Lombok

The morning after Tara and Richard’s wedding, only slightly hungover, Tobin and I flew to Bali. I was really excited about having him join me on the island, but we arrived late in the evening and I had to go straight to work the next morning, so unfortunately he was left to his own devices to get settled. Not surprisingly, it was a tough transition to 32-degree heat for a man who’s made for the mountains. Add in unreliable wifi and a lack of air conditioning, and we’ll just say it was an interesting couple of days.

Meanwhile, at work, I was gently being urged to start visiting our field sites. Part of the reason I was excited to work for MDPI was the chance to visit remote parts of Indonesia where we collect fisheries data. But it seemed a bit logistically challenging to ensure I’d have quality time with Tob while travelling to these field sites. I managed to strike somewhat of a balance on my first site visit by flying there two days early with Tobin so we could spend some time exploring the island together.

Lombok is the largest island immediately east of Bali, and some people describe it as what Bali was like twenty years ago. No traffic jams, no insane party strips… a bit more mellow, a lot greener. The population is around 3 million while Bali’s is over 4 million (to be honest I thought there’d be a bigger difference, but maybe it’s because of the tourist influx in Bali?). Lombok just doesn’t feel as “Westernized” as Bali does. It’s kind of a relief.

Actually getting to Lombok was a bit of a debacle, though. My flight had been booked through work, but we had to sort out Tobin’s on our own; and unfortunately it’s a bit tricky to book tickets online in Indonesia with a Canadian credit card. I won’t go into details, but it took a couple of late night and early morning motorbike rides to convenience stores and travel agents in order to get the ticket. By the time it was sorted, the 3pm flight I was on was full, so Tobin had to book a later flight.

We were so flustered by the ticket fiasco that we totally miscalculated what time we had to be at the airport, forgetting that my flight was an hour and a half earlier than Tobin’s. “Rushing” through Bali traffic in a taxi, we arrived at the airport a mere 25 minutes before my flight – but luckily I made it onboard.

Wayyy too much time was spent here.

My flight took off right on time and I landed in Lombok 30 minutes later. I checked my phone and learned that Tobin’s flight was delayed 3 hours. Womp womp. We waited out the delay in our respective airports until we were reunited in Lombok at about 8:30pm.

We chose to save a few dollars and take a local bus from the airport to Senggigi, about two hours away on the west coast. We’d found a great last-minute deal on a fancy (to our standards) hotel online and were thrilled just to crash when we arrived.

YAS PLZ

The next morning, we rented a motorbike and drove along the north side of the island. It was a stunning drive with incredible ocean views and winding, hilly roads. We both loved the vibe of the island – as I mentioned earlier, it is much more relaxed and less developed than Bali. We kept stopping to take it all in – black beaches, tiny villages, green rice fields, buckets of dried fish… there were endless visual treats!

Lombok jungle.

After a couple of hours, we reached our destination – a trail to a couple of gorgeous waterfalls: Sendang Gile and Tiu Kelep. They were both stunning – fresh cold water tumbling down from the impossibly green jungle – but also pretty busy (Tiu Kelep especially) so we didn’t linger long. We raced back along the northern road, hoping to make it back to the west coast for sunset – which we did! We managed to find a restaurant on the beach and enjoyed a cold beer while watching the sun dip down next to the silhouette of Mt Agung on Bali (yes – the one that might erupt any day now).

Sendang Gile waterfall.

Sunset from Western Lombok, gazing at Mt Agung.

On Monday morning we went for a quick dip at Senggigi beach. The water was perfectly turquoise, the sand already too hot for our feet at 9am. We wondered why, exactly, I have a real job and we couldn’t just go surfing and exploring and travelling for as long as we felt like… sigh.

Around noon we had to part ways – I was heading east to MDPI’s field office, and Tobin was hopping on a ferry to check out the famous Gili islands. I arrived in Labuhan in east Lombok in the evening and met our field staff. I spent the next day learning about MDPI’s site operations and visiting ports and fish processing facilities. Lombok is our oldest and most reliable site, and is also used as the training ground for new field staff members. It was fun to meet the staff and see some of our data collection and community work in action.

On Wednesday morning Tobin and I reunited at the Lombok airport – Tobin having enjoyed a couple of days snorkeling (and getting some work done) in Gili Air. Our flight was only slightly delayed flight back to Bali, and soon enough we were back in the busy fray of this crazy place.

Views of the southern coastline of Lombok from the plane.