Lombok

This story was posted under the categories: Big Asia Trip, Indonesia

Have you seen the movie Diarios de motocicleta, which tells the tale of a young Che Guevara travelling through South America with his friend on an old Norton motorbike? It inspired us to do some roadtripping ourselves. Maybe we could be part of some history too? Or at least, get to know a little bit more of the real Indonesia, withou being tricked into tourist tours and expensive trips all the time…  

We rented a scooter (unfortunately not a Norton, but a more convenient and automatic Yamaha) and left Bali one sunny morning, after having repacked our backpacks and fitting all our belongings for 2 weeks into one backpack (note for later: if we can survive 2 weeks with this, why do we keep all the rest?). Gregory at the steering wheel and Ine at the back with the bag, we toke off to explore Lombok, an island just East of Bali. Lombok is very different from his bigger brother in 2 ways. First of all, Bali is overpopulated, there are houses everywhere and nature has been confined to some rare spots, whereas Lombok remains very rural and even the bigger cities are just a couple of houses along a road. Secondly, Bali is Hindu and Lombok is Muslim and as always religion makes a big difference. 6 o’clock prayers were blasting through the loudspeakers and we had to put on the long trousers and t-shirts again to be decent.

But the trip certainly paid off, we discovered the marvelous beach of Selong Blanak. It was just us, the white sand, blue sea and a couple of fishermen. The road was as aweful as the scenary was beautifull and it wound over hilltops and through valleys, opening up the splendid scenary of Lomboks southern beaches as we moved further to the East. We came across little villages, where kids were running after us, their parents calling Hello and everybody wanted to know where we came from and where we were going too (“Oh so far!”). We had a quick stop at a local mecanic to adjust our brakes, which suffered terribly from the poor condition of the road (later we would see on a map that it said “new road, but in very bad shape”) and arrived for our first night in Kuta. If you ever go to Lombok, don’t go to Kuta… it’s probably the ugliest beach in an area of 20 kms around. But it’s also one of the few locations that do have accomodation fit for tourists, so we had little choice…

The next day, we continued further East towards more beaches and towards Gerupuk, something of surfers’ Mekka in Indonesia. Having done a couple of days of surfing back in my younger days, we chartered a boat and were transported to a place in the middle of a bay which offered splendid breaks, small enough for a beginner like me. I managed to ride 2 waves before being totally exhausted from the paddling and we went back to the beach and headed out towards Mount Rinjani, a 3000m high mountain located in the center of the island. Tetebatu and it’s 40 meter high waterfall were to be our next stop, before we decided to go back on the tourist track and splurge on the Gili Islands.

The Gilis are 3 very small islands, located off the coast of Lombok and are famous for their relaxed atmosphere, snorkling and some other, less legal stuff, like magic mushrooms and marihuana. We spent 2 days on Gili Trawangan, swam next to giant turtles and technicolor fishes, laid lasily on the beach, juggled with coconuts and played coconut petanque. For the first time in 6 weeks, we felt tired and it was from doing absolutely nothing!

Ps: due to lack of time, we haven’t been able to write anything about our vulcanic expeditions to Mount Bromo and Ijen. You can enjoy the pictures however and we’ll be happy to tell you more about it when we’re back