On The Road: Day 4: Dream Beach

After meeting a larger than life character who went by the name of 'Yudi', we bought tickets for the boat from Sanur to Lembongan island. He also arranged for his brother to meet us on the 'other side' where we were told that he would be waiting with a motorbike.
The boat trip was pretty standard for S.East Asian transport in that it was cheap, slightly unorganised and these two factors coupled together with the sheer amount of water that was coming in and over the boat made it feel like we were taking our life in our hands (in reality is was far worse, our life was in the hands of a decrepit, partially sighted indonesian man) but we arrived safe and sound, against all odds.
We were greeted on shore by the usual sales patter "you want accomodation, me have nice bungalow for you, special price for you friend?". Then we heard our names being called and found Yudi's brother. He led us off the beach no more than 20 metres away, we turned the corner and there waiting for us was our mode of transport. He requested no money but told us to meet him at the same spot in two days, turned the key and started it up, revved the throttle and said there you go. I could see some hesitation in Cassandra's eyes and that was before Yudi's brother (who was walking into the distance now) turned and shouted " remember, no insurance!". This isn't surprising, in fact it could be the motto for Bali, perhaps it is written on the flag but his timing was perfect as we swerved to avoid a huge pothole and then veered back over the other side of the road to squeeze down the narrowest of passages as an oncoming car left less than a metre between him and the wall.

There are only two roads on the island and this is the best one.

The next thing we knew, we were off - exploring an island we knew little about, a crinkled and faded map in our pocket with our destination the opposite side of the island from our starting point - really the stuff of travellers dreams.

We rode higher and higher into the hills, not really looking for anything in particuliar but more infatuated with the idea of exploration and checking out island life. Amazingly after 10 minutes we saw a sign to 'Dream Beach' (complete luck and absolutely no judgement) but as I was driving, I turned and nodded to Cassandra hoping that I could convince her that I knew exactly where we going. In another 5 minutes we were bumping and shaking all over the place as the tarmaced road had now been replaced with a track which looked like some local had thrown a bag of rocks and stones down in order to stop foreigners like us from heading down this way. We persevered and as luck would have it arrived at our destination, we had made it to 'Dream Beach'.

We barely had time to check in and look around before the clouds (which had been darkening since we arrived) decided that they would actually rain on our parade and next thing we knew we were in the middle of a storm. To some people this might be mildly inconvenient but we loved every minute of it and turned it into our afternoon entertainment, ordering up some tea and taking prime seats on the balcony.