Island time

We had our breakfast at 0830 again.  I went to reception around 0930 to advise them of our impending checkout at 1000 but found our driver already waiting to take us to the Nusa Lembongan ferry.

We had made arrangements for the boat from Sanur to Lembongan, Lembongan to Penida, Penida to Sanur and then a car to Amed, plus transfers to/from the hotel at Lembongan.  I was rather surprised they got all that right … well, nearly … the Lembongan to Penida ferry is just a walk-up service so they couldn’t do it for us.

The driver introduced himself as Wayan, the eldest of the Balinese birth order names.  And then he told me what the other three of the four names were, saying that Ketut was the third and Nyoman was the fourth.  But I named my third cat Nyoman!  Do I have to rename her now to Ketut?  Ooops!  A quick search on Google revealed that he was wrong.  He must have been an only child or of just two otherwise he would have known, I expect.

It was a 40 min wait under the shelter at Sanur beach for our 1100 departure.  Our luggage was loaded ahead and we were called down to the beach at 1100.  We removed our footwear into two large boxes to be loaded onto the boat.  Then we rolled up our shorts and waded into the water and took our seats.

Scene at Sanur Beach for boarding of boats.

The six-engined boat set off at 1115 for the 30 minute ride.  It was surprisingly quiet.  We pulled into Mushroom Bay or Sanghyang Bay where it was a short walk with our luggage to Naturale Villas.  The transfers that were supposedly included weren’t actually needed.

After checking-in, it was after midday.  We headed out for lunch and walked around briefly to explore options for diving and snorkelling.

Mushroom Bay seemed a bit too busy with boats and daytrippers for a conducive swim.  We chose to have a cool dip in one of the two pools in our accommodation.

In the evening, we headed out for a pre-dinner drink of mango smoothie.  It was so bad as if there were no mangoes in it.  We had to say something and the second iteration was much better.  Following that, we thought it would be good to eat somewhere else.  We found a simpler place at the far end of the bay which had an equally good view for a good dinner.