In Reply to: GPS Navigation in Bali posted by fromeurope on Monday, 20. April 2009 at 05:02 Bali Time:
It was a Garmin Nuvi 250 model and it was fantastic. Was my first trip to Bali but I was with friends who have been going to Bali for years. Even they said they were astounded by the amount of roads and hotels and restaurants etc the Bali Navigator GPS has loaded into it.
We travelled up to and around Lovina touring right up into the hillside looking down over the coast line, the views from up there were breathtaking, my friends said they had been up that way about 10 times over the years but without the Bali Navigator GPS they would never have had the confidence to go off the beaten track like we did. The unit had every lane, alley, road that we past along the way and on the website they say they have mapped over 10,000klms of roads and also more than 13,000 hotels, restraunts, shops, petrol stations and other businesses in Bali.
On the way back down south of the island we went up and over Mt Kintamani and again not on a main road it was off the beaten track on a sealed but narrow road and we saw parts of Bali that not too many tourists would ever get to see judging by the surprised faces of the local villagers.
Our unit simply mounted to the inside of the cars windscreen with a suction cup mount supplied and we did not have an external antannae just the one built into the GPS unit and it worked fine all over the island but maybe if your unit is an older model maybe a external aerial will be good idea. In Ubud we came accross a couple of guys on motorbikes who also had a Bali Navigator GPS, they had a GPS mount on the bikes handle bars, so its ok for bikes too apparently, not sure if they owned or rented.
I highly recommend the Bali Navigator system and I'm keeping my eye out on eBay now to see if I can grab a cheap 2nd hand Garmin GPS unit and just buy the map from Bali Navigator online and download it onto my own GPS unit, that way I have one when I go back to Bali instead of hiring all the time. I am thinking of hiring a bike in September and taking 2 weeks to circumnavigate the entire island and then in March next year take another 2 weeks to explore the islands interior.
Bali Navigator has a website that I have linked to below they also have maps for GPS mobile phones. I have a GPS phone but I think a seperate GPS is better because the size of the phones screen is too small, but thats just my opinion.