After a pleasant week in Sanur we all packed up and caught the Rocky Fast Boat over to Nusa Lembongan. We stayed in the same villa on Pantai Selegimpak as in 2008 and had booked one just down the track for our friends which was very new and had the most amazing infinity pool looking out over the water. They had to rearrange the furniture outside however, to make it a bit less of a toddler death trap (we remember doing that on our first trip!).
On the first night our friends ate in and we went out to the Beach Club at Sandy Bay. Komang, our much loved villa manager suggested 5.30pm for the sunset and he was spot on. We had a table right next to the pool and have some fantastic photos of the waves crashing on the beach as the sun is going down. The fish off the BBQ was fantastic and so were the desserts.
Lembongan is all about relaxing, so we really only had one very active day. We did an island tour where the adults and toddler sat in one of the little trucks with the bench seats (not being brave enough to start their motorbike riding career on the rough tracks of Nusa Lembongan) while the kids rode two each of a scooter with Komang and Gede, grins plastered ear to ear. We went up to the mangroves and let the kids splash about a bit in the shallows then went out in a boat snorkelling. It was a little bit choppy and there was a slight current, so I wasn't sure how our girls would go. They couldn't handle snorkels, but had one arm wrapped around the boat outrigger and the other around their trusty pool noodles (that MM insisted on bringing from home despite DM's eye rolling) and kept ducking under the water with their swimming goggles. we thought they looked like miserable drowned rats, but in reality they didn't want to get out, they thought it was fantastic. We had lunch up there and then headed off for the bridge and the underground house, the sea weed farms and a few more beaches.
The next morning Komang took us to a little slither of beach a 10 minute walk from the villas in the direction of Jungutbatu where they could snorkel from the beach once the tide went out and we swam them out one at a time on their pool noodles to where the coral was and they got to see a stack more reef fish. We had lunch there at some warung where the food took forever to arrive, but was nice enough when it did.
DM and MM went diving one morning on Lembongan. We were supposed to go to Manta Point and then Crystal bay off Nusa Penida, but there was a pretty serious swell going on (certainly the snorkelers on the boat looked worried!) and they couldn't find any Mantas, so we went to Crystal Bay and they Toyapaket, both pleasant dives, although not much big stuff and no sharks. The scenery around Penida is magnificent; waves crashing into cliffs and tiny, deserted beaches fringed with green jungle. We got back to discover that Komang had taken the girls down to the beach with a plastic bucket and gathered a little family of sea snails complete with a home of rocks and sea weed. That they thought it was excellent and spent the afternoon alternating between the pool and fussing over their little sea snail family.
We ate at Sandy Bay once more and a few times at Villa Wayan just down the road which was a nice laid back outfit whose only negative was the absence of icecream on the dessert menu. Other than that, Komang and the staff would cook simple but delicious meals for us at the villa, so long as they had a few hours notice.
After 6 nights we were very reluctant to leave, but all good things come to an end, so it was back onto the fast boat to Sanur where we said goodbye to our friends, who were spending their last couple of days at Space Bali in Seminyak. In something of a contrast to Space Bali, we were spending our last hours at the Ari Putri in south Sanur because we were leaving in the early hours of the next morning. We got two interconnecting rooms for $US74 and they were pretty basic but clean and the girls were happy in the pool where they made friends with a little girl from London. We were leaving in the early hours of the next morning. After dinner we put them to bed for a few hours while we finalised packing and then headed to the airport to discover that our flight had been pushed back 45min. The lounge we normally use was pretty crowded so we paid a little more for the prada lounge and managed to catch a little sleep before we got on the plane about 1.45am.
We were sad to be back in Sydney, but would you believe, our bags came off the carousel really quickly again! We are already planning the next trip.
Lessons learned:
- 3 weeks is a good length of time for a trip to Bali with little kids
- take the pool noodles!
- You can do anything in thongs
- wandering up the beach path in Sanur as the sun rises is one of the most relaxing forms of exercise a human being can do and makes you feel better about what you're about to eat at the Hyatt breakfast