The Nusa Islands are three small islands off the southeast coast of Bali, known for their incredible cliff views and stunning beaches (it's like Uluwatu on st*roids), as well as swimming with manta rays! They're part of Bali and are made up of Nusa Lembongan, Nusa Ceningan and Nusa Penida. Nusa means island/archipelago in Indonesian. They are so much faster to get to than The Gili Islands (20-40 minutes), and in our opinion way better.

Nusa Lembongan is the most built up of the Nusa Islands, so it's the best in terms of access to amenities. Most people go to here, and then visit Nusa Ceningan via the Yellow Bridge, and do a day trip to Nusa Penida (we recommend at least 2 days). There's a lot of really nice beaches, beach clubs, cliff edge views, good restaurants and cafes, etc. Nusa Lembongan is also home to Devil's Tears! But be very careful visiting this as it is very dangerous! You can also take a boat from here to snorkel with manta rays! (or do that from Nusa Penida)

Nusa Ceningan is great for a day trip from Nusa Lembongan! You can only access it via bike across the Yellow Bridge, but it has some really cool stuff like the Blue Lagoon and Mahana Point cliff jump.

Nusa Penida is by far the largest of the 3 islands and has a lot to see, but each thing is quite far away from each other - it's great if you like driving around and adventuring like we do, which is why we spent a few days there. It kind of reminded us of the Jurassic Coast in the UK if you've ever been, but more tropical! It has crazy high cliffedge landscapes on the south side and flat lovely beaches on the north side. It's where the infamous Kelingking Beach is, as well as Angel's Billabong, Devil's Billabong, Diamond Beach, Broken Beach, etc. - too much to see in one day! One of the other main attractions is that you can go snorkelling with manta rays! (we didn't see any though 😂 which was apparently very unlucky)

You can't possibly do everything in a day, but you might also get a bit worn out from all the adventuring after a couple of days, so it's probably only worth spending 2-3 days on Nusa Penida.

Pro Tip: be very very careful on the roads if you rent a scooter there, they're mostly ok but do have some huge potholes, and at some point on the south side we ended up on an absolutely crazy road - not sure if you could even call it a road - and it was pretty difficult! People warned us before, and we'd been on some quite rough ones, so we thought we'd already experienced it, but it only got worse! 😂 so they start getting bad, maybe just take a different route!

Pro Pro Tip for all the Nusa Islands, take enough cash as ATMs are limited.