Indonesia - Nusa Lembongan

The boat over from Bali to Lembongan

After Bunaken we flew down to Bali where we spent one night in Segar Reef beach before heading onto the island of Nusa Lembongan. Lembongan is one of only a few places in the world where you can regularly see Sun fish or ‘Mola mola’. We stayed in a little bungalow on the beach and did two dives with a dive company called World Divers run by a British couple. The first dive was a place called Manta Point and we saw our first Manta rays of the trip…in fact actually our first Manta Rays ever!! They were so beautiful and graceful as they glided through the water – I think we saw 4 on that dive.

Lembongan - view from the bungalow

The next dive site we went to was called Crystal Bay and is the favourite spot for seeing the Mola Mola. Before the dive we had been told that there was only about a 10% chance of seeing the huge sun fish and actually we’d already met several people who had done quite a few dives and been unsuccessful. We were lucky however and about half way through our dive we saw two huge sunfish!! Unfortunately as there were literally hundreds of other divers in the water they didn’t stick around for long and swam off into the deep blue! But we were still completely chuffed by the sighting and did a small victory dance in the water with our American dive buddiesJ The diving in general around Lembongan was very very good with lots of nice corals and fish. The only downside was that the water was absolutely freezing!!! Despite 5mm wetsuits and booties within 10 minutes of being in the water we were shivering…I think we’ve been spoilt with our warm tropical seas – it was a massive shock to the system!

Manta Ray

As well as diving in Lembongan we decided to try our hand at surfing and Mike and I both signed up for a surf lesson at a local surf school. There isn’t any beach surfing in Lembongan so we had to get a little boat out and surf over the reef – fine when it’s high tide! Surfing was really fun and Mike was standing up on his board in no time! I have to admit it took me a little longer and actually I barely stood up at all on those first few daysJ.We also hired some bikes and cycled around the island. Sort of fun but the bikes were so old that ones gears didn’t work and the others breaks didn’t work (at all)…slightly problematic with lots of hills to climb and come down! Not surprisingly we had several overweight, middle aged men on motorbikes ride past and shout ‘Get a motor!’