In Love with Lovina...

So four days on and we are still loving our time in Lovina. The beaches are beautiful, the people are friendly, the food AND beer are cheap - why would we want to leave? Our accommodation is cheap and pretty basic and comes free with geckko poo on your sheets (we think they're living in the thatched roof!) There is also a huge pool which is a bonus as the beach is a no go area in the day because the black sand gets much too hot. We have spent most of our time relaxing by the pool and trying to outdo each other swimming lengths - Tom is winning at the minute, he is far more of a water baby than I am!

Yesterday, we went out on a traditional boat dolphin watching. It was such a fantastic experience! We met the captain of the boat at 6am down on the beach and helped him push the boat out into the sea before jumping in. Safety doesn't seem high on their agenda here so we had no life jackets, just a small wooden boat and our hands to cling onto the side! We sailed out for about 20 minutes and as we did so, we were able to see the sun rise from behind the mountains. It was worth the money we paid just to see that. Now the reliable Lonely Planet guide warns that dolphins are not always spotted so we tried not to get our hopes up - but we were in luck. Never in my life did I expect to see as many dolphins as we saw in our two hours on the boat and they were so close, swimming and jumping out of the water. It was truly amazing! They were much too quick for my camera and I ended up with beautiful photos of the sea but nothing else. Tom managed to take some video footage of them which hopefully shows you just how many and how close they were.

Having made it back on dry land, we went in search of breakfast, as the breakfast at our hotel consists of 2 pieces of toast and some very watery coffee - yum! We then made our way back to the pool to enjoy the early morning sun and met a couple from New Zealand who had just arrived. They were really friendly, which makes a change from the other guests here! We sat around the pool chatting and they gave us lots of tips and advice for when we travel to New Zealand. They've even given us their number and email so we can look them up when we get there - lovely people.

After having a mid afternoon nap (I could get used to these!) we headed down to the beach to see the sunset and dodge the evening traders with 'special sunrise prices'. We got talking to one local man who lived up in the mountains. He was selling necklaces that his family make from sea shells and coconut shells. They were beautiful and he told us the hiistory behind each and what each of the colours meant. Such a lovely man and we felt bad haggling the price of the necklace but we really wanted to buy from him. The necklace will give us protection according to this man, can't be a bad thing when travelling the world and being so far away from home.

We then went in search of food and found a restaurant which had live traditional dancing. The children dancing were so cute and looked so colourful in their traditional dress. There is more dancing on the beach tonight as a welcome for some round the world sailors, so hopefully we can see the adults and children dancing together. Tom decided in the restaurant that he wanted some 'hot' food to eat so ordered a beef rendang whilst I stayed in my comfort zone and ordered a chicken satay (the hot here is really hot). Needless to say, Tom found his curry pretty hot and but as soon as he had finished began sweating and having double vision - quite worrying!! So we had to pay pretty quickly and head back to our room. Tom has not had a great night and has spent most of it on the toilet with his head over the bin - a classic 'Bali belly' travellers diarrhoea/food poisoning if ever you've seen it! So Tom is still in bed whilst I'm sitting in the sun writing up our exploits for you all to keep you all up to date! He is feeling slightly better now by the way in case you're worrying, all thanks to some antibiotics and rehydration sachets all should be fine!!

Tomorrow we are heading down the coast to a place called Padang bai. It's another seaside town and is the main ferry port between Bali and Lombok. We would like to head over to some islands before Lombok called The Gili Islands. There are 3 tiny tropical islands and are described in Lonely Planet as 'a vision of paradise'. Sounds like a perfect place to spend my birthday to me!! Shell xxxx

And so to the North.....

So after 4 days spent in Bali's cultural capital, we decided to head to the North coast of the island to the sleepy seaside town of Lovina. The cheapest mode of transport turned out to be a local shuttle bus, which the very helpful staff at Warsi Bungalows booked for us. It was advertised to take 3 hours, leaving at 11am and would take us across the hills and mountainous volcano areas down to the sea. We were really looking forward to a leisurely drive taking in the fantastic scenery - oh how wrong we were!! The journey began being squashed into a mini van with our bags and those of it's other passengers - 3 very loud French couples. Tom and I were sandwiched in between them all and as you can imagine Tom very quickly began to lose patience and pulled out his ipod and headphones to drown out the noise! I think at one point I could even see a vein bulging on the side of his forehead!! They didn't speak very good English so I resigned myself to trying to understand what they were all talking about (A level French was a very long time ago but I could still make out some of their conversation).

After about an hours driving, we stopped at a coffee plantation to admire the views and to taste the coffee - 'all free' he assured the bewildered looking passengers in the car. So we wandered through the plantation with the driver and found ourselves stood next to two cages which contained the infamous mongoose that creates very expensive coffee. It is fed coffee beans which it eats, ferments in its stomach and then poos out! The coffee beans are then collected, and ground down for drinking. Sound delightful stuff hey?! The poor things were very scrawny and had no water to drink. So thirsty were they that we watched one drink its own urine. One of the French guys that was with us had his water bottle so we filled up the containers. The driver continued to tell us that we could sample some of the coffee if we wanted down on the terrace - none of us took him up on his offer! However, we did try some amazing teas (ginger, coconut, lemongrass, vanilla). Tom put his haggling skills to good use and bought some ginger tea. Then we all piled back into the van to continue the journey.

As we approached the area surrounding Mount Batur, our van was stopped by the police demanding money from each of us to pass along the roads. At this, the van was filled with loud, angry French and English voices telling them we had already paid for our journey and we were not going to pay anymore. It turned out that one French couple were actually staying in the town near Mount Batur and for this reason they had to pay money to do so, the rest of us did not have to. This was met with cries of 'corrupt bastards' from who else but Tom and the French guy behind us reiterating this by repeating 'corruption' (say in a French accent) over and over again! So we dropped them off by Mount Batur, taking some amazing pictures from the van window, as we continued on towards Lovina. By this point we were 3 hours into our journey and were not even close to Lovina!

We continued on through the mountains for another VERY hot and sticky 2 hours before we eventually reached Lovina. The driver pulled off the main road into the driveway of a hotel and told us we could all find rooms here. However, this hotel was a fair distance from the main part of town and not where we wanted to stay at all. The driver refused to drive us anywhere else and out came our bags onto the floor as he parked up the van. After looking at the map, our only option was to walk back up to the main road and along it towards the centre. Not happy is an understatement! We made our way towards one of the guesthouses in our 'bible' (the Lonely Planet guide!!) and Tom went in to suss out availability and prices. It was too expensive so Tom set off on a mission to find somewhere whilst I slumped down in a heap with the bags. Ten minutes later Tom came back with a fab deal on somewhere to stay (some more good haggling was done!!) and a new friend in a local captain of a boat.

So after a fairly sticky nights sleep in our thatched bungalow, we've had a super lazy sunbathing day to try and start off some sort of tan! We've made it to Happy Hour, drunk some cheap Bintangs and eaten some more amazing food (a huge Indonesian sharing platter). I think we could get used to this!! Shell xx