Lynda’s, our modest-but-comfortable accommodations on Nusa Lembongan had a great breakfast. Pip had a Bacon & Egg Roll, I had an American Breakfast and John had the Aussie Breakfast.
To my surprise, the Aussia Breakfast outclassed the American Breakfast. I guess that was on purpose, it’s Aussie owned after all. Anyway, Julia opted out of breakfast all together, too afraid she’d end up feeding the fish on our dive.
Diving off Nusa Lembongan
Our first diving news of the day was bad. The seas where to rough to go to Manta Point, one of the main reasons we chose Nusa Lembongan to dive. Also, we were too early for Mola-Mola season, and although some had already been spotted, chances of us getting to see any where slim.
We had two scheduled dive, the irst of which took us a place called Toyapakeh and the second to SD Point.
Toyapakeh
This site is located in the straight that seperates Nusa Lembongang and Ceningan from Nusa Penida and as a result is known for strong currents in various directions. It was to be my first drift dive and as such quite exciting.
Turn out, it was quite tiring. Although we didn’t see anything spectacular or unusually amazing, the endless ridges of prime coral reefs where a true sight to behold. Visibility was endless it seemed, and the coral reefs stretched off into the distance. Lots of smaller fishes abound and a few big ones lurked further away. A school of big Trivali came really close to us and would have to be the highlight of that dive.
I burned through my tank in less than 30 minutes though as I struggled with the swaying current and the bouyancy of the 5mm full-lenght divesuit we got – so far I’ve only dived in shorties.
SD Point
SD Point is paralell to the beach with significantly less current, but still current. Again, the dive was rather unremarkable, so I took the opportunity to concentrate on boyancy control and conserving my oxygen.
The healthy hectares of coral and endless visibility amazed me once and I couldn’t help but feel that usually life abounds here and that perhaps we had just had luck against us.
We returned to shore not exactly awed, but vowing to return for Manta Point and to see Mola-Mola. Next time, did our dive operators suggest, we should go and spend at least 3 or 4 days there to allow a better chance for conditions to be in our favour.
We had left Pip, the non-diver, at the Mainski Inn – the only hotel on the cheap side with a pool. She paid Rp 30,000 for the day to use the pool. We had lunch at Lynda’s where they had giant chicken skewers, which we shared along side Thai green curry and chicken & banana leaf.
Although we had planned on two days in Nusa Lembongan, we felt conditions dictated that perhaps 1 days would suffice this time around.
Fast Boat to Sanur
Julia was adament to avoid the nausia of the slow boat and the rest of us also felt a faster journey was in order. We went around to scout and haggle for the best price, but everywhere did people start high and only go as low as Rp 150,000.
“Union price”, somebody had told us. Some or other association on Lembongan dictated that the price could go up from there, but not lower. Scoot appears to be a reputable operator with new boats, but, were we told, if you didn’t come to the island with them, you couldn’t go with them.
We ended up taking a fast boat back that took about 15 minute faster than the slow boat. The only saving grace was the this boat was smaller and open and thus it minimised the discomfort we had.
50 minutes after we got onto the boat, we were on the black sand at Sanur, surrounded by taxi drivers who had come into the water right up to the boat to offer their services.
We were heading to Ubud.