Update on Ubud, Uluwatu, Nusa Penida

 

From Lovina, we headed to the region of Ubud- a popular place full of culture, nice food and cool experiences. For our first few nights we stayed at a hostel which had good rooms and a pretty central location. We didn’t get up to much on our first day, we had a bit of a look around and went out for a lovely meal at a restaurant called Casa Luna, which quickly became a key aspect of Ubud! The following morning we embraced our creative sides, and attended a silver making course, where me and Sam made rings and Connor made a necklace pendant. We were a little surprised when we turned up to a locals house to start the course, but it ended up adding to the experience and we all enjoyed making our items, even if Connor broke 5 saws along the way! On the way back, Connor and myself got haircuts and then we returned to the hostel for a chilled afternoon around the pool. At night, we attended a traditional ‘Balinese Fire-dance Show’ at a nearby temple. The show was definitely entertaining and interesting, but I don’t think any of us really had a clue what it represented. The show started with over 100 topless men forming a circle and chanting, and the next hour was pretty similar, with the occasional addition of some sort of strange creature. After this fine bit of culture, it was time to fall back to our usual roots, so we found a sports bar to watch United get beaten by Arsenal.

 

Tuesday was fairly quiet during the day, as we had decided to book onto the Mount Batur sunrise hike, which started at 1.50am on Wednesday morning. Mount Batur is a large, active Volcano located just outside Ubud. It summits at around 1700m and the trek path is mostly made up of chunks of black lava from the last eruption in 2000. I personally found the Trek quite difficult, but on reflection it was no harder than any of the treks we had done previously, so I put most of the challenge down to the fact it was 2am, it was pitch black and the fact that I had just recovered from feeling unwell.

We summited at 6AM and luckily we were some of the first people up there, as we managed to secure a good spot to wait for the sunrise. Our guide cooked us breakfast in a small hole on the side of the volcano. The food was questionable (banana sandwich) but it was amazing to see it being cooked purely from the volcanic heat. As we got closer to sunrise, the number of people on the summit got a bit ridiculous. There were multiple drones in the air and our guide told us that over 1000 tourists summit the mountain every morning. Our walk down the mountain was a lot quicker, and we were back at the hostel for 9am, where we were able to get a couple of hours sleep before changing accommodation.

 

At midday, we checked out of our hostel and moved to a villa instead, which Connor’s cousin had kindly offered us free of charge. To be honest, we took full advantage of having our own space for a few days, we barely left the villa and had a really relaxing time , even squeezing in a movie night on our final night.

 

When leaving the villa, we had already spent 5 days in Ubud, and had originally planned to move elsewhere, however we still hadn’t been able to visit Cretya, a series of picturesque infinity  pools on the side of a mountain in the jungle. Cretya is considered the highlight of Ubud for most people, so we decided to stay for another night to allow us to fully enjoy a day at the pools. We’re very glad we made this decision as we had a fantastic day at Cretya, enjoying the views, pools and drinks for a very chilled out afternoon.

 

The next day, Saturday, saw us travel to further south to Uluwatu. The city is very famous for nice beaches, good surf and it is one of the more touristy places in Bali. We spent the most part of our first afternoon at Dreamland Beach, which was one of the nicest beaches I’ve ever seen before. The water was a beautiful colour and the sand was very golden, with very little rubbish or seaweed on the shores.

 

Sunday was a day we were all anticipating with excitement. We had booked tickets to see Solardo, (a Manchester based DJ act) at a beach club that looked otherworldly.  After making friends with a couple from Bristol earlier in our travels, we had kindly been  invited to join them on their 6 person VIP bed at the event. We spent the day enjoying the music and the scenery and slightly overindulged in vodka. It’s fair to say that this definitely wasn’t a budget-friendly day out, but it felt very special and we are all very glad we did it.

 

The next morning we woke up, packed our bags and got ready to leave the mainland for Nusa Penida, a small island, slightly west of Bali. We travelled to the island via a fast boat, which only took around 30 minutes. Upon arriving in Nusa  Penida  , we quickly learned that it was fairly hard to navigate. Grab, an app that we use everywhere to get cheap taxi’s, was not available on the island, which meant that taxi drivers tried to rip us off and we were fairly short of options.  After a bit of negotiation, we managed to finally find a taxi who took us to our hostel. When we reached our hostel we were taken aback by how good it was. It had only opened 10 days prior and everything was clearly brand new. The beds were great, it had a nice pool and pool table and the staff were fantastic. We stayed at the hostel for 2 full days. On the first day we went snorkelling with giant Manta Rays- which were up to 3m in width!

 

On the second day we hired a driver for the day and we visited some of the main attractions on the East side of the island, which were mainly beaches and viewpoints, but were very nice to see anyway. After a great few days on Nusa Penida, it was time to catch another ferry to the Gili Islands.

 

Favourite memory: Snorkelling with the giant black Manta Ray.

 

Beer choice: Still Bintang, same price !