The 8 hour journey turned out to be a lot more pleasant than we expected. The coch only had about 12 large reclining seats and lots of leg room - more important for Matt than me for obvious reasons...
We had been unable to contact the place that we were hoping to go to, so we decided to aim for a 'beach resort' further up the coast which we knew had a hotel. When the bus reached the point we had to get off at, the coach driver had miraculously hailed down a local bus which was going towards the beach resort and within 5 minutes we were off one bus and on another. But this was a good old fashioned local bus crammed with people and we were on it for another few hours!
The bus was stopped several times by someone knocking on the side of the bus on the inside or waiving it down from the outside so the journey was quite a bit longer than we expected...Our bums had gone numb by the time it was our turn to get off. It was pitch black and there was nothing around to indicate there was a resort nearby but they stopped, took payments, gave us our luggage and off they went!
We found someone at the local warung (a hut that works as a shop or restaurant) to take us to the hotel in his truck (we, of course, got ripped off but this was not a time to argue!) where we checked in for the night.
The very same night we used our local phrasebook to try and comminicate with the locals (who by the way were and are very friendly and welcoming and do speak a little English here and there) and found out that the beach we were looking for did actually exist. The hotel we were in was not quite what we had in mind (big disco next door, no atmosphere and dirty beaches) so we planned to head over to Kura Kura beach as soon as possible....
We were in for a surprise. It wasn't quite what we imagined. It is described in the guidebook as a magical place, and along with the beach we were at before, as the nicest beaches in Kalimantan! As with the previous beach, there was plastic and cardboard and bits of rubbish everwhere which is really sad to see and a real shame as we were so looking forward to a white sandy beach. We decided to stay anyway as we wanted to do the beach thing and top up the fading tans and although the husband was a quite an unpleasant character, his wife and son were lovely to be around (unfortunately they left after the second day and we would have left too had we known that was the plan).
The villa was basic with no electricity but clean and had some great views of the lovely sunsets.
We went fishing by candlight off the rocks using a handline with the Jualita who worked there. We got lucky and saw lots of 'glowing prawns' - I've seen plankton before but this was different as some flecks were quite large! We also got talking to the local army boys who use the land behind the beach for training and firing practice. Some of the gun shouts were LOUD LOUD LOUD!
The owner's son, Sandy, and his friends peering through...
I tried some Durian which I have always avoided as it STINKS but I thought it was time I gave it a try.... definitely a once in a lifetime experience! The aftertaste was sickly and it kept on repeating itself, even after drinking saltwater from the durian skin to cleanse the mouth and an ice tea and a cigarette and lunch! yuch.
We found a beach on the other side of the hill which was really pleasant to walk on and was quiet but with no shade so too hot to sit on..
An example of the litter problem (people are so friendly and lovely but just not educated about the consequences of their actions)
Another beautiful sunset.
Locals coming out to play.
Of course, Matt had to do his bit and show Jualita how to tie some fancy fishing knots!
While we were there we had heard that there were scorpions and snakes about. Matt spotted a snake at one point and on one night we spotted a scorpion in our room on the wall which even I was quick to want to kill!! After we squashed it we heard another thud. With the light of our oil lamp we saw that another had fallen from the roof onto the bed!! Oh man, that really had us worried!
All in all it could have been a more pleasant experience all round and to top it off, we realised that somebody had been into the villa (there were no security measures in place for valuables) and had stolen our torch, Matt's cap and very expensive Ray Bans, my swiss army knife AND a padlock of all things! So we were quite pleased to be leaving....
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