Lombok, Indonesia

Our group took the "public boat" from Gili Air to Lombok. It costs about $1 and was packed full. A scary but cost-effective way to travel between islands. In Lombok we stayed at a hostel that served free banana pancakes 24/7 by a friendly man named Abdul. Our first day we explored the nearby town of Sengigi and stumbled upon a really nice resort. We decided to splurge and eat there... great decision! The food was Italian, and equivalent to the dishes I tasted in Italy. We decided to explore the grounds after our meal and found the private villa part of the resort. This included a 'lazy river style' pool and complementary coffee and muffins bar. As there was no one around, we spent the rest of our afternoon swimming in the pool, drinking coffee, and eating muffins.... until they asked for our room number. With some quick thinking and apologizing (from the staff to us) we got out of there without any issues. Because it was so tasty, we ended up eating dinner at the resort and watching the sunset.

The next day we were ready for adventure. We rented four scooters between the 7 of us and set off on a waterfall hunt. Apparently there was a waterfall 30 min from our hostel and we set off into the mountains to find it. Our paved road soon turned into mud and rocks. At some points I had to jump off the back so Andreas could make it up the steep muddy hills. The locals were cheering and laughing at us as we rode by; it was clear that not many tourists came this way. As no one spoke English this far in the mountains, we had to show people the Indonesian word for waterfall on our phone and they just kept pointing up the road. Finally we parked our bikes and a little girl (about eight years old) in a pink shirt ran up to us. She didn't speak a word of English but grabbed my hand and pointed forward. We did what any normal person would do... we followed her! She was wearing flip flops about four sizes too big and started moving quickly through the jungle (we all had to hurry to keep up). We soon realized we were on an advanced trek following a small child that spoke no English. After about an hour of hiking we found our majestic waterfall and it was pretty spectacular. We paid the little girl with a half a pack of Mentos and the equivalent of $1. Happy that we didn't get eaten by a cobra or have our organs harvested, we hiked back to our bikes and started our ride home. Lombok was quite the adventure... next stop Uluwatu!Read more