Weekend Getaway to Sawarna (part 1) …

The view behind the guesthouse in Sawarna

I have some stories from previous trips in last year that I haven’t shared, and one of them is the trip to Sawarna.

Hopefully nothing change after my visit in February 2012! Yikes, it’s almost a year!

February was madness! I was travelling to Jogja, Sawarna, and then to China. I already posted about my trip to Jogja and China some months ago though, but I postponed writing about Sawarna. Guess it’s  Sawarna’s turn now!

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Sawarna is located in Banten (Central Java) province, and is considered not that far from Jakarta and for a weekend escape!

The idea for this trip is from my friend Lidya (@Lramadhania). She found about this trip from BackpackSeru, a trip organizer.  The price was quite reasonable (about IDR450,000 which is equal to about USD45). It’s a weekend trip (from Friday evening to Sunday evening), and was including transportation, accommodation, and meals. I guess this was a good deal!

The total participant for this weekend trip was around 30 people, where 9 of the people were my friends and I. The participants were divided into 2 minibus, with us were dominating one of the buses! Haha.

It was a long ride from the starting point in Plaza Semanggi to Sawarna, plus it was Friday evening; so you could imagine the traffic! The estimated time period for the trip to Sawarna was about 8 hours.

Other thing that I didn’t imagine was the road condition near Sawarna. Although we were already told about the road condition, still I didn’t expect that it was terrible! Really terrible that my head was swinging from left to right to left to front to right while I was sleeping! Lol. Luckily I could get enough sleep that night!

We aimed to catch the sunrise first thing we reached Sawarna, and yes we did.

We watched the sunrise from the cliff and it was beautiful. We could also see pantai (beach) Ciantir below us.

It was a really nice view after a shaky ride to Sawarna haha!

Watching the sunrise from the cliff above Ciantir beach, Sawarna

The guesthouse in Sawarna

After we spent a little time to enjoy the sunrise; we then went back to the car and headed straight to the Desa (Village) Sawarna.

In Sawarna village, there were many local people that rented their room/house to the tourists, including the local people that rented the house for us.

Our guesthouse was a stilt house. It was quite big with plenty of rooms to accommodate us. The wall is from woven bamboo, even the floor at the porch was made from bamboo. Hmm, not really remember about the floor inside the house. Probably is from bamboo too. Only some part that used wood. And if you opened the window at the back of the house, the view was some paddy field!

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After taking a short break, we started our day by going to Goa (or Gua) Lalay accompanied with a few of local guides. If you like the view of paddy field; you will find a quite big area of paddy field on your way to Goa Lalay 🙂

Lalay means ‘bat’, and Goa/Gua means ‘cave’, so it’s a bat cave (without Bruce Wayne inside the cave :D).

I heard that Goa Lalay is only one from many caves in Sawarna. It’s a karst cave with stalagmite and stalactite.

The cave is so muddy with running water on the ground, so the combination of mud and water on the floor of the cave made it became quite slippery! Lidya (or perhaps Sinthya?) said that many tourists that came to this cave accidentally dropped their camera to the water probably because they lost the balance of the slippery floor. So hold your camera tightly!

The view on the way to Goa (Cave) Lalay

The river beside the pathway to Goa Lalay, Sawarna

The entrance of Goa Lalay, Sawarna

Inside Goa Lalay, Sawarna

Inside Goa Lalay, Sawarna

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After we had lunch provided with the local people (which was nice!) back in the village; Ardi, the leader of BackpackSeru, said that we had some free time before we caught the sunset.

Guess what, there’s a beach near the village! How nice was that!

Walking to Ciantir beach, Sawarna from the guesthouse

So myself and other friends decided to spend the free time at that beach. Apparently the name of the beach is Ciantir beach; the beach that we saw from the cliff when we watched the sunrise!

The beach was soooo quite … I think there were only us and some of the food seller on the beach.

Don’t ask me how hot was there in the afternoon, but … we still managed to spend some time there to take plenty of pictures, and just play around (according to Lidya, we spent about 1 – 2 hours there! Geez! Haha).

Ciantir beach, Sawarna

Another look of Ciantir beach, Sawarna

The food seller in Ciantir beach, Sawarna

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The place to see the sunset was in Karang Taraje (Karang is ‘reef’).

The location was a bit far from the guest house, that’s why we used the car. If I’m not mistaken we passed this place on our way to the Sawarna village.

The place was so beautiful plus the tide was low so we could see some of the coral reef that was usually hidden under the water, and most of it was covered with sea weed.

Other nice thing of Karang Taraje was there was plenty of big coral on the beach with unique shape!

The coral reef in Karang Taraje beach, Sawarna

Karang Taraje beach, Sawarna

Another view of the coral reef in Karang Taraje beach, Sawarna

The sunset plus the sea and the coral covered with the seaweed produces beautiful colour during the sunset. That’s why I decided to include the photo of the sunset during the photo tournament a while back. The photo here is a bit different from the one that I submitted to that photo tournament. I took this in a different angle 🙂

Sunset in Karang Taraje, Sawarna

Another view of sunset in Karang Taraje, Sawarna

Related articles

• Ethereal Sawarna: (simplywander.wordpress.com) … This is Lidya’s blog, please also visit her blog and encourage her to finish the story 😉