This ferry port at Bali's westernmost tip-88 km from Singaraja and 134 km from Denpasar-links Bali with East Java across a narrow strait, Selat Bali. Looming up purple through the haze to the west are three of Java's most easterly volcanoes. Much of Bali's imports and exports, and most its domestic tourists, pass through this point.

Except as an around-the-clock ferry terminus, Gilimanuk has little to offer tourists, who usually alight the ferry or landing barges from Java and shoot straight to Denpasar or Lovina. But with its basic no frills services and amenities, Gilimanuk ia a friendly little town for stopovers, for resting up.

The strait that separates Java and Bali, less than three km wide and only 60 meters in depth is said to have been formed by some mythical king who, hoping to excommunicate his son, gouged a line with his finger along the ground. Then the earth parted and the waters of the Indian Ocean and the Java Sea rushed in, separating Bali from Java.

It was an easy matter for neolithic humans hunting in the primeval wlideMess of East Java to cross this narrow strait. During WVV II, stone adzes and pottery fragments were discovered just two km south of Gilimanuk at Cekik. Over time, about 100 burial places were excavated-containing funerary objects, simple tools, earthenware ves sels, and sacrificed animals-demonstrating that this was Bali's earliest human settlement discovered to date. See these neolithic artifacts in the Bali Museum in Denpasar, the Archaeological Museum in Pejeng, the archaeological project at Sanglah, and at Gilimanuk's Museum of Ancient Life north of the Bay of Gilimanuk.

Gilimanuk shows a greater influence from Islamic Java than other parts of Bali. In fact, it was
from Java that Balinese revolutionaries derived their material and ideological sustenance in their
fight to oust the Dutch. In Cekik a war memoria commemorates landing operations by the Indonesian army, navy, and police on Bali from April to July.1946. Boarding a large number of outrigger canoes under cover of darkness, Indonesian irregular troops set off from Banyuwangi in East Java and landed at three points-Malaya, Candikusama, and Cupel-along Bali's southwest coast. The republic's first sea conflict took place during these operations, and fierce land battles erupted as the Indonesians came ashore. Many lost their lives. The sur vivors fled to the hills, where they joined units
from earlier landings and engaged in guerrilla warfare.

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