Lombok-The Island of a Thousand Mosques

I hired a driver from a car driver rental company and it cost 650,000 Indonesian rupiah which is equivalent of $61 Canadian for the 4 of us. 

The driver picked us up at the Lombok port Gilimas and it was approximately a 45-minute drive to our first stop.  

Dancing and music greeted the Cruise passengers at the Port of Gilimas.

Island of Lombok.

Agricultural field and mountains in the distance.

Along the side of the road there are many locals that are getting their produce to market.

We had wanted to customize our Day tour so we chose waterfalls and a authentic Lombok Village called Sukkarara.  The island of Lombock is said to be what Bali was 50 years ago.  It is I don't want to say backwards but it definitely was set back a moment in time. 

Mosques and scooters are everywhere.

I stopped counting the Mosques.  There are two different Mosques in this photo.

Our first stop was Sukkarara Village and we wanted to just walk around and see how the average person lives on the island of Lombok. That was our goal.  But Lombok has definitely advanced enough to be able to corral you into areas where they can make money off of you.  We stopped at a Weaving Center which was interesting and it gave us a chance of seeing women weave and if you're a good Weaver in Lombok, you stand a better chance of making a receiving a better marriage proposal. 

Beautiful fabric on display that has been weaved by the women.

A woman weaving.

This young girl found out we were Canadian and started singing Celine Dion songs whom she worships.

Boys playing in the village.

Misty our guide around the village.

Papaya Tree.

More women weaving.

More children playing.

This lady was spinning the cotton into yarn.

This was some sort of water cistern.

More weaving.

I had forgotten that Lombok was predominantly Muslim and it is a little different being a western woman getting off of a ship with shorts and a t-shirt when every woman is dressed in a long skirt, arms covered and a hijab. 

The women at the Village wanted Sandra and I to try weaving and neither of us wanted to try weaving. First of all I was definitely too tall to get into their little weaving contraption and it looked very uncomfortable.  I was hoping that I didn't offend them, but I'm not interested in weaving. They should have asked my husband if he wanted to weave because he may have been the only one out of the four that was interested enough to actually weave because he was an art teacher for decades.  It would be unheard of having a man weave on this Muslim Island. 

They called this the Chicken Hotel.

This was the village Mosque.

Some of the finished weaving product for sale.

We were a little disconcerted with the stop because we thought we could walk around on our own and just meander and and just like you would in any town or village but we were guided by a Muslim woman called Misty.  She took us to the weaving women and we said hello and watched etc and then she had us come back to the store where we could see all the final products.  Although the weaved fabrics were gorgeous and thick and rich and full of design and color, it's not anything that I would have worn or displayed in my house.  It would have been nice to have a small 8x10 weaved piece of fabric that I could have framed and hung on my wall, but those were nowhere to be found.  They came in large, medium and runner size.  They also suggested that I buy one for a scarf. I don't live in Canada in the cold months anymore so that wasn't really an option for me.  Each piece of fabric takes hundreds of hours to make. And I wished I could have supported them but it literally would have just collected dust in my closet. 

We asked to be taken to a different village and our driver Sahil took us to another Weaving Center much to our dismay.  We got out and looked around once again and got back in our vehicle that we hired. 

He then said he would take us to the waterfalls and it would be approximately 1 hour to drive to the waterfalls.  The drive-in itself was very interesting with little market shops along the roads and the highways. 

Many times you will see a family or 3 or 4 on a motorcycle, this one has 3.

Market stands along the way.

Another Mosque hidden behind the trees and many more scooters.

More agriculture.

Lady with stacked baskets on her head.

I love these hats which are reminiscent of Vietnam.

The roads were newer and wider and in better condition than they were on the island of Bali. 

It became quite clear that there was almost as many mosques on this small island as you would find anywhere in the world.  That's when Sahil offered that Lombok is called 'the island of a thousand mosques'.  In any given kilometer, you can sometimes see five mosques. 

Men leaving the Mosque.

More men leaving the Mosque.  The Call to Prayers is often heard on the island of Lombok.

3 Mosques in this picture and just below there are 2 more Mosques.  These 2 photos were taken in approximately 1 kilometer.

We arrived at the Waterfall GeoPark and got into a 15-minute line-up for a tiny little bathroom and then made our way to the Ticket Center.  We thought we would just buy our ticket and start walking to the waterfall.  Much to our dismay, we had to sit down and talk to a manager dude who told us about the different options.  Darren and I settled on hiking and seeing the four different sets of waterfalls which would take approximately 1 and 1/2 hours.  This would cost us $240,000 Indonesian rupiah equivalent to $21 Canadian. 

With this we got our own little dude that helped us along the way. And thank goodness because there were many twists and turns and many different options of trails and we definitely would have got lost in the rain forest.  I consider myself a fairly good hiker but I did use him for help quite a bit because lots of times you're going down in elevation and it was either sit in the mud and drag my ass down because it was just too big of steps.  He would offer his hand to me and that helped me in some tougher spots.  He also told me that I would need to take off my runners because there were some rivers and streams to cross and to walk through.  My poor feet have not walked barefoot in decades.  For about 40 minutes I was walking in mud and falling rain forest leaves and streams and creeks and a river and much to my dismay mini pebbles and rocks.  Needless to say my feet were very sore the next day.  But my runners were clean and fresh because my little dude guy carried them for me.  He also carried Darren's backpack on the way back from the main fourth waterfall. 

The jungle that we trekked through

Coffee Plants.

Many streams that I walked barefoot through.

This was our Muslim guide through the Waterfall Hike.

The first waterfalls that we visited Garth and Sandra came with us, but because Sandra had a sore foot she decided that they would only do the first waterfall.  We continued on our way and the hike actually was closer to two and a half hours.  It was a very strenuous hike and I loved it. My feet would have loved water shoes as well. 

Monkey family at the waterfalls.

We continued to our second set of waterfalls 

and then our third set of waterfalls 

and then the most glorious of all the fourth set of waterfalls. 

This was the walk to the last waterfall.

One of the creeks we had to cross with bare feet.

We had to use these squat only toilets which are difficult.

We headed back up the mountain out of the waterfall area.

The stairs out of the waterfall area had 4 tiny waterfalls on them.

There were 160 stairs out of the last waterfall area.

We headed back and made our way back to Sandra and Garth and they were waiting for us.  Sahil offered us Durian fruit, but Darren and I have tasted it before in Thailand. It's delicious but it stinks like nothing you've ever smelled before. 

The fruit gets heavy and it has to be tied on to the branches.

 We got back in the car and continued on our way back to the ship.

More rice fields.

Chicken cages for sale.

This lady had this huge bag on top of her head and we just missed taking a picture of her.

When we got back to the ship there were some flea market type open markets at the dock that we perused.  Unfortunately there were once again things I wanted to buy but they were either too short or just did not fit me.  Lombok women are much tinier than I am and they have not advanced enough to cater to Western women's size bodies.  I also was getting short on t-shirts and I wanted to buy a couple t-We shirts and tank tops but they only sold men's t-shirts and man's tank tops.  They apparently want women in flowery, flowy, rayon type shirts which I don't wear. 

Due to this day excursion we missed the lunch buffet where I normally would have a salad. We headed to the Music Hall bar and partook in an adult milkshake or two.  The classic BBC or Bailey's Banana Colada drink is a classic Cruise drink or Mudslide or Moon Over Miami.  These are all blended drinks with alcohol.

In the Dining Room that night with my Strawberry Blonde drink.

Leaving the Port of Lombok Gilimas.

The side of the ship and Lombok in the distance.

Pretty photo of the night lights and the calm waters.

We headed back to our rooms and showered and just made it on time for our supper reservation. We ate and made our way down to the theater where Suzie Q and Toby J a gymnastics trapeze artist duo performed doing and it was truly amazing the strength these two people had.  They were very interesting to watch their abs of steel performance with so many artistic strength positions. They're 45 minute performance seemed like 10 minutes. It was excellent!

After being in the heat of Lombok and the humidity and that hike I was bagged and headed back to my room and read and then crashed for the night.

The next two days were to be sea days, which you would think would be kind of boring and drag a bit but they don't.  We went to a 2 hour long Broadway production called West End Musical- We will Rock You!  It is a really good futuristic musical based on Queen songs.  It was so good that I had to see it again and went to the evening performance too.  4 hours of Queen songs and great talent and I still wanted to see it again.  The cast were amazingly talented singers, dancers and actors.  This was the best musical I have ever seen on board a cruise ship.  The next best one was Rock of Ages on our cruise to Bermuda for Darren's 50th Birthday.

Such an amazing musical of Queen music.