Indonesia – Bali – Lovina

2011  February  —–

Because of the rain and poor beach, we decided to move west to Lovina, another 3 hours along the northern coast of Bali. We found a great little bungalow near the beach. While having a welcome mixed fruit juice with the hosts, we decided to take advantage of their driver and tour a bit of the area. We went to Gitgit to see a terrific waterfall. We had to hike down about one kilometre to see it but it was truly beautiful. Unfortunately Irene left the SD card in the computer and there are no photos 😦 After a quick return to the guesthouse to retrieve the SD card we went to a Buddhist monastery. It was a quiet little monastery and we saw schedules for Vipassana courses posted to the entrance of several buildings which made us smile in anticipated thought of sitting here in Bali rather than freezing at the same course in Sylvan Lake.

From there we went to some hot springs. I know it sounds bizarre to go to hot springs in 39C weather, but it was so beautiful. We walked through a gauntlet of vendors (even the waterfalls had a gauntlet of vendors) over a little bridge, along a stone path through the jungle and to the springs. They are amazing!

There are 3 pools. All have lions heads with warm water pouring our of their mouths into the pools. The medium pool has the water come directly from the mountain and is the warmest, 36C. One can stand under the lion’s mouth and have the water gently caress over your head and shoulders. It drains into the larger pool that is comparable in size to Banff hot springs. The smallest pool was off to the side of the large pool. It also has water coming directly from the mountain, however it falls from spouts about 3 meters above. One can stand under these high spouts and have a fantastic water massage as it pounds over your shoulders, back and head. All this is nestled in the jungle and surrounded with beautiful flowering bushes, all all for the price of 5000rp. Fantastic!

The next day, Irene did a a couple of dives on the farthest north-west island of Menjangan. Diving is experiencing a different world on our own planet. This dive was amazing in that there is a shear drop off about 20 meters off shore. The corals were abundant and very colourful with the corresponding fish that cohabit ate around and within them. Our 3 minute ascending stop was at a ridge covered with soft coral. There were millions (no exaggeration) of goldfish size fishes in every colour of the rainbow alternately rising out of the coral in an explosion of colour only to descend back into the coral as though the coral had sucked them back in. There were hundreds of soft coral with thousands of fish all exploding out and then disappearing back. It looked like a magical fish choreography, danced out to an inaudible orchestra. It was absolutely mesmerizing.

The rain situation was nearly as bad as Amed. It would start to pour about 2:00 pm and would last into the night. It was apparent that the north of Bali was not the place for a relaxing holiday so we shared a taxi back to Ubud with a couple of Aussies who were also tired of the rain. We made one stop at a little village in the spice region of Bali. We perused a local market and stocked up on some fresh spices, but as it was still raining, none of us felt like wandering around too long.

Return to Ubud next…..

Lovina Sartaya        150000

places to eat in Lovina: Warung Jungle good food / price / spicy