My friend ran around the island yesterday in about 30 minutes. I wanted to explore it on foot, but with a 5 year old, that would take forever. So we splurged on a horse carriage. We looped the island (though I’m pretty sure he took a short cut down the middle through the kampung toward the end) in about 20-30 minutes.
Definitely accomplished one of Ellie’s Life List goals. Happy girl over here.
… Does the body good.
But you sure have to earn this little island of paradise. It took us a taxi at 6:30, a bus to the airport, then a plane to Lombok, a private car to the harbor, then a speed boat to the Gilis with an arrival around 3:00pm!
It’s worth it though. We checked into our cottage, swam, and ate an amazing dinner at Scallywags, an outstanding organic food restaurant.
I’m just waking up with a plan to work out by the pool with a friend, eat and swim at the beach all day and maybe order the same dinner again tonight because it was just that damn good. Or maybe I’ll walk around the island this afternoon and explore. No cars or motorcycles here… Just bicycles and horse carriages.
It’s lovely, really. One of my favorite places in earth.
We joined a tour and traveled via ferry to Sumatra late Friday night. The travel was long and exhausting and consisted of several boats and cars to finally get to our homestay on a remote island near the volcano Anak Krakatau.
We were on this boat more than on land throughout the weekend. We sat on top or napped inside between island travel.
Eliana snorkeled and got to see some amazing blue acrapora coral and star fish, sea cucumbers and a ton of beautiful tropical fish.
Bananas anyone?
Our homestay.
Nap, snorkel, nap, snorkel….
The base of Anak Krakatau. The vegetation was so strange and included pine trees!
About half way up…. it was like walking on coffee grounds.
The top! Or at least the highest point we were allowed to reach. You could see red rock from the eruption only two days earlier…
We made it! I think Ellie may have been the youngest kid to have hiked the volcano. She had a pretty big cheering squad towards the end.
Tomorrow we will meet up with friends and join a group of 20 or so travelers in Merak to sail to Krakatau. This has been on our list of places to visit in Indonesia and we are stoked. This is going to be an epic weekend!
Check out this drawing of what to expect from a trip to Krakatau via theydrawandtravel.com.
Bali or Bust 