morning, a powerful voice bellowed towards a boy of the name Otto Sharples. The voice came from a man named Dad. “Wakey Pakey”, the voice spoke in a melodic fashion, the same tone you would use to shout “yodale heehoo”. Otto, laying in his bed, in a deep, deep slumber was all too annoyed when the blade of his father’s voice pierced into his sleep. He was especially flustered due to his lack of shuteye. He folded his thin layer of covers away from his legs and swung his weight over the edge of his bed, simultaneously letting out a low grunt. His face formed into a hefty scowl. He expanded the crack in his white mosquito net and walked out in a wobbly manner. He slowly stomped his way down the tiled staircase holding onto the wooden rail, still displaying an angry face. He saw Dad, Yve and Wescott waiting at the front door of the house already prepared with shoes and daypacks. Otto had his clothes on and his backpack pre-packed, anticipating his mood the day before. Slipping on his mud stained green and black sneakers without untying the laces, he hopped on one foot over to his string bag filled with snacks and tightened the opening at the top.

Otto and his family rushed out the door without conversing and walked through the oak entry gate of the villa onto the walking streets of Penestanan. They hustled down to the main street of Ubud, not surprised to see Juli, their driver, waiting with his car. They exchanged greetings and got in. Otto immediately continued his sleep with his head pressed up against the glass window. While Otto slept, the car stopped at David’s hotel. He was a friend visiting Project Equator and wanted in on the volcano climbing action.

“Otto we’re here!” Otto’s eyes opened to a blinking rhythm while they adjusted to the LED lit parking lot. He crawled out the car and spread his arms wide causing a gliding yawn. Some anxious tour guides quickly targeted Otto and his family, haggling with them to try and be their guide for climbing the volcano. One tour guide was selected and escorted the group of volcano-bound adventurists to a room with a small plastic table lit by a single bulb that attracted hundreds of bugs.  This is where they would pay for the tour and get the down-low on what type of hikes they could chose from. The hike that really caught their attention was the 5-hour hike. “The five hour hike is the longest. Your guide will take you up to the rim of the volcano and cook you breakfast. After you watch sunrise, you’ll hike around the rim for a little bit and then check out the volcano which erupted in 2000. You can still see bubbling lava and steam coming out”, the man lecturing in the room explained.

With visions of lava and steam, the group unanimously decided that they would take the 5-hour hike and they were on their way. As they all started to walk onto the trail a pleasant surprise excited them.  Juli, their driver was walking along with them. “Juli your coming!” they all exclaimed. They tried to convince Juli days before to come with them but he didn’t want to commit for fear of being too tired after the long drive.

Juli, David and the Sharples trekked uphill, up a steep rock slope panting hard and every once and a while, taking a swig of water to make up for the sweat they had lost. Otto’s thighs were burning, but the image of a beautiful sunrise and a scenic view of bubbling lava kept him going. Finally, they had made it to one checkpoint where 50 others were resting as well. The benches were all occupied but they still had time to catch their breath and take a few gulps of water. After 5 mins, they set off again to get to the place where they would watch sunrise.

The group arrived at the next checkpoint 20 mins later and luckily they were the only people resting at that checkpoint along with the tour guides. They cooled down quickly because of the crisp cool breeze that skimmed the rim of the volcano. Eventually, they got cold themselves and were in search of warmth. All prepared with coats, they bundled up as much as possible but still couldn’t get warm.  Fortunately, they were on a volcano, and there is nothing hotter on the surface of the earth. The tour guides pointed out some steam holes that they could sit by to warm up.  Otto sat there for so long that when he left, he was colder than before because his skin and hair was moist to the point that it was dripping with moisture from the steam.

Many pictures were snapped at the sight of the rising sun over the neighbor island Lombok.  A horizon of pink, orange and red colored strips of cloud, with a glowing orb of light slowly warming the air, memorized everyone.  The sky was beautiful.  A cresent moon sat over head as the sun painted the sky with warm colors and a lightning storm flashing miles away.  The scene started to get more and more crowded during sunrise, but Otto and Wescott sat closely by the warm steam vents to get away from the crowd.

While Otto and Wescott bathed in the aroma of warmth, a hairy human-shaped creature passed right in front of them, only a couple of feet away.  Second later, many others creatures followed.  It was a pack of monkeys in search of a quick bite.  The pack of juvenile monkeys walked into the crowded area of the checkpoint.  The funny thing about monkeys is that humans are more scared of them then they are of us, so they’ll use fear to their advantage and frighten their way to a banana in their hands, no problem. The tour guides and terrorized tourists fed the monkeys many bananas and one monkey even snagged a person’s plastic bag filled with food. It was clear that these monkeys do this every morning, because they were pros.

With the sun glowing upon their faces, it was time for the humans to hike along the rim of the caldera. With a smile of joy on everyone’s faces, they walked along the crumbly path surrounded by tall golden grass. Every footstep was a crunch of the loose gravel. They looked down the steep slope of the volcano at the black hardened lava flow.

I’m grateful that my dad was blessed with the gift of persuasiveness, because I would have missed out on a killer sunrise, a high quality work out, and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And the fact that we saw monkeys even doubled the awesomeness factor.  If you didn’t notice Otto is actually me, the narrator. The goblin under the broccoli tree is another story

Our group at the top after sunrise! (left to right: David, our guide, Wescott, Juli, Yve, Dad, me)

Wescott and I enjoying some tea at the top.

Yve and David.

The monkeys taking off with some of the breakfast items.

The guides cooked the eggs in the steam vents.

Epic views in all directions!

We didn’t see bubbling lava but we did see a lot of steam holes which was super cool!

Crater rim hike….definitely worth doing the 5 hour version!

2.5 acres of land later and an itialian architect by his side, Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro set out to build a place that would show and express his interests and ideologies. Almost six years went by and eventually enigmatic buildings rose from the ground. But from atop the hill, he wasn’t able to see the surrounding green mountains and the suns reflection in the ocean set far off in the distance. Instead, all he could see were the tall trees and overgrown vines that seemed to be internally attached to his estate, living and breathing as one. Nestled in that hill was a world of its own. He couldn’t have been happier.

There was a palace. There were towers, chapels, and fountains. There was also a park which  hid tunnels below, away from the viewers eye. The architecture was conceived of many different styles from Roman to Gothic, Renaissance, and Manueline. Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro had created an UNESCO world heritage site without knowing what he was doing. All he knew was that he had wished for something so great and bewildering that he could call his own; that represented him. Now, as a “Cultural Landscape of Sintra” you’re able to visit Quinta da Regaleira and maybe feel a soft resonation of that great first owner, see how his cultural interests influenced the way he created, and uncover the symbols embodying the grounds of a small Portuguese town.

Tunnels all around the property pop out at various hidden places!

The Palace reminds me of Fantasyland at Disney

This is the subterranean tower he built that goes 5 levels deep!

My whole body shuddered with excitement as we woke up the first morning. I remember peering out of the curtains, in the room I shared with Otto, and just seeing a limestone cliff, only a few feet away, speckled with luscious bamboo, engulfed by melodramatic mist, and completed with a raging waterfall that landed directly into our backyard.

“Where am I?” was my very first thought that morning. “Definitely not on earth.” It was like someone had knocked me out, put me in a cryogenic freezer, and shipped me off to the Hallelujah Mountains in Pandora (from James Cameron’s movie Avatar) where they wrangle up pterodactyls. Needless to say, I started that day off with an extra shot of energy, enthusiasm, and angst for exploration.

I knew the next month was going to be over in a blink of an eye, and I just wanted to get the most I possibly could out of Yangshuo. So in my eagerness, I researched every restaurant, attraction, and thing there was to do there. In no time, my mom and I had mapped out our goals and threw together a weekly schedule.

If we felt particularly motivated in the morning, which was about twenty percent of the time, the schedule called for an early morning start:

We would first get up for sunrise:

Then we would get our sweat on by doing T25 on the roof of Fun Sam’s: As much as I would like to think that I got totally in shape and fit in Yangshuo, that dream was completely dead on arrival due to the weather. We quickly discovered how slippery and dangerous a tile roof can be while doing extreme cardio workouts in the rain.

I would also occasionally attempt to meditate: I know what your thinking…Whoa! Wescott has gone all hippie dippie on us…does he seriously meditate in the morning? Um…I guess it would all depend on your definition of meditation. Does sitting on the roof and just staring out into Yangshuo while daydreaming count? If so, then yeah I meditated a little bit, so I guess that makes me hippie dippie.

Finally, I would shower, brush my teeth, floss, and eat breakfast:  I’m pretty sure that showering and brushing your teeth in Yangshuo isn’t much different than in the United States, so how about we just skip to breakfast: the most important meal of the day.

Due to our abnormally long stay in Yangshuo, Sam, a total bro who also puts the “Sam” (as well as the “Fun”) in the hostel’s name “Fun Sam’s”, threw in breakfast for free.  So every morning we are randomly greeted with one of the following meals:

Mini muffins and bread. Where’s the protein?

Typical noodle breakfast dish

Handmade dumplings made by Sam’s mom.

The Yangshuo Breakfast Lottery jackpot was definitely the noodles made my Sam’s mom: something about a warm, comforting bowl of noodle soup on a chilly, rainy Yangshuo morning just seemed right.

There were all kinds of toppings for the noodles including pickled beans, peanuts, scrambled eggs and ground pork.

After our “typical” morning routine, the schedule began to vary depending on the weather and what day of the week it was. Let’s take a closer look at that schedule.

On Mondays and Saturdays we would bike to Tai Chi right after breakfast: a tranquil ride that floods your senses with beautiful scenery.

Next, we would spend two hours of the day mastering the art of complex hand movements. Extremely slow, methodical, and precise, Tai Chi proved more of a mental memorization challenge than a physical one. Every now and then we would take a vacation from slow town and balance our bodies out with some adrenaline by learning Kung Fu.

Or…if it was a Tuesday or a Thursday, we would bike to yoga and meditation at our favorite hang out, Mood Food.  The bike ride was a slightly less relaxing and more daunting task than the casual biking to Tai Chi.

Biking to Mood Food was hairy…we will upload a video when we have better WIFI

Following our daily death defying bike ride, I would try and baffle my genes, which, thanks to Dad, make criss-cross apple sauce more like side-by-side apple sticks, during yoga or we would all zen out during meditation.

However, if it wasn’t raining (which was almost never) and we didn’t have anything scheduled, I was blessed with the opportunity to go rock climbing.

But every day, no matter what the weather was like, we would eat at Mood Food for lunch. Wait. Back up! You ate at one restaurant every single day? Yes, yes we did, and still we long for more Mood Food!

We would start our meal off everyday with a bottle of Mood Food Kombucha!

After we were full and had received a new, eye-opening lesson on anatomy or healthy living, we would leave Mood Food and bike home.  Imagine the bike pic you saw earlier, but in reverse. We would also stop to buy some fruit for dinner: apples, bananas, miniature mangos, kumquats, and mangosteens…the usual stuff.

This is us biking with the iPad strapped to the front of the bike basket to capture footage

Mini mango…Yve has pretty small hands too, so you can just imagine the size of the mango.

However, at one point or another the day did need to involve some schoolwork. So, from six to eight, I would tackle Spanish vocabulary, Romeo and Juliet, market analysis, and common sense in Everyday Etiquette. To avoid falling behind any further in my studies, my mom and I developed a new strategy to track progress in each of my classes: the agile development system. Now I don’t know if you know what agile development is already, but I was fascinated by the concept when Mom began explaining it to me. My school system now keeps me accountable and on track, well not really, but more than I would have thought.

Lastly, we would wrap up the day with some nice, old-fashioned dinner and movie. We decided that since Yangshuo was all about schedules and focusing to excel in our interests, movies should follow that suit. We picked a few actors/actresses and decided we would have a marathon of movies that they were in. To transition from one actor to another, we would have to watch a movie that had both of them in it. We ended up picking Tom Hanks, Amy Adams, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Guess what? In a blink of an eye, Yangshuo was over, just as we had predicted. Between the esoteric karst peaks, the constant misty aura, and the foreign, fascinating culture, it seemed as though our entire stay in Yangshuo was a fantastic dream.  A dream that we will always remember, and a dream that will always make me smile for years and years to come.

At dawn, I was the first to wake up and went to boil water in the electric tea kettle and take advantage of the few remaining Starbucks VIA packs we had stowed in our bags…(THANKS MOM AND DAD for bringing us so much great coffee in Tanzania!)  As I zombie walked to the bathroom to fill the pot, I casually glanced out the window to the landscape that was beginning to illuminate with the morning sun.  I stopped dead in my tracks.  Breathtaking!!  I know they call Yangshuo “The Yosemite of China,” but I still wasn’t prepared for the sheer awesomeness of the view.

Later, after two cups of coffee, I Googled Yangshuo to learn that the peaks I could see in every direction were called Karsts.  Then I Googled Karsts so that I could become more knowledgeable and explain to the kids what we were looking at.  This is what I found…. needless to say, I still can’t really explain Karsts at all….I will leave that task to my uncle Dana, who is a PhD and has spent his career teaching graduates and undergrads Geology at The University of Oregon ….but I can say that karsts are stunning and that everyone should visit Yangshuo, because, just like Yosemite, pictures do not do them justice.

Here are some of the best pictures I took in an effort to try and capture some of the beauty…

View from our window!!!

View from the bamboo boat!

The view in any direction downtown has the peaks in the background!

The peaks are lit up at nighttime, creating a magical backdrop as you stroll around the city.

Had to add this pic of Cliff and I from our 19th Wedding Anniversary Day….Yippee!

Similar to Yosemite, this topography attracts a ton of climbers and outdoorsy folks from around the world, but that is another blogpost

The garden is beautifully colored with cobalt blue, and that is where the color Majorelle Blue was born (even PopPop snagged some Majorelle blue coloring from a local herbalist in Marrakech.)  During our visit we learned that Yves Saint Laurent and his partner bought Majorelle gardens in 1980, but kept it open to the public. When Yves died, his ashes were scattered throughout the garden.

Yves Saint Laurent’s house in the middle of the garden.

That classic Majorelle blue.

Otto had his crutches on the raft!

We stopped and took this picture

Mom and Jones made a video!

The scale of this show matches the scale of the country itself, employing over 600 local villagers as actors to perform in a 70 minute show played out on the river and in front of an island where the theater seating has been constructed. The storyline is in Chinese, and while I am sure it was moving, we didn’t understand a thing that was going on. It didn’t matter, however, as the pageantry of actors using boats, floats and moving docks synchronized to music and dramatic lighting more than kept us entertained.

Art takes on many forms, whether it is human expression exposed on a stage or canvas, or Mother Nature etching impossibly beautiful rock formations or landscapes. Yanghuo brings both forms together, offering one of the most beautiful natural amphitheaters of limestone peaks with a peaceful river for a stage floor, combined with the large-scale imagination and might of an army of Chinese artists to create a very memorable experience.