Our dreams of spending 2 nights in a slightly 'luxurious' hotel in Sengiggi to recover were shattered when we came to realise that everywhere was fully booked :(
After three hours of traipsing around with our bags, still muddy and totally drained from Rinjani, we eventually found a totally overpriced, stuffy room with cold shower and squat toilet! At this point it was 9.30pm! We abandoned our hopes of a much needed lie in and set the alarm to move on as quickly as possible to Kuta.
It wasn't even 8.30am when the driver of the shuttle bus we had jumped in became involved in a fight with another driver... Which Samuel had to split up. The bus hadn't even set off yet and the other driver kept blocking us in. We are still totally unaware what it was about but it was certainly something to do with taking us to Kuta Lombok! More hassle being the last thing we needed (I was a broken woman!!), we jumped straight in a nice trusty air conditioned blue bird taxi which actually ended up being cheaper anyway! Our luck was starting to look up!
It was still a very similar story in Kuta but being early we managed to find ourselves a slightly better homestay than the night before. Again, not the luxury we wanted but in this busy time we were grateful for a bed for a few nights.

There was no way we were going to be doing much on that first day as even walking was a struggle. Starving, we headed straight to a cool cafe we had spotted during our bed search, where we couldn't have been happier with the delicious fresh breakfasts we received. Unable to face any more banana pancakes, which are always offered as a free breakfast, we have ventured back to this cafe every morning!
In the afternoon we found enough energy to explore and walked down to Kuta Bay, giving way to a quite a few goats along the way. The beach was filled with locals still celebrating the end of Ramadan and the kids selling bracelets all jumped on us as soon as they saw white people! At one point Samuel counted 11 kids gathered around us. Seeing a few of them scrape out the remainders of a dried up coconut, I gave them my fresher one when I'd finished drinking it. I've never seen kids so happy!! It puts things into perspective.

Feeling slightly fresher the next day, we got a scooter and rode East, checking out some other beaches and a small village called Gerupak. Lombok is so much more rural and poorer than anywhere we have seen in a little while, but people seem very happy.

The next day we headed in the opposite direction through the hills. This was a beautiful drive with some amazing views! We went to Mawi beach first, which is a cool little bay great for surfing..but the 1km drive on the potholed road to reach it isn't so cool.
In the afternoon we went to Mawun beach which is yet another beautiful bay. Here was saw the most locals we've seen at the beach and we soon discovered it was the last day of celebrations. We had a lot of people wanting photos with us! There was also one very cute boy selling bracelets who decided to sunbathe with us for a while and I couldn't resist buying a bracelet I didn't want just to make him smile.
On the way back to Kuta we stopped at a restaurant with an awesome view and food so good that we had to come back today!!

From Gerupak you can get a boat out to the surf breaks which Samuel planned to do today as Kuta is a great place for surfing. It was off the cards for me with my still achey body!! Samuel was gutted when he discovered there were gonna be no waves today and he wasn't going to get to surf in Kuta!
However we still spent a nice afternoon soaking up the sun at Mawi beach.

With a few days to spare in Indo, but not really enough time to go any further, we are heading back to one of our favourite places tomorrow, Canggu, for lots of surfing, yoga, eating and drinking!