paradise on nusa lembongan
Waiting for our ferry boat to Nusa Lembongan, a
group of twelve motley travelers found shelter in a shaded bodega. A group of
six sixty-year-old French husbands and wives provided the rest of us
entertainment. The leader of the pack, a man that resembled Fred Flintstone
with a French accent, kept everyone’s spirits high with his rambunctious actions
and naughty jokes. An Italian sitting next to me, with a melodic voice and
soothing green eyes, spoke of Nusa Lembongan with such honest affection; I hung
on every word he said.
After a forty-minute ride away from Bali and
towards this quiet island, our boat arrived on Nusa Lembongan. Staff from our
hostel, Secret Garden Bungalows, met us on the beach and carted our bags in a
trolley down the dirt path until we arrived in a hidden Eden. All of the
bungalows, sporting individual hammocks, faced a pristine swimming pool and were
bordered by towering palm trees. We settled in and then wandered off to find
lunch. A local warung drew us in and we sat and feasted on delicious Balinese food.
In the midst of our meal, the green-eyed Italian walked in and noted that we
found the best food on Nusa Lembongan already.
The following day we signed up for two fun dives
with Big Fish Diving. I had been dying to scuba dive again since receiving my
open-water certification on Koh Tao over New Years. We woke early and met our
guides, two Germans bearing completely opposite personalities. Ready with our
wet suits and equipment we headed off for our first dive site of the day, Pura
Ped.
We descended below the waves and entered a blue
abyss. The visibility was impeccably better than my dives in Thailand. Below me
was Ariel’s sea: a sloping reef painted with vivid coral and lively fish.
Triggerfish, pufferfish, sea snakes, and parrotfish danced around us, undisturbed
by the humans in their territory. We drifted with the current until our fault as
mammals required us to return to the surface for air. Buzzing from the ocean’s
paradise we headed to our next destination, the Mangroves. This dive was over a
level sea floor so we just cruised above fish and sea creatures carrying on
with their day.
I easily could have stayed on Nusa Lembongan for
longer. The diving, discreet island life, and sunsets are addicting. Watching
another glorious sunset after spending a day in the Indian Ocean, I cannot help
but be flooded by immense gratitude. This splendid life I live is no longer my
dorm room dream.
Over the past two years I have explored some
magnificent places. I have fallen in love with cities and left my heart with
strangers, friends, and landscapes. Love: a word that means so much but is so
often said that its meaning is spread thin. It is a word that is listened to
but not heard. It is so often casually said that humanity has been numbed to its
strength. Yet to me, it still holds such power. Love is a word that can
encompass a myriad of emotions, toward different people or places - Love for a
nephew, a mountain top, a village’s child, a romantic partner, a city. One word
that can carry the weight of a million feelings is grander than we think. It is
time to revive the power of love and
let it return to its old glory that poets and scholars before our time gave it.
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