Kelingking Beach
Interesting facts
- In Tripadvisor's 2019 Travellers' Choice awards, Kelingking ranked 19th among the world's beaches and second in Asia.
- Seen from a different angle, the headland is also likened to a young whale rather than a dinosaur.
- Nusa Penida means island of priests in Balinese, yet a Dutch map from around 1900 labels it Bandit Island.
- That nickname came from the kingdom of Klungkung's practice of exiling criminals, political opponents and reputed black magic practitioners to the island.
- Nusa Penida first appears in history on the Belanjong pillar of 914 AD, which records a military expedition by Bali's first known king.
- Islanders speak their own form of Balinese, hard for mainland speakers to understand and reportedly close to the language of the Bali Aga.
- In 2006 every village on the islands wrote bird protection into its customary law, creating a sanctuary for the critically endangered Bali starling.
- The waters off Nusa Penida are known for reef manta rays, often seen at a dive site called Manta Point.
Why it is worth it
Seen from the clifftop on the west coast of Nusa Penida, the headland at Kelingking looks like an animal lying in the sea: a long ridge of limestone, green along its spine and sheer on its flanks, running down into turquoise water with a narrow crest and a blunt, bowed head. Everyone reaches for the same comparison — the T-Rex — and it sticks. Below, cupped between the headland and the cliffs, lies a crescent of white sand pounded by open-ocean surf. The name, a word for the little finger, is far gentler than the view.
The drama is a matter of scale and colour. The cliffs rise about 180 metres, the vegetation clinging to their ledges is an intense tropical green, and the water shifts from deep blue offshore to milky turquoise over the sand. The best moments are early, before the midday haze flattens the colours, and late afternoon, when the sun drops behind the ridge and the headland throws its shadow across the bay. From the viewpoint the ridge stacks up in successive humps, and on a clear day the swell draws white lines of foam around its foot.
The descent is a proper undertaking rather than a stroll: the first third follows 156 built concrete steps, and the rest is a raw path of dirt and rock along the spine of the headland with a bamboo handrail, about twenty minutes down and up to half an hour back. The beach at the bottom is wild — powerful shore break, strong currents, no shade — and swimming there is forbidden; it is a place to stand at the water's edge and look back up at the wall of limestone rather than to swim.
Getting there
Kelingking lies on the west coast of Nusa Penida, near the village of Bunga Mekar, in Bali's Klungkung Regency. Fast boats cross from Sanur on Bali in about 45 minutes to the harbours at Toyapakeh or Banjar Nyuh, and the drive across the island to the viewpoint takes another 45 minutes to an hour. The nearest mainland town is Klungkung, about 25 km away across the strait, and the nearest airport is Bali's I Gusti Ngurah Rai International (DPS), about 34 km as the crow flies.
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