Lovina and the North Coast in Bali

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Bali's north coast is a different island. The mountains cut it off from the southern tourism, the sand is black volcanic rather than white, the sea is calm because it faces the Bali Sea rather than the Indian Ocean, and the pace is slow enough to be startling if you have come from Canggu. Lovina is the main resort strip — a string of villages west of Singaraja, Bali's second city and its Dutch colonial capital — and the whole coast west from there to Pemuteran is quiet, cheap and largely undeveloped.

The dolphin boats, honestly

Lovina's signature activity is a dawn outrigger trip to see spinner and bottlenose dolphins offshore, leaving at six and costing 100,000–150,000 rupiah per person. The dolphins are genuinely there and the sunrise over the water with the mountains behind is lovely. The problem is the format: on a busy morning thirty or forty boats converge on a pod and chase it, engines running, which is stressful for the animals and unpleasant to be part of. If you go, choose an operator that agrees in advance to hang back and cut the engine, and accept fewer sightings.

Hot springs and waterfalls

Banjar hot springs, twenty minutes west of Lovina, are three stone pools fed by sulphurous water at around thirty-eight degrees, with carved naga spouts, set in a garden. Early morning is best before the coach parties. Inland from Singaraja, the Gitgit, Aling-Aling and Sekumpul waterfalls sit in a cluster; Aling-Aling is the one with guided jumps and natural slides of up to fifteen metres, and Sekumpul, an hour east, is the biggest waterfall on Bali. The road up from Lovina to Munduk and the lakes takes an hour and is spectacular.

Singaraja and the colonial coast

Singaraja was the Dutch capital of Bali and the main port until the 1950s, and it still looks it: a waterfront of colonial warehouses, a Chinese temple, a mosque and a Dutch-era harbour monument within a few streets of each other, reflecting a north coast that has always been more mixed than the south. The Gedong Kirtya library holds a collection of lontar, palm-leaf manuscripts, and is one of the more unusual small museums in Indonesia. Very few visitors stop, which makes it a genuinely quiet morning.

Practicalities

Lovina is three hours from the airport over the mountains, which is the reason it stays quiet, and one hour from Munduk. Accommodation is cheap: 200,000–600,000 rupiah for guesthouses and small hotels, with a handful of better places on the beach. The swimming is calm but the black sand and the murky water mean this is not a beach destination in the way the south is — it is a base. West along the coast, Pemuteran has the island's best reef restoration project and access to Menjangan's diving, and is the better stop if you are in the water.

Lovina and the North Coast at a glance

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