And here is our VIP date! We met up in Bali and traveled over the Wallace line , over to the much more undisturbed beaches of Lombok. We were so happy to see our Christopher (or Chrille as we call him), although it doesn’t really show here (it is the only photo of the two of us). We had not seen Chrille in 3 months, Bali in 7 years and Lombok in 13 years. We have many fond memories of them all.
We spent lazy days on Selong Belanak, reading, walking…
…watching the sunsets…
…and the lovely water buffaloes walking by twice a day. I love water buffaloes!!! We rarely holiday at beaches (boring), but always make an exception when it comes to Indonesia. Staying at an excellent hotel is absolutely vital if we are to endure a beach venture though, which we succeeded in marvellously at Sempiak villas.
The jungle was obviously calling us, so we then traveled up to the rainforests in northern Lombok. I pretended to walk in Alfred Russel Wallace’s footsteps. A remarkable man, who co-discovered natural selection and of course the Wallace line.
We had a magnificent jungle view by the foot of Gunung Rinjani, the second highest of Indonesia’s many volcanoes…
…and experienced the most fabulous monsoon rains, we all love weather with a bit of character.
We naturally needed to climb the volcano, it was highly recommended to do it in two days, but since we bloody hate camping we decided to do it in one day. It started of beautifully through thick and misty jungle…
… and savannah looking nature the higher up we got…
..until we reached the rim of the crater. The lake is the floor of an inactive gigantic volcano, with a smaller active volcano growing (yes, they grow!) inside it. There had recently been an eruption and smoke was still coming out of it. Such fascinating things, volcanoes! We were absolutely exhausted for days after this excruciating hike, after a few days recuperating in Ubud (Bali) Chrille flew back home to the cold north.