Indonesia - Step 7.7: Nusa Lembongan an 4 hour on a scooter in Penida

Even though we started our way to go to Nusa Lembongan from Lombok at 10:30am, we didn’t arrived before 17:30 in the new hostel. So after this 7hours of Cab, waiting in a tourist office, ferry to Penida, waiting with puppies, ferry to Lembongan, hiking up to the hostel and arriving - we just went down the steep hill to the mainstreet to find dinner.

There was an italian place where we could watch the sunset and end our travel day. Nusa Lembongan is small, but you need a scooter to get around anyways. I absolutely love riding the scooter, so I was happy that we each rented one the next day. The streets there are a not as good as in Lombok, there are a lot of damaged roads and steep hills, but we managed.

As now I was traveling again alone with my dutchie-bestie and we have the same life-pleasures in common, we both just enjoyed finding a nice café again. Sitting there, watching waves, having good coffee, conversations, journal, read and exist; thats just an activity we both love and appreciate.

I found myself often questioning, why I am not traveling like other people and go on a hike, to a waterfall, and adventure every other day and travel around fast, blabla. But in the end is this what I already did and still do when there are beautiful things that I want to discover. Also I am still learning to stop comparing (comparison is the thief of joy), as everyone has different values. Traveling long time (this year actually the whole time, even with the break to visit my family), I am valuing to travel slow, stay in a place longer to get small, tiny routines, getting to know the surroundings and make this place a temporarily home.

So thats why we enjoy this so much and we sat there for a while at the beach, before we decided to scooter to Nusa Ceningan which is connected to Lembongan by a small bridge that says “Careful: bridge is broken”. This one is even smaller than the island we stayed on and we discovered some beautiful cliffs and nature.

This evening we had dinner in a warung, which basically means “shop” in indonesia, but most of the time it is a restaurant with local food for like 30-60k (2-3 EUR).

For the next day we decided to do a daytrip to Nusa Penida. (Little did we knew this time what an intense day it will be like)

So we took the first ferry to Penida and rented a scooter, ready to scooter around the day. There are certain touristic spots, that the locals tell you to go to. These spots are on the west, as you can not do the whole island in one day. Google maps lead us on a 45minutes drive to the first place which are two viewpoints. The problematic that we found on Penida, was that a lot of day tourists come from Bali to do the same thing we planned, so there are countless cars everyday going to one touristy spot after another. Meaning as we arrived at the first place, we already saw the crowds of people running to one viewpoint to take 2937 photos.

The place itself was beautiful but the manner of just going there to take a photo with these tourist-guided that constantly told you to go out of the view was ruining it. I told my friend I like these magical nature places, but I don’t want to see them I want to “be” there. Otherwise I could watch a photo on google. And thats why for the next spot we just tapped on a point in google that said “manta view point”. It was another 45min drive and the last 1,7km lead us to a road that was really steep and broke so at some point we left the scooter and walked the remaining 800m. Instead of Mantas we found 2 temples and a cliff view point, going to the edge to see the depth until my friend got really nervous about me standing so close to the edge.

Another 40min scooter ride later - with 1929 tourist cars that overtake you and almost drive over you - we went to another typical viewpoint. It was really hot and our life-energy was drained by the sun, scooter rides, crowded places and unfriendly guides. So we decided to start our way back to the port, as we also needed to catch a ferry. On that last 50min scooter ride my friend lost me and arrived at the port some minutes after me. One Nasi-Goreng and a ferry to Lembongan and we arrived at our hostel and took a dip in the cold pool. Which apparently is very rare in indonesia as usually all the pools are warm. I made the mistake to not put any suncream before riding a scooter all day in the sun, so I got the worse sunburn since I arrived.🦀

The last morning I taught a yoga class to my friend and a guy from LA that stayed in the same hostel. We went back to Bali (again with a ferry, realising the amount of times we are on boats here is ridiculous).