Every journey begins with a single step. Actually, if you want to get to the beach between Padang Padang and Ulu Watu from my room, it’s one hundred thirty-seven steps. Steep, uneven, moss-covered concrete ones that snake back and forth down a cliff face to a beautiful deserted stretch of beach hemmed in on both sides at high tide by house sized ironshore boulders. There’s a nice right that starts at the edge of the cove and peels about half way down the thousand yard stretch of sand before it breaks up in a shallow patch that extends to the other side of the cove. Good bouldering at the junction of land and ocean, the danger tickle of clinging to a higher than head high perch only partially mitigated by the fact that there is water underneath, as that water may or may not be deep enough to cushion a fall. Save for the lonely, orphaned shoes and plastic detritus washed up on shore, this beach could have looked just the same ten thousand years ago and had about as many people on it: zero.
How did I find such a place? Skill, research, extensive quizzing of the locals in their native tongue, careful examination of topographical maps and satellite imagery? Rather, like many of the best travel finds, blind luck. I knew the general area I wanted to go, had the name of some accommodations from a guide book, hired a driver, and headed out. My first choice of places was no longer there. Well, it was there, but the sign and several of the bungalows had been leveled, the pool was half full of liquid that looked like it had been siphoned from a high school science project, and there was one guy hanging out at the deserted, cleaned out bar/restaurant. He assured me that though the place was closed for renovations, he could put me up for more money than some of the fully functional resorts in the area were asking. The view was nice, but, figuring I could find a place that was actually in business, I pointed out that the term renovation is usually reserved for a site at which work is actually occurring, a place where workers are present and doing something with the piles of bricks that used to be buildings. Moved on with my intrepid and harrowingly patient driver.
A few more missteps. A wander down a dirt road to find that the encouraging signs at the main road junction led to what was basically someone’s living room for rent, including access to the side yard combination chicken run/ laundry drying facility. A stop at a nice looking place with a great pool whose only, and, in my opinion, glaring shortcoming was the lack of access to food. Everywhere I stayed in Bali, from nice hotels to tiny apartments, included breakfast. This place not only did not include breakfast but had no facility for making it. Guests suffering the unexpected and inconvenient affliction hunger could feed themselves by hoofing to the nearest restaurant, by no means near on this sparsely populated peninsula I was exploring. As this army runs on its stomach, I moved on. A drive past a shuttered building owned by a fraternity brother. Seriously. Half way around the world and there is my buddy’s surf retreat. What are the odds? A brief stop at a four room spot that was nice enough save for its next door to a rooster pen deal breaking location, reminding me of my adventures apartment hunting in Kona: “Hi, I’m here about the apartment. Do you hear roosters here? Yes? Okay, nevermind.” Call me a city slicker, but being awakened by roosters sends me into a poultricidal rage. Who came up with the quaint idiocy that roosters crow…squawk? doodle? at dawn? Sure they doodle at dawn, but not because it is dawn, not because they are greeting the day, but because they doodle incessantly throughout their stupid chicken lifetimes and every three thousandth time in a twenty four hour period that they announce their presence the sun happens to be coming up. I did not stay at the place next to the roosters.
Then I saw a sign. Nothing fancy or biblical, just a faded old sign. “Thomas Homestay.” My driver, as opposed to showing his exasperation at each stuttered misstep on the adventure to house me, appeared to grow more enthusiastic at each stop. By the time we bumped our way down the dirt road towards the coast, he was desperately ecstatic. “Maybe you like this one, yes?” he bubbled. “Maybe,” I said doubtfully as I tried to keep from bashing my head against the ceiling of the cab as we bounced down the rutted track, feeling guilty for dragging him all over the Bukit Peninsula.
Thomas Homestay was unimpressive from the back. A collection of three buildings joined by a continuous roof. Chicken coops. Laundry hanging out on lines. An elderly crone sweeping at the dirt gestured deeper into the compound when I inquired about a room. I walked through a breezeway and onto a porch cantilevered over the above described view, and when the owner approached me and asked if I wanted to stay, I just said, “Yes.”
Only briefly did I reconsider my decision after being shown the living space I would be renting: small, tired room, hard, lumpy mattress with questionable linen and a pillow I wrapped in one of my own t-shirts for sanitary purposes, a shared bathroom complete with non-flush squat toilet, a noisy, beat-up fan mounted to the wall, and not much else besides two windows. Fourteen bucks a night, and the room not even worth that despite the fact that they included breakfast.
Ah, but take two steps outside the room to the balcony railing and no amount of money could pay for the view of the ocean and a deserted beach only one hundred thirty seven steps away.
