So after a couple of nights in Kuta planning for our last week in Bali we made our way to Lovina.

It was a long dangerous trip, taking just over 4 hours and a few near car crashes. At one point my forehead actually hit the windscreen, when the driver (who couldnt have been much older than 16) tried to over take traffic by driving on the wrong side of the road! (this happens often in Bali) luckily he thought better of killing us all and slammed on the breaks just in time!

We made a quick stop in Ubud (the stop for the other passengers) and bumped into our old friend Tutde at the "bus station", who looked like what I can only describe, as the evil twin version of himself.. (maybe it was?!?!) We spoke to him for a while and he seemed to cheer up abit when our familiarity with him and talks about his family encouraged the other passengers to stay with him.

The bus journey coutinued, a 'little' more comfortably... we had the bus to ourselves and were able to spread out along the seats, which helped the car sickness up the long, steep, eternally winding roads.

At one point the driver asked us if we liked strawberrys and before we had a chance to respond he'd pulled over to the side of the road and we were swarmed by locals.... they litterally prized open the windows of the bus and were shoving punets of strawberrys in our faces from every which way shouting "10 thousand", "15 thousand" (thats about a pound, they werent diamond encrusted or anything) ! Scary.... nice strawberrys thou!

So with the windows firmly LOCKED we finally reached Lovina. The beach area is very small, a small road you could walk down in seconds, 2 or 3 hotels and the same amount of warungs (resturants) and shops, with a little black sand beach at the end.

The locals made themselves known to us instantly, "if you want massage you come to me", "I sell the sarong", "Transport?"

We did a few trips... firstly was the GitGit waterfall (The highest in Bali). It was bootiful! We took a few pics but it was to dam cold to swim :( I did dip my feet in though. On our way back up we were lured into a little resturant over looking the rice fields and the city below. It was run by a rather etcentric old lady (with lipstick on her teeth) who was jumping around us excitiedly. we started to get a bit suspisious of her when she started bring us food we hadn't ordered, and then when it came to pay the bill she started running around the resturant grabbing pieces of random material and wrapping them around me like traditonal dress. We went along with it, even asking her to be in the picture she insisted Nic took of me (we have photographic evidence) at which point she turned up her music loudly and started to dance and sing around the place. She was of course a bloody con artist, who added money to our bill and then when she didnt have the correct change for us gave us a packet of crisps instead and danced off!!! Mental woman.

We then had a little tour of Singaraja the neighbouring city to Lovina and the former capital of Bali, (its now Denpaser). 'Singa' means lion and 'raj' means king, 'Lion King' and there was a massive statue of one in the middle of a roundabout appraoching the city. Unfortunatly theres alack of singing pumba's and other animals singing Elton John!

We strolled round the museaum, which took all of 10mins!! There was only about 50 items in there and none of the plaques were in english so we could read any of it. Nic was so impressed in fact in the comments box he simply wrote "bum wee".... charming. We went to the tradional market which was fruit stall after fruit stall and the occasional dead plucked chicken smelling not so nice in the hot hot sun!!

Day 3 was dophin day!! We were woken at 5:30am and taken out on a tiny little boat on the pitch black sea into the darkeness. The sunrise was stunning and we saw lots of dophins. We got some pics but there so fast at jumping we never quite caught the shot we were after. Plus theres SO many boats out there that it actually becomes a bit of a zoo.

Our next stop is Amed, a excellent diving site in a little village on the east coast, with shipwreks and fresh seafood. Lovely Jubbley, as the locals would say!

Until then lovely people.....

Peace and flippers

Katie and Nic x