A 40 minute boat ride from Sanur takes to you to the shores of Nusa Lembongan. They are sandy shores, lapped by cyan blue waters. We were excited for the beach. After all Bali and its islands are famous for them. A week of island life, exploring the coves and hopefully doing some top notch snorklelling in the rich waters around.
I am not starting this post with Lembongan which is where we stayed but Nusa Penida where we visited, where we saw the most dramatic ocean side scenery we have ever seen. No pictures can do theses phenonemal places any justice the scale was vast the waves crashed against the cliffs sending up huge sprays. The colours, what do you call them? azure? blue? cyan? turquoise? but then there was a deep purple blue too. And it just got better and better. Pods of playful dolphins, rainbow clouds of tropical fish and incredible manta rays swimming, clearly visible from the cliffs. So many perfect places, so many gorgeous shots.
This is Broken Beach. Looked like someone spilled bright blue paint in the water.
A short walk took us to the other side of broken beach where from the cliffs, we saw a large pod of dolphins in one direction and then large manta rays in the other – We didn’t know which direction to look!! amazing
The dramatic cliffs of Killikingtan beach – we saw lots of mantas swimming in the dark ocean to the left of the t-rex head as it is known !! those little dots on the sand are people !! a very long climb down.
Truly the most dramatic scenery.
One of the reasons we chose our guest house was the location. There are 2 main “townish” areas on the island and we plonked down in northern one. It turned out to be a great choice and one we would recommend. Close to good eateries, a really nice beach and the mangrove forest. We didn’t rent scooters here. You would need one if you stayed in the southern area.
A peaceful evening strolling along the shores watching the last rays of the day. I think this is one of my favorite photos I took of the island.
Our little guest house Putra 7 was a perfect spot we loved our traditional cabin with its beautifully hand carved door. We loved the veranda, the huge bathroom, and the super comfy bed and they changed the sheets every day!! But it was the pool we most enjoyed after long hard days on the beach snorkelling!! There was many an evening we just sat by the pool and read, or chatted to family and friends by phone and even watched netflix.
$50 per night including brekkie Can’t beat that 🙂
From our place we had great walking access to the mangrove forests which we enjoyed exploring.
A fun thing to do is to hire a little boat to take you through the mangrove forest. We saw a few birds but not much else. Not like the monkeys who took over our boat in the mangroves in Thailand !! Very peaceful and we had a lovely chat with our guide, who was a bit gangsta to be honest. Well look at those those shades and hat – he was ancient bless him and super strong.
Mahagiri became our go to beach. For the price of a drink we were allowed to lounge on their five star sunbeds. Good deal we thought. Many of the posher hotels here have beach club price for about $20 you can spend the day at their pool and on their stretch of the very clean beach. It seemed kind of empty when we were there not so many tourists so a drink was all we needed to pay. Bargain.
How gorgeous is this parasol – well it is 5 star !!! and under the clouds out there is Mt Agung a very petulant volcano.
High on my wish list was to try and go swimming with mantas rays. We had seen a lot of them from the cliffs. I found a company that takes you to their hangouts and signed myself up. Lance not a big fan of off shore snorkelling so just me and a jolly group of twenty somethings!! It was an early meet up with Capt’n Jack at the beach. (Yes really his name – he had a t-shirt hehe) We waded out to our boat which looked pretty new. I was relieved, sea worthy boats and safety never much of a priority on these tours. The mum in me glanced around for lifejackets… none… I like to think they were somewhere had we needed them !!
After a while we stopped in the deepest ocean – MANTA shouted Capt’n Jack he pointed… and like lemmings we all jumped over board. It was pretty cold and I couldn’t see the bottom just black and then a white shape and there was the manta he swam by me I got to see him from the side for about 30 seconds then he was gone – Wow I’ve seen one now Im happy. After a while Capt’n Jack hollered more sightings and everyone frantically swam off in search of it. It was a bit far off and I was getting a bit cold, so I decided to swim to the boat. Then then all of a sudden I saw something white coming towards me from the black. I was a bit scared, heart beating in my ears. Somehow I had been found by a giant manta ray I would say 9 feet across. He/she swam right towards me with his mouth wide open filter feeding I just floated and I thought he was going to brush into me, but at the last minute he turned and swam beneath me. Then after a minute he came back and swam around me. It was truly magical. I felt he was as interested in me as I was in him !! What a blessing and experience. .
In a mad attempt to capture all these underwater shots I bought a iphone plastic pouch so I could take pics under water – long story short it didn’t work. Yikes a dead iphone- autopsy report – death by drowning. Luckily it was an old spare – lance seems to have brought a few along !! – he is so well prepared. Perfect travel partner.
The wild coastline extremely unforgiving and very deadly but so stunning. Massive respect for the ocean after seeing this and swimming in it.
This is Devil’s Tear – the pictures do it no justice the swell of water coming into the channel was immense as the waves hit the cliff huge sprays of water shot up into the air – the noise was deafening. very exhilarating to watch.
LOVE Bali everything about it. don’t want to leave – I think we will be back and soon !!
2 thoughts on “Nusa Lembongan & Nusa Penida”
Wow Lance and Julia. What an amazing place. Love your pictures and stories that really capture your experiences.
Thanks so much glad you enjoy reading them.