Life's A Beach

Life’s A Beach
Bira, Indonesia

Bira, Indonesia

We had heard so many amazing things about the beaches in Sulawesi that we could not wait to get to Bira Beach and get in the ocean. After another mammoth journey from Sengkang we arrived late in the afternoon and had a quick look around Bira. It was much different to what we had anticipated and a walk along the beach took an eternity as with everywhere else in Sulawesi every local wanted to take a picture with us. The sea looked beautiful and so we booked a snorkel tour with the owner of our B&B and looked forward to exploring the magical oceans of Bira.

That night we headed to the only restaurant in town and met every other tourist in the town, all 2 of them. They seemed nice enough, a Spanish girl and her Bermudan boyfriend so we had a chat and bid farewell till tomorrow night.

Full of excitement we met our boat man ready for our snorkel tour and followed him to the beach, the total lack of communication didn’t seem to be a problem so we just went along with it. The boat man took us across to an island off of Bira beach and told us to get in and indicated that we needed to let the current take us to the beach so we hopped in and did as we were told. The sea was beautiful, full of huge in tact healthy corals however there was one thing missing. During a good 30 minutes in the sea there was not a single fish to the seen. Seriously not a single fish! Eventually we made it to the island after fighting the current and our boat man moored up and headed off to while away the afternoon in a hammock. We tried to ask him where we could snorkel and he just pointed us up the beach. We went for a walk dodging boat lines and anchors and could quite clearly see that there was nowhere to snorkel so we headed back to the village where our driver was having a nap. Defeated and hot we told our driver to take us home and we tried to snorkel on the beach there. Sadly it was so shallow we couldn’t get over the reef and gave up. On our way back we unsurprisingly met the couple from the previous evening who propositioned us. They wanted to share our car back to Makassar. We told them we would need to speak to our driver as we were not sure and would meet them for dinner that eve.

After thinking about it, we decided it would be a nice thing to help them out and worked out how much that journey was in a private car. When we met them later and agreed that they could share and we could split the cost they were utterly astounded that they were expected to pay any more than the bus would have cost them and decided to take the bus. Obviously they had a pretty bad experience on the bus as a few days later they sent me an abusive email accusing us of trying to rip them off….. errr I am pretty sure we were the ones putting ourselves out to help them. At least we can laugh about them now.

All in all Bira was not the lushious beach destination that we had hoped, the Muslim festival meant that the beach was just a mass of locals wanting their photo taken with us most of the time we were there and after some awkward discussions the owner of our B&B agreed to give us a discount on our disastrous snorkel tour, but there was some light at the end of the tunnel. Aside from Mr & Mrs Bermuda who were the most awful travellers we have met so far we did make some great friends in Bira. We had one very small world moment talking to an amazing couple from Belgium who for years and years have worked a year and travelled a year. As it happened they had been to New Zealand last year and had lots of great advice for us. We had already arranged our first week stay in Auckland and had decided to try out couch surfing for the first time. During our discussions they told us that they had couch surfed in New Zealand and Auckland and had had an amazing stay with Barry Johnston. The very same Barry Johnston that we were headed to stay with. Such a small world!!!

Not a moment too soon we had to leave Bira Beach, but not before a quick trip to the boat building yard just outside the town. It was absolutely amazing, these monster wooden boats all just perched on the sand being painstakingly built by hand. Who knew that some of the best boats in Indonesia are built right here?!

Back on the road and headed to Makassar after an awesome experience seeing all that South & Central Sulawesi had to offer. Whilst the beach was less than we expected Tana Toraja was mind blowingly cool so it all worked out pretty well.

As we got to the city our driver Agus took us for a last couple of photo stops before we met up with Dodo again who delivered us safely to the airport for our onward flight to Manado and our adventure in Northern Sulawesi…..

Farewell Makassar!