Salt Water and a Clifftop Temple
A banana boat, a jet ski and a parachute over the bay in the morning, then a beach at the bottom of the rocks and a sea temple on a cliff.
The driver collects you after breakfast, and the car is yours for the day. That matters more on this tour than on most, because the day has three quite different parts, wet kit to carry between them, and a clifftop temple at the end that you want to reach while the light is still good.
The first stop is a watersports beach on the east side of the southern peninsula, where the reef keeps the water flatter than on the surf coast, and where most of Bali's watersports operators have set up. It is not a quiet place. Speedboats idle in a line offshore, there is a row of counters with laminated price boards, and people in life jackets stand around waiting their turn. Your three rides are already booked, so you skip the counter and go straight to the life jackets.
Somebody fits yours and checks the buckles rather than asking whether you have. The briefing for each ride is short and very specific: where to hold, when to lean, and what happens if you end up in the water, which on the banana boat is not so much a possibility as the plan.
Three rides
The banana boat goes first, because it is the one that gets everybody laughing. Several of you sit astride a long yellow inflatable, a speedboat tows it out in wide loops, and at some point the driver turns hard enough to put everyone in the sea. The water is warm. You come up spluttering, somebody is already shrieking, and the boat circles back round to collect you.
The jet ski is the one that makes people go quiet. After the briefing you head out within a marked area, and there is a particular moment when you open the throttle for the first time, the machine lifts under you and the spray goes sideways in a sheet. Most people come back in grinning, and trying hard not to look as though they are.
Parasailing comes last, and it is the ride people are nervous about right up until they are in the air. You are clipped into a harness under a parachute, the speedboat moves off, and you simply rise, far more gently than you expect, until the beach, the boats and the reef are laid out beneath you. It is quiet up there. That is the part nobody warns you about.
Parasailing is the ride people are nervous about, right up until they are in the air. Then it is the quietest few minutes of the day.
Padang Padang
The drive from the flat east side of the peninsula to the cliffs of the west takes you across the Bukit, the limestone plateau at Bali's southern tip. It is dry and scrubby and looks nothing like the rice-terrace Bali of the postcards. Then the road reaches the coast, and the sea below is suddenly a different colour and a different mood: deep blue, with long lines of swell and surfers sitting out beyond the break.
Padang Padang is reached down a flight of steps from the road that squeezes through a narrow gap in the rock. At the bottom is a small cove of pale sand between two walls of limestone, with the waves breaking on the reef just offshore. It is small, it gets busy, and it is lovely anyway. The water close in is fine for a paddle. The reef further out belongs to the surfers, and it is best left to them.
Change out of your wet things in the car before you go down, and give it the best part of an hour. There is nothing to do here except swim, sit and watch the surf, which after a morning on speedboats is precisely the point.
Uluwatu
Pura Luhur Uluwatu is one of Bali's great sea temples, and it stands on the edge of a cliff roughly seventy metres above the Indian Ocean, at the south-western tip of the island. At the entrance you are given a sarong and a sash to wear over whatever you arrived in, because this is a working temple before it is anything else. The inner courtyard is closed to visitors. The clifftop paths on either side of it are not, and they are where the view is.
The temple is also home to a large troop of long-tailed macaques, and they are the thing you need to be warned about. They take sunglasses, hats, phones and sandals with great speed and no shame, and then they hold on to them until somebody offers fruit in exchange. Put your glasses in your bag before you walk in, hold your phone with both hands near the cliff edge, and do not wave food about.
Walk the path along the cliff away from the crowd at the entrance, and the temple appears ahead of you on its promontory: a small, dark shape of carved stone against a very large sky, with the swell breaking white against the foot of the cliff far below. That is the photograph. If you stand still long enough, it is also the moment the whole long day comes together.
Put your sunglasses in your bag before you walk in. The monkeys at Uluwatu do not give anything back without negotiating.
The Kecak fire dance performed at the temple around sunset is not part of this tour and is ticketed separately, so tell us in advance if you want to stay for it. Otherwise the driver takes you back north through the evening traffic, salted, sun-tired and very ready for dinner.
Experience Salt Water and a Clifftop Temple
Three rides on the water, Padang Padang and a sea temple on a cliff, in one private day. Tell us your dates and we will build it into your Bali trip.
