February 9, 2016

Watching Dolphins at Lovina Beach

• Boat Fee: 120,000 IDR (~10 USD)

I was really excited about this moment even if it meant waking up at 3 AM from our accommodation because the part where we can see jumping dolphins is on the far north (see route map). We have a different driver for this day, named Oka, and he also could not speak a lot of English. But that made the discussions funny instead of frustrating because we were understanding different things but we were all anyway nodding our heads.

Our driver told us of a coffee-killing story. He was able to clearly say the words Mirna, Jessica, and Vietnamese Coffee and that Jessica killed Mirna through some poison in the coffee although they were friends for quite a long time. I don’t know how it happened but we were able to get the gist of the story. At that time, I really thought that was some kind of a fiction story or legend. Apparently, the story is real! When I was writing this, I became curious and googled it. Alas, there were results and the names were likewise correct! That news was all over Indonesia, no wonder he kept on talking about it.

Where were we? Ahh, yes, my dolphins. Dolphins look so friendly, cute, full of grace, peaceful, gentle, kind, I can go on and on. Maybe in the future, I would be excited to watch whales as well. All the boats were racing to where the dolphins were. Every boat driver tried to quickly maneuver their babies just to bring us all as close as possible to the amazing creatures.

We finally had one amazing chance to see the group up close. That already made my morning. Overjoyed!

Back to List

---

Twin Lakes

The landscape has two lakes, Lake Buyan and Lake Tamblingan, separated by a lush forest. It was drizzling when we arrived around 9 AM at the side of the road where the entire stretch can be seen. Therefore, we could not stay for long but we were able to take enough (maybe even more than enough) photos. Plus, we were super hungry because we have not eaten anything substantial since we kissed the dolphins goodbye and we have been hunting a place to eat but most shops are either still closed or are closed for the day.

Hmm, now I remember why we had a different driver. Well, there was a big festival happening that week from February 9 to 11 and probably that’s why shops were closed. I will talk more about that later. However, that was not the reason. Johnny, our original driver, was recommended to me by a friend, who apparently was also traveling to Bali with friends in the same week. We have booked the same driver and then the days clashed for Johnny. Of course, Johnny had to take my friend first but good thing that he was able to find our storyteller driver Oka. Not bad.

<<Previous   Next>>

Back to List