Trying Freedom

I woke up bright and early after my two days on Nusa Lembongan feeling pretty gutted to be leaving already, however, since the first surfing session I’ve been checking the surf forecast daily and wanted to be back on the mainland in a couple of days for some good conditions, so the adventure must go on!

I headed back to the yellow bridge which is where you can catch a local boat over to Nusa Penida for around £3, I also got to drop my moped off which I was more than relieved about, this one had its fair share of challenges including the lights turning off whenever they fancy which was resolved with a quick punch of the dash and also no speedo, not that you would want to get any speed on these roads anyway.

After 15 minutes I was at the harbour in Nusa Penida with another moped, hopefully better than the last. I had a quick coffee and an interesting chat with another traveller who had just started solo travelling after some disagreements with friends she originally came out with the week before, obviously that’s not good but slightly reassuring for me in a way considering it’s how I’m doing it.

I got on the coffee shop WiFi and did some Googling to find out what I should do in the one day I had here, I decided to set out on a road trip around all the main island sights which are normally covered on the island tours you can get tickets for all around Bali, I’d just be saving a chunk of money and time sitting in traffic with the convoys of tour cars.

First stop was Diamond Beach, around a 2 hour drive and the complete opposite side of the island.

It was absolutely stunning, and just the first spot of the day. While I was sat at this exact spot I met Gustav, a solo traveller from Sweden who it turns out had pretty much planned the same trip as me with an extra spot on route, so after spotting some Manta Ray’s here I tagged along with him for the rest of the day.

The next spot was one of Gustav’s suggestions which I didn’t have on my list, Tembeling Beach. Pre warning you have to have some pretty good skill on your moped to make it down to the beach in one piece, it’s pretty much off-roading on single track with very steep ground.

Not sure quite how worth it the beach was, but the ride down is good fun if you enjoy that kind of thing. We did see some people struggling back up to the road but it’s doable if you’re careful and can hold off arguing with your partner, with that it was onto the next place and the one I was most looking forward to, Kelingking beach.

I’d seen it was a fairly difficult trek down to the beach but since that’s my kind of thing I dismissed it and cracked on anyway, but it’s no joke, you definitely have to watch what you’re doing here, however it didn’t seem to scare off the sea of influencers at the beach which spoiled it slightly, however, still better than the huge amount at the top that didn’t want to brave the climb.

Excuse the terrible photo, again, I need to spend some time with the GoPro but I will put some shots on Instagram soon. We ended the day at Angel Billabong and Broken Beach which again, no photos, I really need to get better at that…

I headed back to my hotel with a small detour thanks to some awful Airbnb directions which took me to a pig farm (note to self always search the hotel name instead) and pretty much passed out straight away, successful day!