Nusa Penida

WHERE DO I START? Today was 1000% a fairytale!
As we said goodbye to Ubud, we started our next adventure with a VIP private boat & land tour of Nusa Penida (an island roughly 1hr away from Bali).
We got picked up at 7am from our Ubud resort and drove south to Mertasari Port. This is where we jumped on our private speed boat and headed for Nusa Penida.
Whilst the boat trip wasn’t the smoothest to sit still, we still enjoyed a few lovely cakes and drinks on our way. Very quickly we arrived at Mantra Bay, there were a few other boats around with groups of people snorkelling, however no one had spotted any mantras just yet. Our captain suggested going further up around the island with hopefully better luck to spot a mantra away from the larger companies with groups. As we moved along the island, we quickly learnt why all the mantras were hiding away… dolphins! A little lost dolphin was doing flips, jumping and showing off which scared away all the mantras. We quickly jumped in the water, and started snorkelling, no sight of the dolphin again.. however we saw multiple sea turtles and thousands of fish! The water here is beyond crystal clear, absolutely breathtaking.
A few hours of snorkelling later, we arrived at Nusa Penida Island and had some lunch on our way to see KelingKing Cliff! My photos cannot do it justice of just how picture perfect this cliff looked! Our day had the opportunity to turn very south whilst we were here. As we were having our photos taken, I popped my bumbag on the ground for a second out of the picture… very quickly a monkey came swooping past picking it up… bye bye to all our money, cards, passports, Id’s… everything important and essential is inside that bag and now a monkey has it. Luckily there were lots of people around, a few local tour guides knew exactly how to get it back, and before we could process exactly what we have just lost, we had a local passing the bag back to us… phew! That could have been very bad.
Our next stop was Crystal Bay beach - a black sand beach on the island! Whilst this was very busy, the water was so cooling and exactly what we needed. We had a quick dip and headed back to the boat. One last snorkel off the boat was essential before we made our way back to the main land.
Wow! Bali does not disappoint! We swam with millions and millions of fish, diving down beneath the surface, you could swim through schools and they weren’t bothered by us humans. The biggest turtle, I have ever seen came up to say hello, I got to watch him come up to the surface of the water and come back down, diving down to swim along side him felt so surreal, to see gods creation up close and personal, seeing every wrinkle in his neck, ever spec on his shell! Perfect way to end our day! I am absolutely kicking myself that I forgot to bring my GoPro to Bali, however like Amos said.. if I were to have brought it.. we probably wouldn’t have had as much luck seeing the amount of fish and turtles we did.
A quick boat trip back to the main land, we drove down to our next destination, south of Bali - Uluwatu. Enjoyed a late dinner at a Greek restaurant, and went in for the night.
An amazing day I will not forget. Nusa Penida, you bet we will be back for more! Goodbye, until next time :)Read more