Village in the Clouds

Village in the Clouds is truly a unique venue and very much the love child of Josep Triay, world class ultra-marathoner and son of Majorca, Spain. Originally conceived as a retreat by a wealthy Chinese merchant from Denpasar, a top Balinese architect has designed the buildings that sit high on a mountain overlooking valleys and rice terraces and from where on a clear day you can see the ocean about fifty miles away. The resort is very high end and can only accommodate about sixteen to twenty people when fully occupied. During the time we are stay there we see only two other overnight guests, lovely forty-year old women, also from Spain. The food is fantastic. The setting is fantastic. We walk to small shrines deep in the mountains. We try to walk to visit a popular hot spring but get completely lost and end up riding without helmets on the backs of motorcycles to get there and whose owners take us through village after lovely village to see UNESCO recognized rice terraces that are truly stunningly beautiful. We ride the bikes for a couple of hours. We pay the drivers five dollars each and they kiss our hands in gratitude.
Josep also runs a “Freedom School,” where village children are offered English classes with a Spanish accent, a few random other subjects, and Balinese dance. We visit the Balinese dance class, which Joy joins in. It is lovely to see young boys and girls separately learning the highly stylized dance footwork, hand and finger gestures, eye and head movements, and facial expressions.
On our last evening at Clouds before dinner I offer a yoga class that Joy, Josep, and the two women attend. Afterwards we all dine together. As with every meal at Clouds the food is fresh and this evening good wine is flowing and post dinner conversation is warm, candid, passionate and political. Josep suggest we have breakfast together as well. His mother has mailed him homemade Majorcan olives and prosciutto and he will instruct his Balinese staff to produce a classic Majorcan breakfast. I cannot begin to describe how delicious it was.
And this is the way it happens for us in Bali, a cornucopia of good fortune. Still, we take our heartfelt leave of Josep, Marisa, and Assun and head toward Pentestan, the village next to Ubud, where we will be staying at the guesthouse run by Karja Wayan, a renowned Balinese artist who has studied in Tampa and who has even visited Boston and the Cape. On our way to Ubud we stop at a spectacular botanical gardens (turn left at the big corn statue – no really, a big ear of corn statue in middle of road, twelve feet high and proportional) and also buy orchid cuttings that travel in a plastic bag through customs in New Guinea, the Philippines, and California and are growing now in my kitchen.