Broken Beach and Angel's Billabong: The Arch, the Tide Pool, and the Tide That Decides Whether You Swim

Pasih Uug, Broken Beach, is a circular cove on Nusa Penida's west coast where the roof of a sea cave fell in, leaving a bowl of cliff around a beach that the sea reaches through a natural arch in the wall. You walk around the rim of the bowl, look down at the beach and the turquoise water inside, and watch the swell push through the arch. There is no path down and no swimming; it is a viewpoint, a fine one, and it takes twenty minutes including the walk around. Manta rays are sometimes seen from the rim in the water below.

Five minutes on foot from Broken Beach, Angel's Billabong is a natural pool in the rock at the bottom of the cliff, filled by the sea at high tide and left as a clear green basin at low tide, with the open sea beyond a lip of rock. At low tide on a calm day people climb down and swim in it, and it is as good as it looks. At high tide, and at any tide when there is swell, waves come over the lip into the pool and have carried people out; there have been deaths here. The rule is simple: swim only at low tide in calm sea, stay away from the lip, and if the water is moving, look and leave.

Your driver will know the tide, and the warungs at the car park will tell you; there are also signs. Low tide falls at a different hour each day, so whether you swim is a matter of which day you come, not of planning. In the dry season, April to October, the sea is generally calmer; in the wet season the south-westerly swell makes the pool unsafe on more days. Do not let a photograph of someone else in the pool decide it for you.

These two sit twenty minutes from Kelingking and the three make up the standard west-side circuit, usually in the order Kelingking first for the light, then Broken Beach and Angel's Billabong, then Crystal Bay for a swim and lunch. See the Kelingking guide and the Crystal Bay guide; for how the west compares with the east, west or east.