Java, Nusa Lembongan (and a bit more Bali...)

 Mount Bromo

Our last two weeks in Asia and Alice's mum came out to meet us. We picked Tina up from the airport after hours of driving around, Lost. For Tina's first meal we ate Balinese duck at a local warung (small restaurant). Our first few days were spent by the pool, drinking rice wine and playing dominos with hotel staff (meh mehmehmeh). We left Ubud and headed for Java our first stop being Mount Bromo, a semi-active volcano flanked by two other volcanoes in a luneresque landscape. We woke at 3.30am for sunrise at the summit, which was beautiful.
Next stop in java was yogyakarta, the cultural capital. Here we stayed in a Losmen (cheap hotel) down a series of warren like alley ways, this added to the charm but made it hard to find. Our first day we visited borobudur, said to be the worlds biggest buddhist monument and had a lot of school kids take our pictures. The rest of yogya was spent wondering the market and sampling the many delicious street foods on offer.
A twenty hour bus and a boat later and we were in Nusa Lembongan a tropical island off the coast of Bali. With nothing to do but lye on the beach and explore, we did just that. Alice even rode her own scooter for a day.
Our joint 24th birthday was spent here also. This started out really well with a nice meal  and a few drinks courtesy of tina.. however it all went a bit wrong at the end of the day. Turns out something was very wrong with the tuna we ate, first we had itchy mouths and later i was covered in a red rash. NOT FUN.
Soo last stop in Asia was Sanur where we spent our time lazing on the beach and eating the last delicious asian food we could manage to get down us...After a teary goodbye between Alice and Tina we were done and off to Australia..

 A Few Photos

Lombok to Flores; and everything inbetween

So its been a pretty crazy couple of weeks. The photos are just a taster of what its been like.
We started in Senggigi Lombok, a dramatic coast line of black and white sand beaches and cliffs rising out of the sea. On a scooter we roamed the coast jumping from beach to beach. I managed to drive in to a swarm of bees and got stung a few times.

In Senggigi we decided to book a four day / three night boat trip from Lombok to the island of Flores, visiting komodo national park on the way to see some giant deadly lizards. These trips are notorious for being dangerous as the seas are pretty hard to navigate around these islands, so naturally we were a bit apprehensive.

The trip started with a very rocky sea crossing to the islands of Moyo and Setonda, here we showered in fresh water waterfalls and saw a nice salt lake.  The people on our trip were all really nice and we immediately formed a good group. There were only seven of us which meant a lot of room on the boat.

Our next day involved being woken up at 5 am and told to jump in and swim to the beach. We were on Gili Laba and climbed a hill for amazing views of the crystal waters and a dry landscape. Next we went to Pantai merah (red beach) for some amazing snorkelling. The pink sand here made the beach beautiful. Finally we were off to Rinca one of komodo national parks island. We did a two hour trek and saw quite a few of the beasts along the way. We did some more snorkelling and lying on the beach for the last day and finally arrived in Lubuanbajo Flores.

Flores is an incredible mix of mountainous landscapes, insanely friendly people and natural splendour. The bus rides were far from comfortable (one minibus we counted 33 people) and the roads are shocking. First we visited a town called Moni were we went to see the incredible multi-coloured crater lakes of Kelimutu. Trekking down from here to swim in waterfalls. We went on to a town called Ende and then to Bajawa to see traditional villages renowned for sacrifices  and soak ourselves in the natural hot springs. Flores has a real rural charm to it,, there are macadamia trees everywhere making the forests shine silver and the people are genuinely happy to see you. We were sad to leave.
Back in Lombok we spent a few days relaxing on desserted beaches in Kuta. Paradise.

Photos