We are spending our last three nights in Bali in a small fishing village called Anturan, which is one of the villages that makes up Lovina in the north part of the island.
We arrived at our guesthouse after a three hour car trip through the mountains featuring the soothing tones and soft melodies of Christina Aguilera’s greatest hits followed by her Back to Basics album. Car sickness plus blaring dance remixes made for a less than pleasant journey.
Our guesthouse is tucked away in a rice field and is walking distance to the beach.
You may be thinking that this is an awesome feature, but in the zillions of activities suggested by our hosts (not personally but in a binder they provide), not one of them included lounging on the black sand beaches of Lovina… Bummer! Turns out the beautiful black sand beaches of north Bali are actually quite polluted and lined from end to end with fishing boats. The water, however, is crystal clear and the restaurants along its edge provided beautiful sunset views.
We spent our first evening at Warung Rasta, owned by some guy, and I am not kidding, named Jemmy Marley. Hmmmm… While the view couldn’t be beat, the beer was expensive and our dinner was overcooked. We were also forced to listen to cover songs of every hit single from the 1990s. Saaave tonight….
Therefore we made our way further down the beach and settled on a nice restaurant called Nyoman Warung, where we tried the local arak made with honey and lemon and chatted with a professor from the States about social entrepreneurship, microfinance, and Hillary Clinton. Slightly heavy convo for Bali, but the arak made it seem lighter. while Jesse rolled eyes, I could not be happier to find someone who loves HRC as much as I do.
We awoke early the next morning for a snorkel trip in West Bali National Park. An hour and a half drive from Lovina followed by half an hour on a boat led us to gorgeous coral reefs abundant with fish and other aquatic organisms. This also proved the perfect opportunity to soak up the Bali sun. (don’t worry Ellen, we reapplied sunscreen often!)
Brown as berries and content from our marine extravaganza, we returned to Lovina exhausted in the late afternoon and had a quiet and early night with massages, dinner at another local restaurant, and bed.
Jesse awoke at some God awful hour I barely remember to go tuna fishing while four hours later, I started my Balinese cooking classes. The instructor (who was also my masseuse from the night before) took me to the local market for ingredients and then set out to teach me how to prepare the three dishes I requested: Nasi goreng (Indonesian style fried rice), chicken satay, and pepes fish (tuna prepared with Balinese spices and grilled in banana leaves)
Making the peanut sauce for the chicken satay… Spicy!
More cooking!
Jesse returned fish-less but I attempted to elevate his spirits with the delicious meal I just prepared.
We enjoyed our homemade lunch then set out on a quick trek to sekumpul waterfall. We were very happy to enjoy these surroundings without another tourist in sight.
hati hati (be careful in indonesian)! The next photo may cause offense to the retinas as the outfit Jesse is wearing is so hideous:
On the one hand, I really liked Lovina. It is definitely less touristy then the other parts of the island which also made it feel more authentic. On the other hand, because there are less foreigners, people seemed to push harder on selling us things we didn’t want and on the things we did want (like waterfall treks, fishing trips, and snorkel adventures), if was hard to tell if we were getting ripped off or paying a fair price. Still we made the most of our time here and in Bali and I am really happy with our experiences.
Tomorrow we head back to KL to actually see the city and not just gorge ourselves on a smorgasbord of Malay cuisine. One week left of our Asian adventure!
Bengali Ali 
This is so adorable! What an awesome trip.