When I got up this morning at 7:00am, the first thing I did was take a walk down to the beach and have a look at it in the sunshine. Actually, the beach is quite nice and very deserted. Black volcanic sand, like Costa Rica. I decided to have a morning swim, since I hadn't even been in the ocean since I got to Bali. The water was great temperature and I enjoyed the dip. I decided I was going to hang out here for awhile and make the best of it. First I headed back to the room, and got my wi-fi money back and had breakfast in the little restaurant.
Then I went back to the beach and had another swim. There are some coral formations quite close to the beach and using my goggles I could see some very bright neon blue fish and a lot of baby blue starfish!Gotta wonder why a starfish would be blue, they certainly are not camouflaged. I swam for awhile, walked the beach for an hour and relaxed on a chaises. On the way back I walked through a dive centre's property and discovered that they hatch green sea turtles. The turtles lay eggs on the beach and these people dig them up and hatch them, keep and raise them for three months before releasing them to the wild.
At 2:00 I mounted up again and headed out on the scooter for the return ride to Kuta. I have decided that if I can't find anything along the west coast of the island that I will go and see Alvan and try to move my flight to Lombok up one day.
The ride down the coast was really nice. The scenery was beautiful, saw lots of terraced rice paddies, but the only beach I saw was totally deserted and had rows of really big breakers coming in. The traffic was good most of the time, but there were lots of trucks and riding behind them is not much fun, as they all have exhaust problems and kick up stuff off the road. There is always grit in your eyes. I found my way to Kuta without incident but then got totally lost in the city and couldn't find Alvan's shop for an hour. When I finally did, I rearranged my flight to this evening. I have decided to leave a day early, because I haven't found what I am looking for here and I have heard really good things about Lombok.
So, I had time for dinner at a nearby cafe before Alvan's friend drove me to the airport. The plane was delayed a half hour, but when it came it was half empty and the flight was only forty minutes. We landed at Mataram International Airport. Alvan had arranged for a friend to pick me up and take me to my hotel which is on Senggigi Beach. I couldn't see anything on the half hour drive because it's dark, so I have no idea what it is like here. I'm checked in but, the only problem is the hotel has no wi-fi despite me asking Alvan to make sure it did. I found the beach by listening to the waves. Then I took my computer to a local Internet Cafe to update the blog. Then back to the room to get a good night's sleep before tomorrow's adventures.
great turtle shot
ReplyDeleteNice work by the turtle people. Maybe this will help their numbers increase,
ReplyDeleteBob Barker's assistant