Nusa Penida’s Remarkable Clifftop Escape

After a private car up a goat track of a road through rubbish-strewn scrub on Nusa Penida, you arrive somewhere that has no right to exist this well.

From Toya Pakeh harbour on Nusa Penida, arrange a private car and driver before leaving Bali. Have your guide meet you at the jetty — because getting to Amarta Penida is very much part of the experience.

The road climbs through the island on narrow, winding bitumen punctuated by enormous potholes. Progress occasionally slows to walking pace as your driver picks a path through broken road surfaces, pulling aside where necessary to squeeze past oncoming vehicles.

It’s not particularly pretty either. Plastic waste is scattered heavily through sections of the dry roadside scrub, an uncomfortable reminder that Nusa Penida’s rapid tourism growth hasn’t always been matched by infrastructure. Then you reach Amarta Penida.

High on the clifftop, the whitewashed property feels part Mediterranean resort, part private island escape, with infinity pools stepping down through terraces towards the Badung Strait. The contrast with the journey you’ve just completed is extraordinary.

At the cliff edge stands Amarta’s own candi bentar, the traditional split gate familiar from Balinese temple architecture. If you’ve seen photographs of Pura Lempuyang’s famous Gate of Heaven framing Mount Agung, you’ll recognise the form immediately. But here there’s no queue. Instead, the gate frames sea and sky, with Mount Agung rising across the strait on mainland Bali. It’s one of the property’s great surprises and an exceptional place to simply stop for a while.

Lunch happens on the shaded upper terraces overlooking the pools and ocean. The menu wanders happily between Mediterranean comfort food and Balinese cooking: pizza and bruschetta alongside seafood salad, turmeric prawns, Ayam Bakar and nasi goreng. French Champagne, Australian cool-climate wines, cocktails and mocktails complete a drinks list far more substantial than you might expect this far across the island.

Then there’s the price. Amarta feels considerably more expensive than it actually is.

Families drift between lunch and the pools, couples settle beside the rail with Champagne and strangers meet over cocktails at the bar. There’s little pressure to do anything particularly quickly — which is precisely the point.

After 30 years of travel writing across Australia and the world, Amarta Penida is one to remember. Not simply because the view is spectacular, but because it produces that increasingly rare commodity on a busy holiday: an afternoon you don’t want to end.

Getting there

Fast boats run from Sanur to Nusa Penida. Arrange a private driver to meet you at Toya Pakeh jetty rather than relying on a shared vehicle, particularly if Amarta is your principal destination. The road requires patience and someone familiar with local conditions.

Aim to arrive around noon, wear swim clothes under something light and leave the afternoon free.
The journey in may have you wondering where on earth you’re going.
The journey out explains why you went.