Nusa Penida West or East: Two Different Days, and Why One Trip Cannot Do Both

Every Penida tour is sold as 'west' or 'east', and the split is not marketing. The island is bigger than it looks from Bali, the roads between the two sides are slow and rough, and the sights on each side are clustered. A west day and an east day are each a full day. A 'west and east' day exists and is a long time in a van looking at things through a window.

The west is the famous side. Kelingking's dinosaur cliff, then Broken Beach, a collapsed sea cave that has left a natural arch with the ocean flowing through it, and Angel's Billabong next door, a tidal rock pool that is safe to enter only at low tide in calm seas and lethal when swell comes over the lip. Crystal Bay finishes the day with an actual swimmable beach and sunset.

It is the day to do if you only have one, and it is the day everyone does, so start early.

The east is quieter and, for a lot of people, better. Diamond Beach is a white cove beneath limestone spires reached by a staircase carved into the cliff, with a swimming warning nearly as serious as Kelingking's. Atuh beach is the next cove along, with a warung on the sand. The Thousand Islands viewpoint looks over a string of rock islets from a cliff path, and the tree house nearby has become a photo stop in its own right.

Drive times from the north-coast harbours are longer to the east, which is why the day-trip crowd mostly goes west.

Penida's roads are the thing no brochure shows. Away from the north coast they are narrow, steeply cut into the hills, and broken up by potholes and washouts, and the vans that carry tours crawl through them. Thirty kilometres is an hour and a half. This is the reason a one-day tour covers one side, and it is the reason scooter rental here is more dangerous than on Bali: the surfaces catch out experienced riders every week.

One day, first visit: west. Two days, staying over: west then east, with the early morning at Kelingking on the second day if you can face the road again. Snorkelling with mantas is a third kind of day, by boat around the south-west coast, and combines with a shortened west tour rather than a full one.

The tours listed here for Nusa Penida are split the same way, with named drivers who know which road washed out last week.