"Each step forward has a sacred meaning of its own" Sri Chinmoy
Nusa Dua Sea Swim - Feb 2023 - Bali
I packed my tow float for my trip to Indonesia, thinking I might have a chance to do a long point to point swim. In Seminyak I heard some rather offputting stories of people getting sick after swimming (the water was by all accounts pretty polluted, especially after heavy rain washed some pretty bad stuff down the creeks to the beach) but who knows if there was a connection? After all, I got pretty ill myself without having been in the sea!
Once I arrived in Nusa Dua the ocean was clearly pure and swim-safe, so early in the trip I took a morning stroll down to Pondok Gardu, one of the nearest promontary shelters to my hotel, then loaded my sandals and a few bits and pieces into the tow float before slipping into the sea for the mile or so traverse of the Nusa Dua beaches.
The initial sensation shouldn't have been a surprise but it was - such warm water! I always forget such a thing as warm sea exists, as I do almost all my open water swimming in a wetsuit in north west Europe. The feeling of being immersed in warm salt water is pretty amazing when it comes so rarely. In a way, I'm glad it's unfamiliar and I won't ever find it normal, or take it for granted, just have it as a delightful experience on the odd occasion I find myself in these latitudes.
I was quite weak after being ill earlier in the trip, so I turned my arms over slowly and covered the distance at an easy pace. There were lines of buoys marking the safe swim zone, so although I stayed outside of those (officially on the danger side) i was well out of the way of any boats and could use the buoys as an easy handrail to follow. On the horizon was Dharma Island, with surfers on the break further out to sea and spray breaking over the reefs.
There were a handful of swimmers dotted around the shallows. After ten minutes or so I came across my first shoal of fish - a translucent silver kind, all about twice the size of my hand, with gold and blue markings fluorescing in the water like precious gemstones. They swam parallel to me, then ahead of me like pilots leading me down the beach. After a sadly short time the fish were gone and I was solo-swimming again, coming out of the buoyed area and having to put my head up and sight regularly to avoid the slow boats pulling in to pick up and drop off tourists on the beach.
At Dharma Island I was not going to tackle the reef and the breaking waves, not to mention the large number of surfers and their boards - so I took the safe option and came out of the water to cross the narrow causeway between beach and island. I slipped back into the water with just the last bay ahead of me to cross. This one is Nusa Dua beach proper - between Dharma Island and Peninsula Island - the two promontaries that give Nusa Dua its name.
When I came close to Peninsula Island - close enough to see the statue of Krishna and Arjuna - I got into shallow water and had to wade over the rough stones to complete the last few yards. I emptied out my tow float, got my sandles back on and slowly strolled back the way I'd come. I want to do more point to point swims, but back home things are not quite so warm, placid and safe as they are in the shallows of Nusa Dua. Maybe I'll need a support crew or a swim buddy? This was a great swim though. As Douglas Adams would say, thanks for all the fish.
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