One final island hop in Indonesia
Trip Start
Sep 24, 2009
1
23
69
Trip End
Apr 30, 2010
Gili Air, Lombok, Nusa Tenggara Barat, Indonesia
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
We had arranged a shuttle bus/boat ride to Gili Air, which in theory, meant that we were picked up from the hotel in a bus, taken on a 45 minute ride up near the northern end of Lombok to Bangsal, form where we had a 'special boat’ to take up us Gili Air. We would be picked up by 8.30, and should be sitting on the beach in Gili Air by 10am – or so we were promised.
The first part went according to plan, but it turns out that our ‘special boat’ was really just the ‘public boat’. That in itself isn’t a problem (in spite of the boat being overcrowded, and packed solid with baskets of vegetables, etc) – but public boats don’t leave until they are full. This means you have to wait around until they sell enough tickets. Again, not really a problem, and to be fair, I think we only waited ½ hour or so – but it’s not quite the deal that we were sold. Oh well – I guess we DID talk them into knocking 30% off the published price.
Gili Air is only 3.5km (I think) from Lombok, so once we got going, we were there pretty quickly. It didn’t take us long to find a decent place (cheap rooms with a swimming pool!) – and we were in the pool by 11am or so, just an hour later than promised.
Gili Air is a bit more basic than Gili Trawangan, more quiet and laid back, and not quite so many tourists there. We chilled out for the afternoon and snorkelled off the beach.
Turtles, fish and eels
Alan was keen to see a bird sanctuary on Gili Meno the next day (to take photographs). We decided to treat ourselves and charter a glass-bottomed boat to take us snorkelling for the day. The plan was for the boat to take us to Gili Meno (the middle island) and drop Alan off to see the bird farm. While he did that, the boat was going to take me for the first snorkel of the day.
Snorkelling was awesome! First I saw a large turtle happily swimming along about 3m below me. I quietly stalked him for quite awhile until he decided he had enough and skipped over the edge into deeper water. What a sight!
A few minutes later I came across this particularly large and colourful fish – I’m guessing he was about 60-70cm long - and I watched him for ages as he methodically ripped out large chunks of coral and tossed it aside. Lots of smaller fish would move in to see what goodies had been unearthed. It was fascinating to watch! For a finale, I swam over a huge moray eel that was poking his head out from under some rocks.
We went back to get Alan and continued on with some more snorkelling on the other side of Gili Air. We came across another 4-5 turtles swimming just below us, including a big granddaddy turtle.
After stopping for lunch on Gili Trawangan, we headed back to Gili Air to do another couple of snorkel drops off of Gili Air. All in all it was a really successful day, and it was quite nice to have our own personal boat to take us where we wanted to go!
Movie time
Alan had bought a couple of cheap DVD’s on Lombok, so we asked the hotel people if we would be able to borrow their TV / DVD player in the restaurant that evening if no one else was around. They did one better than that – they grabbed a DVD player out of one of the more expensive rooms and set it up for us in our room. So Alan grabbed a beer and some chips and enjoyed a movie night! There's nothing quite like watching a wide-screen movie on a 14inch TV! :-/
Onward to Bali
We had arranged another shuttle to take us back to Bali. We travelled by boat from Gili Air back to Bangsal, in Lombok. Then a small bus took us to Lembar, at the southern end of Lombok. From Lembar, we caught a ferry to Padangbai in Bali – about a 4-5 hour ride. This is where I am writing this now. It’s a huge car ferry and the journey is slow. But there is a good strong breeze which means it’s very comfortable. It’s a good opportunity to catch up on the blog and to do some more reading!
