From Lovina to Padang Bai

Lovina is a known place to watch dolphins. In the evening, we met a fisherman who offered us a dolphin tour with snorkeling at a good price. We started at half past seven. After staring at the water for over an hour without seeing a dolphin, we went snorkeling. However, what we saw everywhere was trash. The whole beach and the sea were full of it! It's a sad sight...

However, snorkeling was beautiful!

From Lovina, we drove west and stayed overnight in Negara. It was by far the ugliest city I have seen in Bali!

In the north and west, you can also see more mosques than in the rest of Bali. Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. However, the main religion in Bali is Hinduism. Therefore, you usually see relatively few churches or mosques.

The Balinese love to hold ceremonies. We saw them almost every day.

From Negara, we drove towards Antosari and back to Lovina through the mountains. This route was super beautiful and fortunately not heavily trafficked.

On Wednesday morning, we tried our luck with the dolphins again. We started at six. After a dreamlike sunrise, we saw lots of dolphins that even came relatively close to the boats.

Continuing on the main road in the north, we went to the east coast to Amed and from here a beautiful coastal road that goes around Mount Agung. At one point, the view was especially beautiful and we made a stop. There were three boys sitting in the sun next to a house, drinking Arak, the traditional rice liquor. We chatted with them for a while and were not allowed to leave until we had tried the Arak. :-)

After visiting a water temple in Karangasem, we drove to Padang Bai. We stayed at the Fat Barracuda Hostel here. The next day, we wanted to take the ferry from here to Nusa Penida, a small island off Bali.