In Reply to: Nautilus shells posted by scrimshaw_jo on Wednesday, 31. January 2007 at 20:04 Bali Time:
is in a street in South Sanur, on the way to the Cat and Fiddle. A number of shops each side of the street. If you look like crossing over to check out one of the other shops, then the price comes down. I don't recall if they had any nautilus shells or not, but we got an assortment of large, exotic looking shells at what we thought were reasonable prices. Better selection and much better prices than the Sindhu Markets.
We've brought back many different types of shells over the years and never had any taken off us by the customs, except for once. One time we picked up some shells from the edge of the dunes up the beach from Berawa. They were very dead and bleached by the sun and naturally we thought that they were some kind of seashells. But they turned out to be shells of the Giant African Elephant Snail. This isn't some kind of joke. Apparently these things have established themselves in Bali [we've since seen them live in the Tjampuhan Hotel river gorge]. They grow very large and are very voracious and naturally are totally banned in Australia, even very dead ones!