Gili Air

No surprise that the 3 hour taxi and boat ride took 6 hours but we arrived on Gili Air, one of the three tiny islands off Lombok. There are no cars or motorbikes here, just bicycles or horse and carriage to get around. A walk from one side to the other takes no more 30 mins.

Straight of the ferry port we saw a dive shop so of course went in to enquire about doing a fun dive. The next days dive site was Shark Point. Needless to say we were sold so booked onto that. We then walked and checked into our accommodation, a small bungalow in the centre of Gili Air. Later on we borrowed bicycles to explore and ended up going all the way around the outside in no time at all.

An early morning next for diving. We got kitted up and left for Shark Point with four of us in total. A quick descent straight down to 30m to discover the ship wreck and within minutes the first white tipped reef shark was in sight. It wasn’t big, maybe 2m long but laying on the ground quite peacefully. Another few minutes later and a shoal of fish appeared with another white tipped shark just casually laying on the sand bed beneath. There was a mild current so we turned and began a slow ascent up the reef only to spot a third shark, this time swimming around not to far away. Don’t worry, these are not aggressive sharks, at least not with us around. Further up the reef I swam over a coral only to find a large sea turtle beneath so stoped to say hi. Bright coral and tropical fish lined the reef with a fourth shark this time hiding underneath a rock similar to the sea turtle. In all a great dive seeing four sharks, three sea turtles a ship wreck and of course a huge range of fish and coral. We both said this will be a new holiday hobby of ours from now on!

Later that afternoon was spend relaxing on the beach with the most amazing white sand and light turquoise sea. Gili Air is less busy than it’s neighbours so despite the beautiful beaches, they are nice and quiet almost like a deserted island at times. The evening was spend enjoying dinner and cocktails whilst watching the sunset over the adjacent island Gili Meno and Mt Agung all the way over on Bali finished with churros for dessert, one of Jess’ favourites, at a Spanish bar.

The following morning we had booked onto a snorkelling trip which consisted of four spots around the Gili Islands with lunch in between. Forgetting their names, the first spot was a deep reef. Not too much here but we did spot more sea turtles. The second spot was the Gili Meno statues, an underwater sculpture of 48 humans arranged in a circle made from casts of real people apparently. We knew this was best visited early morning but we hit peak time annoyingly. Nevertheless it was a interesting to see amongst the snorkelling crowd. The next spot was absolutely full of sea turtles in the shallow waters eating sea grass just off the shore. We swam up close with loads of them who seamed not to be bothered by us. Afterwards we stopped for lunch on Gili Meno and looking into the clear blue water could see at least 20 turtles around us just munching away - difficult to see but look at the last photo. The last stop was another shallow reef although this one had lots of tiny jellyfish around. I managed to avoid them all but others didn’t including Jess who got a few small stings although as you can imagine she wasn’t dramatic at all (I’m surprised the white tipped sharks didn’t pay a visit with all that surface thrashing). Needless to say Jess did survive the ordeal and soon forgot about them.

We’re currently enjoying another sunset dinner with cocktails and live music by a beachfront fire.

Snorkelling and diving photos/ videos to follow.Read more