2020.03.01 – Gili Air – Tulamben (Indonesia) – It rained heavily throughout the night. Upon our wake up, we started to question ourselves as to whether our 11am scheduled speed boat to Amed would actually be running. After our 8am breakfast, we sent a WhatApps message to the boat operator. As we did not hear back from them, I borrowed a bicycle from our accommodation and cycled to the ticket office. As I arrived, the staff were just walking in. They promptly responded that the fast boat to Amend would be running as scheduled. We left our accommodation at 10am for the busy harbor area. To our surprise, we met Mark at the dock’s waiting area, our backpacker from Kamloops whom we had shared a car ride from the Lombok airport a few days ago. We shared our respective experiences from our stay at the Gili islands. We bid farewell to Mark again as we boarded our speed boat at 10:45am. The one hour boat ride to Amed was made more enjoyable by the conversation we struck with Sun – an avid divemaster. She came from Switzerland, but was very familiar with the SouthEastAsia dive sites. Upon our speed boat beach docking in Amend, our luggage was carried over to land by the locals. A driver was quick to offer us his services. Sun joined us in the car for a short ride to the dive center she had booked. We continued our route to Tulamben some 15 kms further. We struggled with driver to find our accommodation as its location under Maps.me was not accurate. After driving a few times through the small hamlet of Tulamben and with the help of Google maps, we finally found the hotel slightly off the main road. Shortly after check-in, it started pouring rain. We had our evening meal at the hotel’s very popular restaurant.

2020.03.02 – Tulamben – Tulamben (Indonesia) – After our courtesy breakfast at the hotel, we opted to head out for snorkeling from the nearby shore. The small hamlet of Tulamben was home to over a dozen of dive shops which were all focused on exploring the inside of the sunken USAT Liberty cargo ship torpedoed by the Japanese in WWII. The shore was extremely difficult to walk on as it was covered by washed stones. After inquiry a few times with the many divers in the area, we finally located the ship wreck – mainly confirmed by the many columns of air bubbles raising to the surface as divers navigated the inside of the sunken boat. Arriving or leaving shore was also challenging as the strong waves kept on crashing into us. After we finished snorkeling around the sunken cargo ship, we went snorkeling around the coral garden area but found little corals. Nonetheless, we appreciated the many colorful fish. Back at the hotel, we enjoyed some relaxing time at the pool. We promptly showed up at 6:00pm at the hotel’s restaurant for our evening meal. We had made a reservation after our morning breakfast to ensure we had a table available.

2020.03.03 – Tulamben – Lovina (Indonesia) –After our late breakfast, we attempted to find out whether there were any bus service from Lovina to Tulamben as the information we were told from different sources were conflicting. To our disappointment, we discovered that the northern part of Bali was not well serviced by public transportation. We later tried to request a GrabCar for the drive to the town of Lovina – some 78 kms further. Unfortunately, the Grab application failed to find a driver for us in the area. Thankfully, our hotel was able to call a local driver for us. The drive to Lovina made us realize how many motorcycles/scooters were traveling on the roads. Thanks to Maps.Me, we were able to locate our beautiful out-of-way accommodation in Lovina. Although the accommodation was very nice, we quickly realized that we would need to walk 20-30 mins to visit the town center. After relaxing and enjoying our accommodation’s pool for most of the afternoon, we walked to a cafe in center of Lovina for our evening meal. Contrary to muslin communities, Bali being predominantly Hindu and Buddhist, welcomed dogs in their lives (and streets). As such, we encountered many barking dogs along our walk into town and back. We had an enjoyable evening meal at that popular cafe. On our way back to our accommodation, we stopped at a large grocery store for some snacks and beer.

2020.03.04 – Lovina – Lovina (Indonesia) – In the morning, shortly after stepping out of our bungalow for breakfast, we asked staff to book the services of a driver for a 1-day Lovina tour. As it was the low tourist season in Indonesia (rainy season), it was fairly easy to get a driver to show up at our accommodation promptly at 9am. We drove for 45 mins to our first stop of the day: a trek and swam at the Git-Git Waterfalls. Our second stop was at the very beautiful (and busy) major Hindu Shaivite water temple of “Ulun Danu Beratan” on the shore of a lake. Our third stop was at a coffee plantation where we had a very informative visit and a nice complementary tea and coffee tasting. We were introduced to Kopi luwak coffee. A coffee that consisted of partially digested coffee cherries, which had been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet. I tried a small cup for $5 cdn. According to Wikipedia, it had been called one of the most expensive coffee in the world. But I must agree with some critics that claim more generally that kopi luwak was simply bad coffee, purchased for novelty rather than taste. For lunch, we stopped at an expensive tourist buffet restaurant overseeing some rice terraces. Later, we stopped for some photos at a viewpoint above the popular Twin Lakes. After we made our way to the “Holly Hot Springs” at the nearby Banjar village where we relaxed for an hour. Finally we wrapped up the day by a visit at the expansive Buddhist temple of “Brahama Vihara Arama”. We returned to our accommodation shortly after 5:00pm. As Jenny had passed on the lunch buffet, she had some food delivered at our accommodation for her evening meal.

2020.03.05 – Lovina – Lovina (Indonesia) – After breakfast, we managed to order a GrabCar for a ride to the beach area. Although our accommodation was very new and comfortable, its location was a bit far from the town center. We walked along Lovina beach for over an hour. We noticed that many of the small boats used for excursions to see dolphins were dragged up high on the beach as the tourist demand was clearly quite low. On the walk back to our accommodation, we stopped at Pepito’s Market, a large grocery store. We bought snacks and deli food for our evening meal. Back at our accommodation, we relaxed for the reminder of the day in our room and in the pool.

2020.03.06 – Lovina – Munduk (Indonesia) – Our driver from the other day was very pleased by the extra business involved by driving us to the village of Munduk some 20kms up the mountain area. Sadly for us (and other tourists), there was very limited public transportation (e.g. bemos, bus, shuttle) in Bali. The hiring of private driver appeared often as the only means of getting around between towns. Most tourists on a tight budget tended to rent scooters for their travel around Bali and other parts of Indonesia – just like the locals. Shortly after check-in into our mountain view room accommodation in Munduk, it started to rain for the remainder of the day. Thankfully, we were able to eat our evening meal at the warung (small family owned restaurant) attached to our accommodation. We truly enjoyed the view from our room while looking at the rain and cloud cover moving across the mountain.

2020.03.07 – Munduk – Munduk (Indonesia) – It seemed like Jenny’s prays for good weather were answered as we woke up to a partially sunny sky. After an early breakfast, we had the homestay staff drive us on scooters to the head of a 4.5km trail leading us along the way to four nice pristine waterfalls. We encountered a few tourists along our trek. Back in the village center, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant before returning to our accommodation. Although the weather in Munduk was slightly cooler than in Lovina due to mountain area, we were drench in sweat by our trek. After shower, we relaxed in our room for the remainder of the day while enjoying again the mountain view. After visiting a few other warungs, we returned to our homestay’s warung for our evening meal as it offered good food and the best mountain view.

2020.03.08 – Munduk – Munduk (Indonesia) – During our breakfast, the homestay staff helped us to secure for our tomorrow’s car ride to Ubud. We took our last malaria pills of the trip as we had been taking them for the past month. As the sky was still dry in the morning, we ventured out on another 4.5 kms walk around nearby the rice terraces. Again we needed a good shower upon our return to our room before relaxing for the remainder of our last day in Munduk. We returned once again to our homestay’s warung for our evening meal.