When we arrived in Kuta on the South coast of Lombok we checked into Yellow Flower Inn initially. It was nice here, but for your money you could get a hell of a lot, so on the second day we changed our accommodation a place we saw just down the road which had a pool and traditional Balinese architecture. Unfortunately, we got bed bugs in the fancier place! Just goes to show, fancier isn’t always better. They did eventually move us to a new room which was much better though.
After dropping our bags we headed out to the main beach at Kuta, but pretty much the whole of the Southern coast of Lombok is pristine white beaches and turquoise waters… The beach was beautiful, but it was a bit littered with plastic and rubbish which was sad.
We hired a moped from our guest house and headed East along the coast and the little dirt tracks to see what other beaches we could find. It was all white sand still and along the coast we ended up at a Westerly facing beach so stayed to watch the sunset.
We spent the evening in the village of Kuta which had quite a few little bars and restaurants thanks to the influx of surfers which come to the region. The village had a nice laid-back hippie feel to it, very stereotypical surfer! Haha
The next day we took the bike West along the coast to the surfing bays of Mawun, Tampah and then Selong Belanak, another Westerly facing beach where we stopped again for the sunset.
As if we hadn’t had enough of beaches, the next day we decided to venture even further, to a remote and apparently ‘secret’ beach known only to locals, called pantai pink, or pink beach. It is apparently pink because of the red corals off the coast which when mixed with the white sand give the beach a pink tinge.
Google maps said it was only a 1 hour 40 min away, but I don’t think Google really knew quite how bad the roads were and it took us almost 3 and a half hours to get to the beach on the most insanely bumpy roads ever. We took a pit stop at a little shop along the way and the family was literally in shock to see us! It was quite funny 🙂 We also had to stop for fuel which was just some petrol in a glass bottle at the side of the road in some family’s farm.
We finally arrived at the Pink beach and parked up at the top of a steep path you could only walk down. Arriving at the beach was simply incredible. It must be the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen. And apart from a single shop and a family of snorkellers that had arrived by boat (which left very soon after we arrived), we had it all to ourselves.
After a quick drink from the shop we had a swim and then luckily the shop also had some snorkelling masks they lent us. The shop owner took us out into the coral reef and it was amazing… Again, I wish I had an underwater camera. It was the most intact reef I’d ever seen, so colourful and FULL of fish…. but then…. a swarm of extremely tiny jellyfish washed drifted into our area. I was bombarded by stings all over my body. They were about the size of a 50p, translucent, reflecting the colours of the reef with stingers about 2cm long. Then one about double that size stung me on the shoulder and I panicked… I couldn’t seem to get out of the swarm (or smack of jellyfish is it?). I had to get out of the sea, so I turned and swam to the shore as quickly as I could. Not looking at the reef, but out ahead, I tried to waft the mini jellies out of my way as I swam. Then… I spotted by biggest fear in the water… a box jellyfish… it was about 5 metres from me, directly ahead. I screamed to Jer and the man from the shop, and diverted around it to get back to shore as quickly as possible. I was panicking so much…
I finally made it, but my stings from the smaller jellyfish still hurt. It kind of ruined the day really, and just seeing the box jellyfish made my anxious and paranoid of the water after this day. I will have to work on my confidence, or perhaps buy a wetsuit, if I am to snorkel in South East Asia again.
I left the beach in pain from all the stings, a little frightened of the water and also worried for the future of this stunning beach. I hope it doesn’t become over developed and dirty like the other beaches in Lombok. I hope that the reef is looked after and protected.
Overall, Kuta was great, the beaches were stunning and the region was laid back, slow paced and chilled. I wish I hadn’t injured my knee right before visiting this region. Having spoken to a few surfer people, we were in one of the best places in the world for surfing, but with my knee I wasn’t able to try. However, I still enjoyed spending time at the beaches and relaxing and resting my knee. The Snorkelling at pink beach was also incredible, if only I had checked that it was jellyfish season before getting in… and that pink beach is notorious for jellyfish! …but then I wouldn’t have seen it at all… so I guess it all worked out well in the end.
Libbytes Blog 