Bali: Tulamben and Padang Bai

After our great Volcanoe adventure we hopped on a shared charter to Tulamben, a town with nothing, and no one, where the only attraction is a US Cargo ship Liberty that was torpedoed in 1942 15kms south of Lombok. Attempts to tow her into the port failed as she filled with water and beached at Tulamben. Then an erruption of Gunung Batur shifted the hull into deeper water. This made for a very cool snorkelling site. Although accompanied by a strong current, and a dozen divers, the coral life on the ship was very cool, and the fish just as interesting. It took us two tries as we had to wait for the proper time of the tides to get in the water so we weren't swept past the ship and onto the wavy beach.

Then we went on to Padang Bai, the port town to Lombok, where we decided to give our super touring a rest and spend two nights. We got the coolest Bungalow, which was more like a barn with three big beds upstairs and the bathroom and a lounge area below with couches and chairs, where they brought our free breakfast in the morning. It almost felt like a real house with our own living room. And a bit of luxury is nice once in a while. The beach was so cool, composed of coral beads not completely ground down, so you sunk very deep into the earth, but like lying on a waterbed. We also arrived in time to see their annual festival which was a colourful parade through town.

Then we jumped on the ferry the next morning to head to Lombok and the Gili Islands. Gili Trawangan was great. And island free of police, filled with handsome young Indonesian men, fun bars, open pot smoking, "bloody mushrooms", beautiful beaches and a great bungallow. We could have stayed forever, but thought it best to keep going after 6 days seeing as we have a limited time to see all of Indonesia. In retrospect we should have just stayed.

We went back to the mainland and took the bemo to Senaru and hiked to the waterfalls, which obviously the locals told us we would never find by ourselves. The second and larger waterfall was gorgeous, like thundering water jetting out of the foliage of the mountain. It is belived that swimming in the pool at its base is a fountain of youth and grants you an extra year on your life. Well, we found out why: the water was freezing! The spray alone, when the sun went behind the clouds was enough to make me want to run. But it was also amazing, like standing in the middle of a hurricane.

The next morning we split from Paul as he was heading back to Bali to fly to NZ (we miss you!!), and Carla and I went east towards Sumbawa. We thought we would be able to take local transport as our cheapest option across Lombok and Sumbawa to Flores, which we read was amazing. Well the trip was a bit more difficult than we thought....

R