Lovina (north Bali)

From Amed we hire a driver to take us 2.5 hours north to Lovina.

When I first began obsessively planning our travels as a distraction from a low point, back in April of last year, I planned country by country. Sometimes I started with airbnb and chose the coolest looking houses within budget, then sussed out where they were. Other times I googled the best itinerary for a month-long stay and found places accordingly.

In Bali, I knew that the favourite place I had stayed 20 years ago was somewhere on the northern coast of the Island. Lovina rang a bell, so I booked there.

We arrive and nothing looks familiar but then I suppose things change a lot in twenty years. (A few days later I find the place that I stayed, a few kilometres down the road but the beach is strewn with rubbish and there are communication towers everywhere.)

This is our first stay in a house that we have booked through airbnb. It’s actually really cool, especially for the $60 a night we are paying. The young French couple couple who own it obviously lucked out when they stayed as guests then offered to buy the place, which encompasses another 2 story house with a pool at the front. They live in Bali full time. I asked what they do in the rainy season; apparently they go fishing and watch netflicks. Personally, I would spend a bit more time on interior decorating as the houses are really cool but need a little TLC.

Being alone as a family was a little strange as we’ve been amongst people for the last couple of weeks. After I have a little homesick cry, we settle in. I needn’t have worried about being lonely. There were people dropping in all over the show, incessantly sweeping, cleaning the pool, bucketing out drains and offering to take us out on trips.

These strange insects seem to be suspended on a clear disk. I don’t know how they move but they look cool.

We meet a really cool Balinese guy called Taka, who took us out for the day to the Git Git waterfall, the Temple on the lake and the Banjar hot springs where the locals come at the end of the day.

So many guides and drivers will tell you whatever you want to hear. Taka tells us all about contracting Dengue fever, how the painters in art shops just pretend to be painting , how resorts rake all of the beach rubbish into piles then instead of putting it into a bag and taking it to a rubbish dump, bury it under the sand only to have it resurface the next day. We see this in action the next day down at the beach.

The rubbish problem in Bali is a big topic of conversation as we drive around. Having been to the Indo mart to buy food, it is easy to see why the sand is covered in rubbish when there isn’t adequate rubbish management. EVERYTHING is in packets. Even bread rolls are packaged individually in airtight plastic wrappers.

We can fool ourselves into thinking that we don’t have a problem with excessive packaging in NZ but ours gets taken away every week in a bin. If it were lying all over the street and in our gardens and all over the beach we might try to use a little less of it.

Of course, visiting a waterfall in Bali is a little more of a retail experience than popping down to Kare Kare falls. We just came for a nature experience but it turns into something a bit more harrowing.

It’s hard to navigate your way through the scores of women trying to tie sarongs around your waist and putting dresses on your back while you’re not looking.

Worse still are the tiny little cute kids with baskets of ugly bracelets and key-rings that we want to buy just so they can go and sit down and play, rather than following tourists around all day and making $1.

Our last morning in Lovina we spend on a boat following dolphins around. Strictly speaking we are not chasing them but the other 20 boats out there seem to be. Because we head out a bit later than everyone else, we get to spend about half an hour sitting out on the water with dolphins swimming around. It’s hard not to compare the experience to Mimiwhangata where we do this stuff for free.