Then back on the bus to follow the narrow road rising into the hills cultivated with picturesque rice terraces. Alfred Russel Wallace, the famous British naturalist and explorer, first brought the island to the attention of Westerners. In his journal, The Malay Archipelago, Volume 1 (1886), Russel describe his amazement at the lovely, fertile rice terraces of Lombok, which he claimed surpassed any cultivated tract of land in Europe:
“I rode through this strange garden utterly amazed . . . that in this remote and little known island, from which all Europeans except for a few traders are jealously excluded, many hundreds of square miles of irregularly undulating country have been so skillfully terraced and leveled, and so permeated by artificial channels, that every portion of it can be irrigated and dried at pleasure. The banks, which bordered every terrace rose regularly in horizontal lines above each other like an amphitheater. Every brook and rivulet had been diverted from its bed . . . and bordered by ancient trees and moss-grown stones.” 

The drizzle turned into a soaking rain at our next stop, Teluk Village, where we observed a traditional stick fight performance. Then we headed on to the highlight of the day, Sendang Gila Waterfalls. There’s a lovely panoramas over the lush forest from the café terrace where we enjoyed an exotic lunch that included Indonesian style shrimp, peanut chicken, and fried bananas with honey. Immediately after lunch we clambered down 380 steps to the bottom of the spectacular waterfall—and then huffed our way up in another heavy downpour.

Teluk Village and Sendang Gila Waterfall Movie

After the falls, we headed back to the port through a winding mountain pass of lush tropical forests where grey monkeys sit by the roadside to beg for food. Unfortunately, the rain slowed the bus down so that the driver had to rush to get us back to the ship before it sailed away. The upshot was that we had too few opportunities to get out to take photos or soak in the views—that’s a real disadvantage of traveling in a tour bus. Stayed tuned for the next blog on Bali.

In the monsoon season (January and February) people sit out on raised platforms waiting for the rain to abate


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