How to Swim With the Dolphins at Sunrise in Lovina, Bali
The only way you can swim with the dolphins in Bali is by taking a sunrise boat tour that departs from Lovina, a small town on Bali’s Northern Shore. Lovina has capitalized on its natural dolphin population and every morning dozens of tourist boats depart to watch pods of dolphins embark on their morning feeding migration – The only word to describe watching these dolphin migrations is magical.
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✔️ Lovina Quick Guide
🐬 Best Tour: The best tour of Lovina is this one that includes transport anywhere to/from Bali.
🛵 How to Get There: You cannot take Grab or Gojek to Lovina. To get there, you can arrange a tour that includes a private driver or rent a scooter and drive yourself.
📍Where is Lovina Located? Lovina is located on Bali’s northernmost shore, around a 3.5-4-hour drive from central Bali.
⏰ Time: All dolphin tours are for sunrise, and boats set off at 5 AM – So most Lovina tours are 2-day/1-night.
💰 Cost: You can take an ultra-cheap group tour for as little as $10 per person, or a private boat tour that includes transportation to/from Lovina for $50 per person.
🐬 The Best Dolphin Tour
I recommend this tour which includes transportation from anywhere in Bali to Lovina, as well as add-on activities and budget options.
All About Swimming With The Dolphins In Bali
Swimming with the wild dolphins is hands down the BEST thing I have done on Bali mainland. Positioned on Bali’s North Shore, Lovina still has untouched-paradise vibes, which is a welcome change from the much over-touristed Southern Bali beaches. In typical unhinged Bali fashion, you’re not just watching the dolphins from above the water, but the locals have rigged swings to the sides of all of the fishing boats that take tourists out. From the swing, you get to dunk your head under the water and watch the pods of dolphins as they swim and play – It’s an insane experience.
The North Shore is the only place in Bali where you can see dolphins in their natural habitat – All over Bali, you might see “dolphin tours” advertised, but they’re always taking you to Lovina. Due to the remote location of Lovina, all the way on Bali’s north shore, going on a dolphin-watching tour is touristy but in no way the tourist circus some southern locations, like the Ubud Monkey Forest, has become.
That being said, if you want to make sure you have the best time possible on your Lovina Dolphin Watching tour, you really have to take a private boat. If you take a private tour they will put in a little bit more effort to go off on their own, away from the main group. I don’t usually advocate for private tours – In fact, I think group tours are a great way to meet people while traveling, but the dolphin tour in Lovina is an exception! Every morning dozens of tourist boats set off, and 90% of them all follow the same pod of dolphins – This isn’t good for the tourists, or the dolphins, to crowd the animals like that. It doesn’t cost much to upgrade from a group tour to a private boat, in fact, the price of things ranging from meals to tours, and hotels, in Lovina is downright reasonable compared to Southern Bali.
💰 Cost of Hiring A Boat: For the ultra-budget group tours, you can snag a spot for around $10. If you hail a boat from the beach, you might be able to get a private boat for as little as $30 per person, (but no guarantee what kind of quality you’ll get), and the nicest tours, like the one I linked in this post, are around $50-$70 and include AC car transfer from anywhere in Bali.
The Best Lovina Dolphin Tour
You really need to take a private tour to see the dolphins in Lovina – The tour I’m linking includes transport from anywhere in Bali, a private tour in Lovina, and the option to add on Aling Aling Waterfall.
How To Get To Lovina: The North Shore of Bali
🛵 Via Scooter
We drove scooters to Lovina from Kuta, it said the drive would be less than 3 hours, but typical of Bali overland travel, this was an extremely “optimistic” estimation. In reality, it was more like 5 – not including the problems we encountered like bad weather and having one of our scooters break down. After we made it past two hours of snaking through Kuta and Denpasar’s insane traffic, we had to deal with the ascent through the mountainous region of Munduk. I was happy I had insisted on taking individual scooters for this part because it was pretty much over an hour of driving straight up into the mountains. As it got colder, and later in the day, the engine on my friend’s scooter overheated and we had to abandon it (not the best move!), so we could make it to Lovina that night.
The scooter wound up being reported as abandoned by the local government, and we went through a magical adventure through Bali’s bureaucracy to get it back. Getting our scooter back from the local gov in Munduk took like, 5 hours, no joke, so then we found ourselves driving in the dark, rain, and fog through the freezing mountainous region of Bali – it’s always an adventure! The moral of the story is don’t take driving scooters over long distances in Bali lightly, it feels like something always goes wrong 😂.
🚗 Via Private Driver & Tour
If you care about your comfort at all, you’ll want to take a car to Lovina instead of a scooter. This is because you have to drive through the Munduk mountainous region to get there, and it’s FREEZING up there (!!!). You can hire a private driver in Bali to take you to Lovina and go on a tour of North Bali on the way there, this is the smartest use of your time.
Note: Grab/Gojek (the main taxi apps in Bali) don’t work with long distances, so you’ll have to arrange a driver independently.
Perfect 2-Day North Bali & Lovina Itinerary
Day 1 – Drive to Lovina
- 8 AM – Depart for Lovina
- Jatiluweh Rice Terraces
- Leke Leke Waterfall
- Late Lunch at Munduk Twin Lakes Viewpoint
- Arrive at Lovina & Stay Overnight
Day 2 – Lovina & Drive Back
- 6 AM Dolphin Tour
- Lunch in Lovina
- Aling Aling Waterfall
- Arrive back in Central/South Bali
My Top Tips For Swimming With The Dolphins In Bali At Lovina Beach
✅ Take a Private Tour!
I don’t usually recommend private tours, and I’m aware that many people coming to Bali are young travelers on a budget – However, you really NEED to upgrade to the private tour to see the Dolphins in Lovina. Trust me on this. If there’s nothing else you take from this article – take the private tour! The reason it’s so important to take a private tour to see the Dolphins in Lovina is two-fold: 1) The group tours all go together, when you set out you’ll see a mass of tourist boats chasing the dolphin pods (which is bad for the animals!), and 2) There are only two swings per boat, and you’re not gonna want to take turns!
Yes, you can see the dolphins on the deck of the boat when they jump out of the water, but in our 4-hour+ tour, we only saw the dolphins jump around 2 times. The way to really see the Dolphins in Lovina is by hanging off the swing on the side of the boat, and there are only two swings per boat. Because these are wild animals, we weren’t always with the dolphins – In fact, I’d say the first hour or so of our tour was our boat driver trying to find the dolphins, but then once we did we had about a good half-hour in the water with them.
✅ Know You Need Some Grip Strength for the Swing
It wasn’t difficult per se, to stay on the swing as the boat was moving – I was actually able to do it with one hand! (Because I was using my other hand to take GoPro photos for this article!). But you do need some grip strength. The swings are used while the boat is moving, this surprised some people – the reason for this is because the dolphins are always moving on their morning feeding migration, so the boat has to be too!
Are Lovina Dolphin Watching Tours Ethical?
It can be argued that no animal-encounter tour is truly ethical. There are some things I’ve done in Bali, like swimming with the Whale Sharks in Komodo National Park, where they were feeding the animals, and that always makes you think of the ethics of the activity you are participating in. Swimming with the dolphins at Lovina Beach on a dolphin-watching tour occupies a grey area, in my personal opinion.
The dolphins at Lovina are neither caged nor fed, and instead, tourists are observing their natural daily migrations to their food source in the wild. Are the animals caged, harmed, or controlled in any sort of way? No, these are natural animal encounters in their environment. Do people kinda annoy these wild animals while they’re going about their business? Yeah, probably – You’re not actively harming these animals in any way, but you are intruding into their environment.
The question of ethics becomes more complicated though when you factor into the equation that dolphin tourism is pretty much the main economy in Lovina for the locals. I think taking a private dolphin tour that branched off from the big crowd (spreading out the tourism is important), didn’t stress the animals out too much. I’ve read that dolphins are social animals, but I’m not in any way a marine biologist or dolphin expert. In the end, What you’re comfortable with is a personal decision.
Short Guide To Lovina
🍔 Where To Eat
- Cafe Greco: Some of the best Western Food we had in North Bali! They made fantastic coffees as well.
- Warung Ayu: FANTASTIC Indonesian food at really reasonable prices.
🏨 Where To Stay
- $$$ Luxury – The Lovina Bali Resort: Hands-down the nicest resort in Lovina, 4-stars and located directly on the beach.
- $$ Budget – Grand Raka Homestay: This affordable hotel is right next to the beach, all rooms have AC, Netflix, Wifi, etc.
- $ Hostel – Lovina Central Hostel: Lovina doesn’t have a huge backpacker scene because it’s tiny, but this is the most popular hostel in the area.
