Pandawa Beach, The Beach Inspired by War Winners

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Pandawa Beach

Pandawa

I'm not sure why this beach is named in such way. Pandawa is the name for five Brothers that went to war with their cousins which were considered as Villain called Kurawa in the Mahabharata epic. The story is the symbols of Good vs Evil where the Winners in the end, Pandawa, symbolized the good and Kurawa played the opposite role. Anyway, still I can't answer the question in the beginning of this paragraph.

The beach lies on the south tip of the Paradise Island, Bali. It was hidden by the limestone hills. It is impossible to reach the beach if the local government did not make the roads by demolishing part of the limestone hills. As we all know, The Island of Bali depends so much from its tourism as non-tax domestic income. As world class tourism destination, the Balinese must aware of anything that could become tourism objects, like this beach for example. Anyway, I've never heard about the Pandawa Beach untill a year ago.

My vacation in Bali was nothing but a surprise. When I went back from shopping, my neighbor asked where I would go for Christmas holidays. I said I might go to Malang and he said that he will go to Bali by driving alone, then he offered me and my roommate to join, how could I say no! So it was a sudden trip, we depart at 00.30 a.m. West Indonesia Time, and arrived in Bali at 10.30 a.m Bali time (central Indonesia time) after one and a half hour on ferry crossing Bali Strait, then continued another 5 to 6 hours drive to reach the beach. Since we used the Waze app, a GPS application, the driving hours got longer than expected.

Pandawa Beach is close to the other newly famous beach, the Melasti Beach. I didn't know until I went back home to Surabaya. Four o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at the Pandawa Beach. The road offers unique beauty of limestone hills, the newly built gate to the beach made of limestone crafted beautifully in Balinese style. 

Since we arrived late, I thought there would be less visitor, I was wrong. There were still visitors arriving to the beach, I found many of them enjoying the view from the road side nearby the cliff. We stopped there too to get pictures of our own. From this point, we could see the beach from far view, it's beautiful, the straight line borders between blue ocean water and the beach white to yellowish sand stretched 1 km west to east.

On the other side of the road we can find the Statues of Pandawa and their mother Dewi Kunti. Started by the statue of 2 meters tall Dewi Kunti then Dharma Wangsa or Yudhistira, Bima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sadewa in Balinese style of stone-craft. Each placed on the man-made cave on the cliff-side. Enough with the photos we took on this site we move down to the beach. From the start I didn't want to get wet so I didn't change my trouser. But the wave were quite big, so I get wet half of my body. I prefer to swim in the calm water like in Gili Labak. I have childhood trauma on the south beach of Jogjakarta where I almost swept away to the ocean by the similar wave. Though it look more save here.

I saw my friends enjoying their time playing around in the water. We argued a little when I proposed my friend to get ready for another spot, Uluwatu, to watch Kecak Dance and to see beautiful sunset. He refused, he said that he rarely go to the beach and he really enjoy playing on the beach, so I stopped arguing in the end. I got starved so I bought food on the foodshop nearby. When I sat on the beach couch with huge umbrella, someone came to me that I need to pay for 50k in order to enjoy the beach on the couch. Wow, I had to pay for just sitting there? of course I refused, then I sat on the sand and enjoy my coconut drink and snack I bought.

I'm not really a fan of this beach, coz the wave do not allow me to swim. But, it is a good experience just for the shake of "have been there". The beach is quite famous, so if people asks have I ever been to the Pandawa Beach, I'd say yes I have.

At 05.30 p.m we depart to our hotel in Seminyak, the Maxone hotel, at Jl.Petitenget Seminyak, Bali. We booked on our way via Traveloka App. We enjoy the night in Bali eating the hot Penyetan nearby the hotel. So hot until I got sweat a lot. There are a lot of nice cafes on Seminyak, and of course a lot of Bules. Only that there's no Christmas signs at all, it was like a normal daily holiday. 

    

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Tanjung Papuma, Serenity in Nature's Beauty

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Tanjung Papuma Beach

South Beaches

The southern coast of East Java is blessed with beautiful & exotic beaches. Stretched from Pacitan on the west to Banyuwangi on the east. Unlike on the north that has shallow and muddy waters, East Java's south coastal beaches are mostly a white sand and clear water beach, with its huge famous tidal wave. Often, swimming on these beaches are prohibited. There were many lives have gone due to the wave. But the wave itself could be the main attraction for adrenaline sport lovers a.k.a the surfers. Each year, they have world class surfing competition at G-Land Bay on the tip of Banyuwangi Regency. Its wave is world class, many surfers from around the world come to do the challenge.

Pasir Putih Manikam, Papuma

The beach I am going to talk about is somehow close enough to that surfing beach. It is at Papuma peninsula, a small peninsula facing the  Indian ocean on the south. It is called Papuma Beach. The name Papuma itself is abbreviation from " Pasir Putih Manikam", literally meaning the very small white sands. It's true, the sands on Papuma beach is like grain, very small. It is located at Jember Regency at the region of Ambulu East java. It is not difficult to find the beach, there are signs on the road heading to this beach.

Last weekend was my traveling time since I had one more off days after the long weekend. My first plan was to go to Bawean Island, since it'll cost a lot and I wasn't on the budget, so, me and my friend decided to go to Jember to Tanjung Papuma Beach. We rode motorcycle and departing around 00.30 a.m. in the morning. I like to depart around that time coz in the next morning we will arrive to the destination. It took around 7 - 8 hours ride from Surabaya to Jember (normally around 5 hours).

Like usual, we stopped for a rest on place the Indonesian usually made of bamboo on the roadside, I don't really know what its name. And another hour we stopped because of the rain, it was already close to district Ambulu. Untill we arrived at the Tanjung Papuma Beach around 8.30.

Route Surabaya - Tanjung Papuma

It was public holiday, the birth day of Muslim's Prophet Muhammad, more like Christmas but less in celebrations. There were a lot of people visiting the beach. Since it is a peninsula, there are two beaches we can enjoy, the famous one is the one on the east side where we can find food shops parking lot and the bungalows run by Forestry Department of Indonesia (Perhutani). I went straight to the western side of the peninsula, less people with majestic view of Indian Ocean.

Google Earth View of Tanjung Papuma Beach

The water clarity on the western side is better than the one on east side, most people doesn't know about the western side, they only know that Tanjung Papuma Beach is the one on the east. Most of the pictures on the Internet is showing the eastern part of Tanjung Papuma Beach. I never like visiting destinations with people crowd, besides it's disturbing my background view of the photos, the natural feeling of the place becomes less than it should be.

Once we found the spot to built our camp, me and my friend went straight to the beach to hunt photos. The water doesn't show blue color like the one in Gili Labak Island, due to the bottom of the seabed that mostly sea rocks and others. The white sands are mainly on the land side, this is because the wave always carrying the sands to the coastal area. Mixed with circular stones with variations in color makes the beach looks so exotic. On the north we can see high cliffs that stand strong facing the Indian Ocean. There are two small rocky Islands as the background view, and also at the far southwest we can see the Island of Nusa Barong, the Island of Snakes they say.

Rocky Islands

We spent hours taking pictures with many poses, it's too bad that the clouds were not supporting our activity. Most of the day are cloudy and the sun disappeared most of the time. It didn't stop me to get nice photos when the sun showed up once at a time. There were few people built their camp here, it's not officially a camp site, the official campsite is the one on the east side of the peninsula. One ranger went to us to take retribution for camping and he suggested that we moved our camp to the east coast. He told us that there was a robbery the night before when a bunch of travelers lost their belongings which cost around IDR 20 Millions. Such a bad news for a place like this. All the time we argued whether we're gona camp here or move to Jember to stay for the night. But than we decided to sleep at the hotel in the Jember City.

Our Camp

Midday felt like as if it is already in the evening, I decided to cook the instant porridge as our lunch. Enough with our meal we took a walk around the beach enjoying the serenity view of the nature God has given to us. Around three o'clock we packed our stuff and move to Jember City to get a hotel, turns out to be a scary old hotel in the middle of the city.

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