Day 8: Snorkelling on Gili T

Today was the day of our snorkelling trip! We had our hotel breakfast and I sorted out washing, then we headed off down the street to the jetty for the 10:30 launch time. We arrived with 5 minutes to spare, though I was a little dismayed to see how many people were being loaded on to the boat.

It wasn't dangerously overcrowded or anything, just a lot of people to be hopping into the water with! We cruised out to a spot about halfway between Gili T and Gili Mano (there are three Gili islands of which Trawangan is the westernmost), stopped the boat and hopped out into moderately shallow water (probably 5 meters or so).

Not a huge amount of coral but quite a few tropical fish around, some quite large. I'm absolutely hopeless with fish names but most of the tropical fish I recognised from places like Fiji and the Great Barrier Reef. Convictfish, yellow & white striped fish, some rainbow coloured ones etc.

After about half an hour we got back in the boat (the process of clambering up the ladder one-by-one seemed to take more time than we were actually in the water) and motored off to the north of Gili Mano (the central island of the three), at a place called "Turtle Heaven".

Here we all had to stick together following the guide, and it was a bit difficult as the group was probably 60-ish people with varying levels of swimming ability (and dare I say varying levels of water etiquette as well). The water here was very deep, probably at least 50m, but we very soon spotted a small turtle swimming lazily away from the group.

Rather than follow we headed a different direction to some shallower water (probably closer to 15m), and sure enough the was a sandy bed where one turtle was resting and another swam up soon afterwards. Not too many decent photos unfortunately as they were quite deep and there was a group of scuba divers nearby, though I did manage to hurt my ears diving down for a better look!

Drifting away again we found some quite shallow water, this time about 5 metres, and another turtle soon showed up! This guy was much closer and content to just swim around a little and then scrabble around the bottom, eating corals or whatever it is they do. Again the large group proved problematic as the turtle was constantly surrounded like an A-lister at a Hollywood function, and a couple of idiots reached out and gave it a pat!! I hate sounding like a grumpy old bastard, but when you're constantly being told "don't touch the turtles", it takes a serious amount of either arrogance or stupidity (or both I guess) to ignore them. I kind of wish those people had been bitten by the turtle - apparently their jaws are easily strong enough to sever a finger!

Back to the boat for our last stop, in the channel to the south of Gili Air (the easternmost island). Fairly shallow water again and some nice coral, but I didn't think the marine life here was that great - especially after the high of seeing turtles at the previous stop. The water was also a bit choppier too which didn't help.

Following this stop we had lunch at a beach restaurant on Gili Air, then a 30 minute bouncy boat ride back to Gili T. We took it pretty easy for the rest of the day - a lazy swim in the hotel pool, caught up on some internet over afternoon tea at the hotel's beach bar, dinner at a small place just down the street from our hotel. Once again the waiters offered me drugs (weed this time) and asked where we were partying tonight etc. The law has definitely taken a back seat here, some hotels even openly advertise mushrooms on their streetfront signage!

Over dinner we decided to stay an extra night here which was a little more expensive but we think worth it. It's just such a chilled out place - no motorbikes or taxis honking, everywhere's within walking distance, and the beach is right out the front of our hotel. The only real noise is the clop-rumble of horse & carts, and from the mosque a few hundred metres away; the muezzin is belting out his songs as I type!Read more