We arranged to hire a scooter and snorkelling equipment for the day, so we woke up early to get everything sorted and we were on the “road” by 9am. It was so much fun. I love scooters. The roads aren’t really roads, more like pedestrian paths that probably were paved a while ago but now just have bits of paving every now and again so you bump your way over potholes and missing paving for most of the way. We drove up the road to Mangrove Point past local houses drying out their seaweed. We were told there is good snorkelling at the Mangroves. Most people get boats to take them around but we were pretty sure we could swim it as the reef doesn’t look far from the shore. We asked a local which was the best way to swim with regards to the current and he told us the wrong way so we swam out with the current and then had to swim back against the current! Oh well it was great exercise and we saw some beautiful fish, giant star fish and coral at the reef. The sad thing is that we swam over so much dead coral from the reef back to the beach. It was really sad to see. We also swam over loads of seaweed farms.
We had a quick drink at a restaurant overlooking the water and admired the view for a bit. The water is such an amazing colour. We then jumped back onto the scooter and headed through the Mangrove Forest and down the east side of the island. We decided to drive over the bridge (well again more like a pedestrian bridge that you can drive over but it is so narrow only 1 bike can fit) to Ceningan Island. Now this island was a slice of paradise. It is quite difficult to get to as it is still quite untouched by tourism. It was stunning. We drove to a the Blue Lagoon point where you can cliff jump and surprise surprise Pete wanted to do it. Yo can dive from 12 meters, 8 meters or 6 meters into stunning blue/ turquoise water. Pete did loads of jumps and backflips and loved it! I have no desire to throw myself off a cliff so I just sat and watched. When Pete had had enough of an adrenalin kick we drove over to a lookout point and had a picnic. It was so stunning.
We decided to head back over the “bridge” to Lembongan to continue exploring that island. We drove to Dream Beach which as the name suggests was idyllic. We had a swim and sat on the beach for about 20 mins before heading over to Mushroom Bay. It is named this because of the coral that grows in the shape of mushrooms. We decided to swim out with our snorkelling gear to see if we could see the mushroom coral. We went the wrong way at first, swimming along the coast and found a pretty little secluded beach that can only be accessed by sea. We got out and had a look around before heading out to deeper open water to find the coral. I always get paranoid snorkelling in open water that boats aren’t going to see me so it was a bit scary for me but we were fine and a few boats did see us and past us which made me feel better. We saw the giant mushroom coral and loads of fish so it was worth the swim out 🙂
We had to get the bike back by 5pm so decided to start heading back. We took some back road paths and explored a bit more before getting back to Bunda 7. We had a swim in the pool and relaxed for a bit before gong out for dinner. We tried a different restaurant but the food wasn’t as good as the little local restaurant we found the night before. We were both exhausted from a full day of gallivanting so I spent the evening updating my blog notes and had an early night!
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