There is not much to do in Pemuteran if you don’t want to dive; except chill and today we do just that. Lunch on by the beach, some blogging, a visit to a small turtle hatchery, a stroll to the western end of the beach and the purchase of a sim card fill the day quite easily.
The beach is interrupted in places by a black lava pavement and at low tide the rocky seabed beyond is revealed making it difficult to get into the water. This is not really a spot for swimming, although there are places where it is possible to enter the sea safely and do a little snorkeling around the coral reef which is being created using electric current and an artificial structure. Apparently it’s rather like something from a sci-fi movie, but we haven’t felt the inclination to take a look for ourselves.
The sand is a gamut of colours from areas of jet black to shades of grey and gold and the rock pools are full of marine life from small fish and crabs to sea slugs and strange-snake like creatures with anemone-type fronds for mouths.
The beach is fringed with large broad leaf trees that provide welcome shade and provide a pleasant backdrop that obscures the few low-rise and, it should be said, attractive, resorts. There are palms too and we stop to watch a man scale one of these towering trees, bare-foot and without a harness, to collect the sap accumulating in plastic bottles hung amongst the crown of fronds.
For £1.50 it’s possible to buy a sim card here with 60p-worth of airtime. We have no idea how many minutes that might equate to, but it seems like a good deal anyhow! And since many hotels in Indonesia don’t take bookings over the internet a local sim card is likely to be quite handy. The actual purchase, made at a little roadside kiosk, is a drawn-out affair as attempts are made to activate the sim card for us. But after about half-an-hour of putting the sim in and out different handsets, a call to the network provider seems to do the trick and we are able to make our first call to book tomorrow night’s accommodation in Java.
We round off the day with two Arak cocktails in the bar near our bungalow. Tonight it is quite busy with seven customers including us filling its veranda is full. We chat to a young German couple who are on honeymoon here and are also off to Java tomorrow – on a day trip to Mount Ijen leaving at 4.30 am whilst we will be leaving at the much more civilized hour of 10 o’clock.