Lombok is beautiful. 10 years ago when Jay and I visited Indonesia for the first time together we had planned to come to Lombok but were warned by some surfers that had returned from there not to go, especially not with me (a woman). There was a lot of trouble happening here at that time and there were reports of machete attacks and civil unrest. It was hard to reconcile this image of Lombok with what we were experiencing. The people are friendly (apart from one old lady who spat on the ground in front of me and spoke angrily to me in Indonesian) and on the whole, helpful. We had 3 young men paddle out to our boat in their canoe for a chat, broken English and broken Indonesian but somehow we managed to communicate. They were just happy to come and sit on the boat, the looks on their faces as they ran their hands over the smoothness of the hulls and the stainless steel was priceless. They were awestruck!

Every place that we have been to in Indonesia so far has had a Muslim contingent and every morning we woke up to the sounds of the faithful being called to prayer and every night tried to sleep while the loud speakers projected their voices across the water. Walking through the village we stopped to talk to the locals and to buy some supplies like telur (eggs) and snake beans and western style potato chips. We had tried the Indonesian version of potato chips but they tasted stale and were covered in sugar instead of salt. Everything in Indonesia is sweet even the savoury items!

There was some great set ups here for waves but no swell at the time. Jay, JLow and Ian had a few small, grovely waves but that was about it.

There wasn't a lot to do here, we walked along the top of some hills to take advantage of the views, had a couple of dodgy meals ashore, got some washing done by a local lady and topped up our water (desalinator's still not working) to get us through until Bali. We made the decision to leave Lombok and head to Bali while there was no swell. The Lombok Strait was notoriously rough, a fact that we managed to keep from Mel, and we wanted to keep our crossing as painless as possible. We also figured that once we hit Bali there will be a lot more for us to do together before Mel and JLow head back to the real world. Bali, here we come!