Yes, there was Leberwurscht for breakfast. And yes, Flo had it. I didn’t. As you probably guessed. =P The pool was smooth as and really tempting but we withstood it…barely. Toes were dipped in…

A re-purposed boat..very cool

After breakfast, we said goodbye to Richard and drove off to Pemuteran. It didn’t take long at all so we arrived at Joe’s bar at 11am, just when it opened. Joe wasn’t there yet so we sat down and had a lemon juice. During this one drink, Joe arrived. Joe is a friend of Santosh who called him to announce us so he knew something about our travels.

Talking to Joe was awesome but since we only drove about 40km so far, we were itching to get a bit more miles (kilometres actually) under our wheels (and butts). After two hours, a piece of Black Forest cake with vanilla ice cream and Joe’s Indonesian insight, we drove another 30 minutes to get to the ferry harbour in Gilimanuk. Here, the tickets were very cheap and ferries seem to leave every 5min. Java is so close at this point of Bali that I joked I could probably swim over if the ferry sank. The ferry did look dodgy this time.

Rocinante is hiding between trucks

Handing our $3 ticket to an official, we were waved onto the ferry where other officials played real-life Tetris to get the optimal loading for the given space. Flo had to move Rocinante once, when a better spot opened up after the trucks were shuffled a bit.

Supposedly, the ferry takes 30min but ours was the slowest wreck ever built and it took a freaking hour to get us across with other ferries overtaking us left and right.

Finally, we were riding out onto Javanese soil. Our second to last Indonesian island had been reached. With leaving Touristland™, we were now back in the land with stretches of no warungs and the standard of accommodation also dropped immediately. This time though, we also get the price cut with it though. Crossing over to Java also meant crossing another time zone. Thus it was still rather early but we were both knackered so we decided to stay in Bakauheni where the Lonely Planet had advertised for a very cheap and basic place. Exactly what we were looking for: Just beds and a mandi. Perfect for 92k.

Being in our room and having internet enabled us to do some “homework”. Well, mostly Flo did the homework really. First, we checked on the status of our passports which was “processed in Bali”. What did that mean? Did we get the visa or not? Why are our passports in Bali? Are they still there? Or again despite us asking to pick them up in Jakarta? Unfortunately, calling vfs didn’t clarify much. Yes, the passports were on their way back to Bali (just when we left it *facepalm*) but luckily, they could be intercepted and are still in Jakarta. But they couldn’t tell us if the visa had been granted. So we checked immigration New Zealand were our status was “pending”. How can be pending when our passports are on the way back?

It took a while to get through but then the staff in NZ explained that our visa was granted and that our status says “pending” as the visa has no end date and thus breaks the system. YUUUUUUUSS, permanent New Zealand residents!