Nusa Penida's most photographed cliff looks uncannily like a crouching Tyrannosaurus rex — a 180-metre wall of green-topped limestone that curls around a white-sand cove, its jaw dipped toward the sea. Locals named the headland Kelingking, meaning "little finger," but online it is simply the T-Rex. It anchors a rugged island just across the Badung Strait from Bali, where the mainland's gentle rice terraces give way to sheer karst cliffs and pale coves that are hard to reach. Along the coast stand its other landmarks: Broken Beach, where a collapsed sea cave leaves a stone arch over a round bay; the tide-fed rock pool of Angel's Billabong; and the sea-stack beaches of Atuh and Diamond. For centuries this was Bali's feared island — a place of exile and dark magic, home in legend to the demon lord Ratu Gede Mecaling, and still a pilgrimage site at the sacred temple of Pura Dalem Ped.
The island makes you work for its rewards. Reaching Kelingking's beach means a steep, rope-assisted scramble down the dinosaur's spine, and the inland dirt roads are rough and slow. But the sea is the real prize. Nutrient-rich currents feed some of Indonesia's finest reefs, protected since 2010 as a marine reserve within the Coral Triangle. Reef manta rays glide year-round at Manta Point, and from July to October a cold upwelling draws the strange, disc-shaped ocean sunfish — the mola mola — up from the deep to Crystal Bay. Onshore, the whole island doubles as a community-run sanctuary for the critically endangered Bali starling. Once a remote outpost few visited, Nusa Penida is now a fast-boat hop from Bali, and its clifftop viewpoints can fill by mid-morning — arrive early, and the coast feels as wild as it looks.