Hey Peeps,
(I'm back on with the second part of this travel diary) Continuing on from our uber tiring night at Ubud, we had an early night to prepare for the morning boat to Nusa Penida. From the Bali map in the previous post, you can see that Nusa Penida is on a smaller island right next to the mainland of Bali. With this, we had to travel by land from our hotel in Ubud to the Sanur beach port and upon buying a ferry ticket to Nusa Penida, go on a 45 minutes ride to the beach port in Nusa Penida. Again, for this arrangement, I will recommend you to contact a driver in Nusa Penida to pick you up from the port for a day trip. This is because a lot of the roads (if you can call them roads even) towards the beautiful geographical wonders aka your congested tourist attraction sites are really bad—like my butt hurts from lowkey galloping on this car seat kind of bad. You really have to be a daaaaarn good driver who is comfortable driving off-roads to brave the roads, really. Of course, you can choose to ride a rental motorbike, if you are more comfortable with that. But still, extra caution.
More on transportation and the details. For ferry, we rode on Mola-Mola Express, which is one of the more recognized ferry providers alongside Maruti Group, and the ticket was Rp.70.000(~S$7) for Indonesian (aka me) and Rp.140.000(~S$14) for foreigners (aka my friends). Technically they did not check your passports but that is also partly because we came with Putu who talked to them before they went on to ask where we were from. Just don't risk this one out, friends. This price is actually pretty reasonable. Furthermore, we had Putu to arrange a driver in Nusa Penida for us, and it cost us S$75/person. This is definitely more expensive, but it includes a lunch meal (trust me just get the Mee Goreng everything else is quite minimal with a bunch of white rice aka not filling/satisfying enough) and the driver had on a super funky reggae music whilst steadily driving/speeding through the unforgivable terrain towards the beaches we wanted to visit. As for this one though, I am really sorry but I could not remember the name fo the tour group that the driver was from. So sorry guys!!
Here is the itinerary completed with timestamps and pictures:
0800—Waiting for the Mola-Mola ferry to deck at the Sanur port while taking some vain shots. Lucky us, the sun was scorching sooooo brightly and the sky was truly clear. We were off to a beautiful start!
0830—The ferry set off for Nusa Penida. The journey will take about 45 mins, so choose your seats, take some vlogs while trying to fight the sounds of the crashing waves and sleep! we basically took every chance we could to just sleep because honestly, sleep + sea breeze are perfect together I'd like to have a cocktail named after it. 0 seasickness, just chill vibes all the way.
0915ish—we saw our driver, Kadek (I think that's his name, I am sorry mr. guy I couldnt recall 100% :<<) with a signboard with our names. We shook hands and the reggae adventure began!! His playlist honestly was bomb though. Loved every single guitar riff that induced head bops from us. Or maybe it was just the car's tires which accidentally got snubbed by the many big pebbles on the sandy road... We really couldn't tell. (Don't worry, if you are really tired or just simply an avid sleeper like our dear friend Grace, you will still sleep fine. Rest your head on the seat belt, she said—it helped balance your head bops!) We were on for about 1+ hours of ride to Broken Beach and Angel's Billabong.
1030ish—We finally arrived at Angel's Billabong! This is the first view you will see once you have reached the parking lot. Just a little warning though, we came during late July, and boy was it crowded!!! Literally there were sooooo many other tourists from everywhere and of course, we all wanted to take that Instagram photos that looked hella bomb so be prepared to queue up a little bit (and sneak in to pose whenever you have the chance pssh)
the color gradients were honestly waaaay clearer irl i swear it was beauti xDD
Another thing about Nusa Penida is that the 4 popular tourist attraction places are Angel's Billabong, Broken Beach, Kelingking Beach (the iconic dinosaur looking land protrusion) and Crystal Beach (the most underwhelming of all, so skip this if you are tight for time), and they are all pretty close to each other. Angel's Billabong and Broken Beach are right next to each other, so you definitely will get to visit both if you choose to go for one. Besides, during the drive, you will encounter a 2-ways only road, and if you choose to go left you will head to Angel's Billabong, whereas if you take left, you will be on route to Kelingking Beach. They had a pretty clear road division and signs following this, so don't worry you won't be lost even if you choose to drive/ride a motorbike on your own. But just remember that the roads are bumpy and connections are definitely not reliable, so download the routes, tank up and hold tight!!
Here are more pictures of Angel's Billabong/Broken Beach:
[Broken Beach] wind was hella strong so get ready 1! 2! 3! pose <3
[Angel's Billabong]
look at the crowd! oh my my
a closer look on the colors because i simply just can't get enough of it 😍
ok I high key miss this honey tan I cannot keep it up back at home someone sponsor me to go back to Bali pls
Kadek went up a log pile thingy to take this! still couldn't open our eyes tho ><
1215ish—we went on to Kelingking Beach! It took us about 45ish minutes to get there and by then the sun was really pretty harsh so don't forget to re-apply your sun protection, folks;) Kelingking was surprisingly less crowded than the Angel's Billabong despite it being the 'landmark' of Nusa Penida. It was more chill, and there weren't as many photo ops there, I guess. Of course the dino protrusion was the highlight, but that is about it. You can totally opt for a hard trek going down the 'neck' of the dino, but Kadek told us that he had only gone down once and it was a really hard trek down. Initially, we wanted to trek, but since we only had a day's worth of exploring Nusa Penida, and the fact that we wanted to swim a little at Crystal Bay, we decided to skip it. TLDR, skip crystal bay for this trek down! I coincidentally had another friend group who went there a day after us, and she said that the views, the sand, and the beach area are all waaaay more mesmerizing than those of Crystal Bay. It was pretty empty too considering the number of people at the top part overlooking the Dino head. So if you are feeling adventurous, definitely trek down and swim for a bit!
Here are the pics of the beautiful Kelingking Beach aka Dinosaur land:
[Kelingking Beach]
Kadek deadass CLIMBED a tree to help us take this picture. Major props to Kadek we love u!!
and yes, the pictures are not edited the color gradients are truly to d i e for.
Thank u Kadek!! <3
1330ish—We headed to a small warung—a small local eatery—for our packaged lunch. For the S$75 we paid, we get a personal driver, a car, petrol as well as a set lunch. Pretty sufficient, I'd say. I had nasi campur—a Balinese mixed rice with chicken strips, local sambal matah, and fried noodles—while my friends had fried chicken with rice. PSA: the meal set was pretty meh, they gave very little proteins with heaps of white rice. I hated not finishing my food but plain white rice is honestly not my favs so I left quite a bit of it on the plate :(. So bring along energy bars of some sorts to fill your tummy, alrighty!
1430—we continued our journey to the last destination of the day: Crystal Bay for a quick swim! Kadek told us that we had to be done by 1530 in order to make it on time to the Nusa Penida port to catch our 1630 ferry ride back to Sanur. So we had our throwovers off, and just had a good swim not too deep in. Crystal Bay was as I said, meh, but good enough for us to unwind and soak in the last bit of that Bali sun while we could.
[Crystal Bay]
1630—we hopped on the ferry to go back to Sanur! the ferry was way less crowded as compared to when we departed for Nusa Penida. Also, the tides can be hella strong so please hold on to your slippers tight because Erika almost lost hers on our ride towards Nusa Penida and gal could have missed all the photo ops without her slippers. So be careful!!
1900ish—we headed back to Ubud for a hella scrumptious dinner at Iiga Warung. According to Putu, this is a fierce competitor of the famous Naughty Nuri's, and a local pick over it too! So we trusted Putu and over-ordered right away. He was absolutely right, though; it was sö g o o d. we spent ~S$75 in total but it was super worth it.
we had 2 Iga Bakar (grilled ribs), Sop Iga (ribs soup, unfeatured), Bebek Betutu (Balinese smoked duck), Green Veggies
We called it a night pretty early on Day 2 too because we would be picked up at 0230am the next day (I! know! right! cray cray baby) for our sunrise trekking. Overall, day 2 was one Instagrammable day filled with reggae music and gradients of blue that we sank right into our bed and fell asleep like babies.
I'll be back for Bali Guling! Part 3 for more adventures and details!
Love you all,
Maretta Simon x
