Adventures in Bali: Nusa Lembongan

Nusa Lembongan is a little island about 30 minutes boat ride from Bali's South-East coast. It's less spoilt by tourism compared to Bali and Lombok and its waters are well known for their surfing and diving potential. 

We stayed on Nusa Lembongan for four nights, arriving after the most frightening boat ride I've ever taken. We'd taken the final seats available, facing backwards on the front row of a small boat, about to sail on very rough waters from Gili T. It was never going to be dreamy. Water came in through the 'sealed' door frame overhead and sweat soaked through my camisole. My bum was lifted from the seat, then crashed back into it with force. My hands kept a sweaty grip on the seat in front of me and nervous laughter escaped each time to boat crashed down against the water. M wasn't faring much better than me. When we stepped of that boat onto Nusa Lembongan's sandy beach, the relief matched the exhaustion. We stayed at World Diving in a sunset seaview room, around ten minutes walk along the beach from the harbour. The room was clean and comfy, and only a low wall separated us from the beach. We'd arrived early evening so got everything planned for the next day's diving and then headed down the beachfront, eating at Bunga Bungalo and heading uphill for a drink on Jungut Batu Hill, watching the waves crash into the cliffs and feeling very glad to be off that boat!

All of our dives were early morning at World Diving, setting up around 7.30am. They have a brilliant outrigger dive boat with a toilet, hot and cold drinks, and a sun deck with bean bags to relax on between dives. My diving experience is still fairly limited but the corals around Lembongan were spectacular. They were the most vibrant rainbow of colours I've seen. Lembongan is known for having strong currents and all of our dives were drift dives. You could really feel the current pushing you at times, but we didn't have any issues. At the right time of year, you can see mola molas in these waters. We weren't so lucky - too early, but we did see another turtle, scorpion fish, cuttlefish, a banded sea snake, nudibranch, and lots of other beautiful marine life. World Diving were wonderful and they are by miles and miles the best dive school we've dived with. 

The dive schedule also meant that we had the afternoons to ourselves and we used them to explore this beautiful island. There are no cars on the island so we decided to hire a scooter. Ten year old girls in pigtails whizzed past as we juddered slowly forward, but twenty minutes into it, we were away! We headed north to the mangrove forests and visited Lembongan Village and the seaweed farms in the south of the island. Seaweed farming appeared to be the main industry here. We saw lots of islanders walking the stretch of the beach late at night collecting seaweed. As you move around the island, and particularly on the south east side, you can see men and women working on the farms and drying out their stock in the sun.

One of the central reasons we hired the scooter was so that we could visit Nusa Ceningan, a smaller island which neighbours Lembongan which can only be accessed across a pretty rickety wooden suspension bridge. We'd initially planned to stay on Ceningan at La Pirate, which offers small seahut accommodations on Ceningan. It looked charming and peaceful, but we'd have paid a lot more to dive from this island. We stopped to eat at La Pirate and, as expected, its isolated location created an atmosphere of absolute calm. I'm glad we stopped off for a visit. There wasn't too much else to see, as such, on Ceningan but the scooter allowed us to move through the thick vegetation to access its highest points and take in the views. We headed back over the bridge to Nusa Lembongan and watched the light change over Jungut Batu, with Bali's volcanoes peeping through the clouds in the distance.

Nusa Lembongan definitely felt like a more authentic Balinese experience. It can become fairly busy in the middle of the day as tour providers visit the island from Bali but at night, those tourists disappear. There's no shortage of places to eat. We ate at a lovely little restaurant attached to Tigerlilly's hotel. We also had a good breakfast at Bali Eco Deli, which works hard to promote eco tourism on Lembongan. One evening we took advantage of the free pick up and drop off service at The Beach Club at Sandy Bay. As long as you buy food or drink, they'll come and collect you from anywhere on the island and drop you back off when you're ready. The food was delicious and I'd happily make my way through their cocktail list. The cliffs in this bay are unreal so time your visit so that you can climb up and walk around the coast to Devils Tear for the perfect spot to watch the beautiful sunsets.

I really enjoyed Lembongan. World Diving's social media feed is filled with photographs of mola mola's at the moment and I've been so tempted to book flights to get back to this captivating island. From Nusa Lembongan we headed by boat to our final stop, Sanur.

30 for Thirty: No#2 Advanced Diving Qualification

No#2 on my 30 for thirty list was to pass my next level of scuba diving certification. Scuba diving has become a bit of a holiday passion for me. I love that I can use equipment to breathe underwater and explore a completely different environment. I'm a tropical water wimp, though. I've not tried dry suit diving in the UK, though a colleague did try to tempt me to dive the Mersey. Not tempted, yet!

Unintentional, "Is this thing on?" photo

Most dive schools offer courses designed by one, or both, of two main dive organisation: PADI and SSI. Our open water was a PADI qualification. Once you're open water qualified, you can start to complete your advanced open water (PADI) or advanced adventurer (SSI) certification. My advanced is SSI. From my perspective, there's little difference, though one thing I liked with SSI is that you receive your diving qualification card there and then. For both certification programs, this involves trying out five dive specialities, including a deep dive to 30m and a navigation dive, and three more from a range of different specialities. You receive information briefings for each but, unlike the open water, there are no chapters to memorise or tests to pass. After the advanced adventurer, the next step in the scuba diving journey would be to take a full course in any of the specialities and gain the speciality diver certification.

At Shark point with Mango Dive

We started our SSI advanced adventurer with Manta Dive, a large and professional dive school in Gili Trawangan. I chose to complete a night dive, which was actually pretty horrible experience for me, a nitrox dive and one which aims to perfect your underwater buoyancy. After the five dives, I was awarded my advanced adventurer certification and felt much more confident about my diving. M had a little trouble equalising so decided to rest his ears for a few days and, thankfully, was able to complete his certification once we reached Nusa Lembongan. We booked diving and accommodation with World Diving (amazing diving experience - can't recommend them enough). I tagged along on Matiss' final advanced adventurer dives. He took advantage of Lembongan's crazy currents and completed a drift dive and an underwater naturalist speciality where we learnt more about the marine life and how to identity the beautiful fish. I also did a fun dive with Mango Dive and Bungalows, where we'd stayed on Gili Trawangan, after completing my advanced adventurer. I'd definitely recommend Mango Dive, another smaller dive shop, if you're diving on Gili T.

Nemo, poking out of his anemone. Gili Trawangan

Over the dives we saw stunning marine life. The corals in Nusa Lembongan, in particular, were breathtaking- so unspoilt and vibrant. We treated ourselves to a GoPro but the photos are actually a bit rubbish. I think we'll buy a red filter to keep some of the colour at depth, next time. Photographic reminders, or not, my dive log is full of sightings of tropical fishes, like angel fish, bat fish, butterfly fish,  parrot fish, lots of Moorish idols, and anemone fish (Nemos!) and then puffer fish, porcupine fish, boxfish, scorpion fish, octopus, cuttlefish, lion fish, sea snakes, mantis shrimps, giant travallies, sea stars, colourful nudibranch, sea cucumbers, sea stars, juvenile white tip reef sharks and a massive black tip shark (amazing!) and SO MANY SEA TURTLES! Sadly, the currents in Nusa Lembongan meant we couldn't visit the dive sites where we'd have almost certainly seen manta rays and we were also a little early to see the mola molas. Boo. Next time, Lembongan, next time.