Oh, it’s cold. Mid winter in Bali, woe is me. Actually, it is quite cool, maybe 26C and a bit grey with light rain. No, I tell a lie, the sun’s out again.

We’re at a clothes optional resort in a room where we have almost exclusive use of a beautiful green stone tiled pool, which stays quite cold. Very refreshing, if you don’t mind the first dip. Yesterday I did seven laps, up and back, of the 20m length, so 280m of exercise. It’s fantastic. Feels good.

This is the main pool, lower down:

At night the underwater LED lights change colour. Very nice, although red water looks pretty odd.

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There are not many guests here (if they reduced the price … ?) but last night at dinner we had a Canadian guy who lives out of his suitcases and travels where he feels like it; a New Zealander, similar, who is a freelance video and film animator and CGI artist, making his living contracting his work in all these SE Asian areas, and working on the web with his Macintosh laptop; a guy from Tennessee with his Chinese female partner, who have a business making and exporting souvenirs and promotional items from Shenzhen to the world, including Perth; and my friend and me from Perth. Quite a crowd and quite a conversation for a while.

I gingerly introduced the topic of Trump politics with the Yank at breakfast this morning and found we are not quite of the same opinion, but I managed to avoid any problems.

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Meet Herman:

They have a system of ponds near the restaurant where they have about six tortoises of various sizes. Yesterday they were cleaning the ponds, so they lifted all the tortoises out onto the lawn. A couple just huddled down and didn’t move, but a few set off exploring, one quite fast, up and over a low wall. They like to eat hibiscus flowers, I was shown. Faskinatin’.

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Lovina Beach, where we set off to watch dolphins. This is about 7.30am.

That was a good trip.

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This is our last day here, dammit. Back to Lovina tomorrow. Time for a nap now, I think. Gee, this typing is tiring. [Stop Press: we like it so much we’re staying an extra day, back to Lovina on Friday instead. Bagus.]

You think you’re tired. This is Yupi, the Great Dane.

Actually, preparing the photos and doing this blogging has taken me more than an hour.

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Oh, nearly forgot, we had a snake in the bedroom at Lovina on Sunday morning. Luckily it was a small one, about 300mm long and 5mm diameter. The cat brought it in and was playing with it. She’d given it a few bites but was fine herself, so it must have been harmless. I’m pretty squeamish about snakes but my friend ably got it in the kitchen tongs and dumped it in the garden. It was still alive, so maybe it survived. But the cat kept grabbing it and bringing it back in, so it got dumped in the pond. Bad cat!