Gili Air

It wasn’t a surprise that the 3 hour taxi and boat ride in fact took 6 hours, but we eventually arrived on Gili Air, one of the three tiny islands off Lombok.

Almost immediately after walking onto Gili Air, we spotted a dive shop so of course went in to enquire. The next day’s dive site was Shark Point so without much hesitation we booked on to a fun dive. We then walked to check in to our accommodation, a small bungalow in the centre of Gili Air. The island is not very big at all, taking 25 minutes to walk across with a population of only 1800 people. There are no cars or motorbikes on the island, just bicycles or horse and carriage to get around. Therefore infrastructure is very limited with mostly dirt tracks and a few paved paths.

After checking in to our accommodation, we hired out bicycles to explore the island. It took us about 45 minutes to cycle around the whole island. We say cycle, it was more like half ride and half walk as some of the paths were just sand making it impossible to cycle. We later discovered that the paved paths and dirt tracks run through the island so have now stuck to those.

The following day, we had an early morning for diving. We got kitted up and left for Shark Point with four of us in total. Our guide Jay was really nice, but we could not believe he was born on the island and has only ever lived on Gili Air! He now has a family but it’s just crazy to think how he’s always lived on this small island. After arriving at our diving spot, we had a quick descent straight down to 30m to discover a ship wreck and within minutes spotted a white tipped reef shark. 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 too far away. Just as well these are not aggressive sharks, at least not with us around. Further up the reef we swam over a coral to find a large sea turtle beneath so stopped 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. All in all a fantastic dive reaching a depth of 30m, seeing four sharks, three sea turtles, a ship wreck and of course a huge range of fish and coral. That was our 12th dive. This time we did borrow a waterproof case for the GoPro and were able to get some footage of the sharks and turtles. Unfortunately this was a cheap case and started to mist up soon into the dive so the photos are not great.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent relaxing on the beach with the most amazing white sand and light, turquoise sea. Gili Air is less busy than its neighbours so despite the beautiful beaches, they are nice and quiet, almost like a deserted island at times. The evening was spent enjoying dinner and cocktails whilst watching the sunset over the adjacent island Gili Meno and Mt Agung on Bali on the horizon. We finished with churros for dessert (one of Jess’ favourites) at a Spanish themed bar.Okumaya devam et