Medana Bay Marina, Lombok, Indonesia (Saturday, August 31 to Sunday, September 8)

We did an overnight from Kilo to Medana Bay Marina – easy trip as there was not much wind as usual.

Lombok offers pretty beaches, rice paddies, mountainous jungle terrain complete with monkeys (there was even one that attacked me to get at my water bottle) and Balinese Hindu temples.  We skipped the Gili Islands – just too touristy but did go to tourist town Sengigi to provision, browse at shops and of course eat out.

Aside from great attractions on Lombok, we found Medana Bay Marina not a minute too late and before the “Sail Indonesia” rally boats arrived.  It had been nearly three months since Cairns, since we had stayed at a marina.  Oh it felt so good to have a slip where we all could step off the boat and come and go at our leisure!  While at the marina, it was also a great opportunity to clean up Lardo – hose off the decks, wax the boat and scrub the bottom!  The marina hosts and staff were super friendly and helpful.

And the marina offered pleasantly cool showers plus a nice restaurant where we ate three times a day, played Mexican Train Dominoes and Wizard and simply hung out chatting with cruisers (Galatea – Neil, Julie and Bailey, USA, and Tiare Taporo – Jim and Jean, New Zealand).  We discovered that Kiwi’s Jim and Jean also are friends with our mates Noel and Litara (Sina) from Whangarei, New Zealand.  Later that week, our friends on Micromegas (Chantal and Fredy, Switzerland) and Footloose (Jon and Irina, Australia) showed up.  The marina’s ambiance was very relaxing – Jim found a hammock and spent some lazy afternoons looking out at the palms along the beach and reading good books.

When we finally pried ourselves from this very relaxing atmosphere, we toured around the island – one day we rented motorbikes to cruise the coastline and another day, we hired a driver to take us to a temple built by Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Catholics in the 1700’s – pretty ecumenical!  Along the way, we drove through lush jungle mountain ranges, rice paddies and an art gallery.

Nearby, the marina was a town which actually had a laundry with real washing machines versus hand wash done in rivers up to this point.  Still no taxi’s but always a willing local offering a ride on the back of his motorbike or better yet, you could take a horse drawn carriage to the nearby farmers market.