Catch up to the beach round two

After our diving trip to the Gili Islands, Preethi and I caught a morning ferry back to Lombok Island and headed straight to the mountainside town of Senaru, with the plan of climbing Gunung Rinjani.  We started the night climb around midnight and trekked through the wee hours of the morning on the steady 9km trail and its 2000m of elevation gain.  Just after sunrise we arrived at the crater rim for possibly one of the most beautiful mountain views I have ever seen.  Unlike Mt. Merapi near Yogyakarta that was just a conical wasteland of lava rocks, the crater on Mt. Rinjani held a giant lake of emerald-colored water with a smaller volcano growing out of it spewing smoke.  The domineering Mt. Rinjani rising another 800m in the background made our solitude on the rim even more impressive.  Our descent was challenged by the tree roots riddling the path but it was also much more beautiful in the daylight and the monkeys kept us company as our exhausted bodies trudged their way down.  My nerdy gardener side got excited by the different varieties of ferns that I had never seen.  Upon arrival we were quickly swept up and driven to city of Sengigi.  It was a pleasant place to spend a night and rest our bodies; we got well-deserved foot massages and this awesome Indonesian hair wash thing called a ‘cream bathe.’

The next morning we caught a bus to the south of Lombok and the surf town of Kuta.  This Kuta turned out to be exceedingly better than the infamous one in Bali, only a few tourist accommodations and a line of locals’ shacks separated us from the pristine beaches and cristal clear water.  Our first full day there we rented a motorbike and headed to a beach locals proclaimed as “paradise,” and it truly was.  A cozy cove of intensely blue water and surrounded by stunning rock formations that we were the only ones to visit that morning. After lolling around on the beach we headed back to town and visited some equally beautiful beaches and countryside along the coast and then ended it all with some cold Bintang.

The next day Preethi and I kept our motorbike rental and headed out for long road trip to Lombok’s southwestern peninsula.  Our bike lacked a little umpf and we just barely made it over the series of hills on the four-hour drive to the little villages along the peninsula’s coast.  The scenery reminded me of the islands in Japan’s inland sea and after a quick rest and some iced ginger tea we turned around and continued the loop back to Kuta.  We luckily had a better idea of the roads on the way back so it only took three hours; once again I was the only one who could drive a motorbike so I had the honor of chauffeuring Preethi the entire day.

Our last day there turned out to be rainy but luckily we found a nice cafe up on a bluff with great views and just read the afternoon away and watched the storm come in off the ocean.  Then it was back to Kuta, Bali and time to say goodbye after two weeks of good traveling.