Sloth Journeys

Richard was going to write this post, but he wasn’t feeling very inspired, so you’ve got me again!

After Senggigi being underwhelming, we had high hopes for Gili Air. We’d been promised coral reefs right off the beach offering excellent snorkeling with no need to take any boat trips, which sounded good to us! We’d also read there were also no motorised vehicles allowed on the Gilis either, which was another tick!

So it was that we headed off to the port to get the ferry to the island. Our Homestay in Senggigi had arranged the transfer including a little shuttle bus to the post and the ferry ticket included. There are two options to cross to the island, the public ferry costing about 80p each, or the ‘fast ferry’ coding about £4 each. Our transfer included the public ferry. Thankfully I’d read to ignore the touts at the port who’ll try and tell you the public ferry only goes when full (true) and that that could be 1-2 hours wait (total rubbish!), so we stood out ground, ignored the suggestions to upgrade and promptly got on the public ferry about 15 mins later and we were off! Also bearing in mind this public ferry only takes about 15 mins to cross to the island, I’m not sure how much time saving you’d get with the ‘fast ferry’!

So we made it to the island and after a sweaty 20 mins walk located our accommodation. Another calm little oasis away from the main hubbub (if such could be said to exist on Gili Air!).

Unfortunately, just as I was starting to feel better from my ‘plane flu’ Richard was starting to succumb. So on our first full day only I went snorkeling. Thankfully, the blogs had been right, and even better, our accommodation was located just a few minutes walk from the reportedly best point on the island for snorkeling! The water was beautifully clear, warm and with very little current, and the reef with dozens of different types of tropical fish, just a couple of minutes easy paddle off the beach. It couldn’t have been easier. In fact, a bit too easy as I spent a bit too long bobbing about and got slightly sunburnt on the back of my legs! Thankfully nothing too bad though, I just had to be a little more careful or snorkeling the following day.

Gili Air itself, is one of 3 Gilis (or islands) located just off the northwest corner of Lombok, with one of them, Gili Trawangan being the party island, Gili Meno being the really quiet one and Gili Air the Goldilocks island. I must admit, whilst there were loads and loads of beach bars all around the island (it only takes about 1-2 hours to stroll all the way around it’s that small!), they were all really quiet. We are here at the end of the dry season, but even so, we couldn’t believe how quiet it was (which suited us but probably less so the owners!).

Thankfully Richard felt a little better the next day and was also able to enjoy some snorkeling, given it was the reason we’d headed here. Apparently it’s also pretty easy to spot turtles, and I suspect if we’d headed a little further round (we could see if the distance a spot where the tour boats seemed to anchor just beyond the reef drop-off) we would have possibly spotted some, but Richard didn’t have the energy to walk much further and the current was stronger on day 2 (and thankfully we’d swum with lots of turtles in the Galapagos last year) and so we satisfied ourselves with the array of neon and rainbow fish (something that there has not been nearly so many of in South America).

Other than the snorkelling we essentially just potted around the island, having a beer here or there and a bite to eat and generally relaxing.

I could quite happily have spent another couple of days doing more of the same, but we only have 3 weeks this time, and culture was callIng, and so, after a chilled could of days, we started our journey back to the Island of Java, for the remainder of our trip.