Closer and closer to finished.

Here are some further images of the villa. It’s starting to take shape and is due to be completed in March. We are looking forward to seeing it completed soon.

This slide set shows the bathroom, a couple of external shots and the tile floor going down in the living space. Hope you find them interesting.

Tags: construction, Our Land, the horizon, villa

We now have a roof. A little earlier than planned but Ayu has been forging ahead with this project. We had thought we should wait for our friend to get there but Ayu is determined to push on. So we can’t argue with getting some shelter onto the villa and so here it is. There may need to be a few changes to the bathroom roof as it opens into the showers but we have gone through that in detail with our friend who’ll be helping us. His name is Deni and he will be overseeing the project until completion.

Tags: construction, Our Land, the horizon, villa

It was great to get back to Senaru and the Horizon in December. As you can see from this large slide set there is lots of development and the villa is starting to take shape. It was great to be back although we have been a little concerned that the budget for the villa is running a little higher than we thought. We have actually asked a friend of ours to help out and finish off the project – just to keep our costs within a reasonable budget.

But that aside, you can begin to picture how the finished building will look.

Tags: construction, Our Land, the horizon, villa

We’ve been very curious to see the progress on the buildings that we approved when we were there in September. Finally Ayu has managed to email through some photos and as you can see in the slide show below, the progress is continuing apace.

The mini-market and staff room is looking close to completion. The villa is well on the way and will soon need a start on the roof. Needless to say it’s all very exciting and we can’t wait to get there in December to survey the progress in person.

Tags: construction, villa

Here’s a few slides of the Horizon as it was looking in August. Hope you like them. It was beautiful clear weather and Mount Rinjani was in full, spectacular view.

Tags: Mount Rinjani, Our Land, the horizon

This is a beautiful set of photos at sunrise in Senaru at the Horizon. There are plenty more photos, but we have just been a bit busy lately to get anything posted! We are excited as construction is soon to begin on the villa, we are just finalising some funds.

Promise to post a few more photos soon. Just trying out some new plugins in Wordpress to make this a little easier for me. Quite a challenge that. These are being brought over from Flickr and I’m still experiencing some problems. Sorry if they don’t load for you, but the sunrise really is quite beautiful!

We are thrilled to be returning to Senaru in virtually the middle of the year and in high season. This will really give us a chance to see the restuarant in action, and to settle on the final plans for the first villa so construction can begin.

BB and I are really looking forward to this. We can only afford a week there, but that’s the longest we will have stayed in the village for some time. We are hoping it will be enough to really get an understanding of how the place is running too – and give us time to talk to all of the staff and Ayu and see how they are getting on.

But all reports have been fairly positive and the rate of customers at the restaurant seems to be quite good.

So we’ll obviously have more photos to post on our return. Can’t wait to get there!

Work continues apace on the site. We have just started on some erosion control through a retaining wall as well as some renovation to the restaurant kitchen now that Ayu has been working in it for a while and knows what she needs.

They work fast up there in Senaru and so this is all looking really good as you can see from the photos that Ayu has sent us. We’re looking forward to going back to check on the progress. We make a decision in a few weeks about exactly when that will be. But for now all we can do is look at these photos and wish we were back there.

We finally managed to return to Senaru in mid-February. It was my first time to see the restaurant in the flesh and I liked what I saw. In fact, I was very pleased with the work that Ayu and the team had done. We took two friends from Australia with us, Gina and Barbara and it was fantastic to watch them meet all of our friends and to see their faces when they saw finally what ‘we’ve been up to’ in Senaru over the last few years.

The only drawback, as you’ll see from the slide show, was the weather – it was a wild, wooly and wet few days in Senaru. It rained almost constantly while we were there and felt very much like winter in Sydney!

Despite the weather, it was a very emotional trip as we had the formal openings of the restaurant and it was also my birthday, which was the cause for some more celebration. So, here first are the latest picks of the restaurant, which incidentally we’ve named The Horizon.