Day 49: Gili Air
We woke up really early this morning to figure out what we wanted to do, and managed to arrange tickets on a boat to go to our next destination: Gili Air. The one hour boat ride was really rocky and Rachna felt a bit sick along the way, but we made it there in one piece!
Gili Air is the smallest of three islands off the island of Lombok, Indonesia. You can walk the perimeter of the island in about an hour and a half – it’s that small! When we reached the island, we took the only transport available – horse and carriage (no gas or electric transport) – around to look for a room. Unfortunately, the poor horse we got had had about enough of his job and the ride was like a little nightmare, with him freaking out regularly, kicking his back legs up (and hitting the carriage), and sometimes running off, even when the driver was trying to stop him. When we finally chose a place (after having seen many, many places), we started unloading from the carriage when the horse pulled forward right when Rachna had one leg in and one leg out of the carriage. Needless to say, she fell flat on her back on the sand path. Then, as we grabbed the last of the luggage, the horse shifted backwards and would have run over Gaurav if Rachna’s suitcase hadn’t acted as a buffer. Not much fun!
We checked into our bungalow, which was on the quieter and more non-touristy side of the island (thank goodness!), and headed right to the beach to go snorkeling. The snorkeling was pretty good. We saw quite a few different kinds of fish and sea creatures, but the highlight was seeing a turtle just hanging out underneath us in the water! Amazing!
After our snorkeling expedition, the tides receded so that the entire coral was exposed! Apparently, every morning, the tide is high, and then it slowly recedes until the evening, when the water almost completely disappears, exposing all of the coral along the shore. That’s when some of the locals come out to walk on the coral to collect fish and other sea creatures that got stuck in the shallow coral. It was a pretty amazing sight to see that the water we had just snorkeled in was all gone!
We walked along the beach and went to “town” on the South side to have some dinner, and then walked back to our bungalow and hung out on our side of the beach with our bungalow staff (mainly kids our age who live the island life) before heading off to bed. We also decided to stay here another night because we really like it here!
We woke up really early this morning to figure out what we wanted to do, and managed to arrange tickets on a boat to go to our next destination: Gili Air. The one hour boat ride was really rocky and Rachna felt a bit sick along the way, but we made it there in one piece!
Gili Air is the smallest of three islands off the island of Lombok, Indonesia. You can walk the perimeter of the island in about an hour and a half – it’s that small! When we reached the island, we took the only transport available – horse and carriage (no gas or electric transport) – around to look for a room. Unfortunately, the poor horse we got had had about enough of his job and the ride was like a little nightmare, with him freaking out regularly, kicking his back legs up (and hitting the carriage), and sometimes running off, even when the driver was trying to stop him. When we finally chose a place (after having seen many, many places), we started unloading from the carriage when the horse pulled forward right when Rachna had one leg in and one leg out of the carriage. Needless to say, she fell flat on her back on the sand path. Then, as we grabbed the last of the luggage, the horse shifted backwards and would have run over Gaurav if Rachna’s suitcase hadn’t acted as a buffer. Not much fun!
We checked into our bungalow, which was on the quieter and more non-touristy side of the island (thank goodness!), and headed right to the beach to go snorkeling. The snorkeling was pretty good. We saw quite a few different kinds of fish and sea creatures, but the highlight was seeing a turtle just hanging out underneath us in the water! Amazing!
After our snorkeling expedition, the tides receded so that the entire coral was exposed! Apparently, every morning, the tide is high, and then it slowly recedes until the evening, when the water almost completely disappears, exposing all of the coral along the shore. That’s when some of the locals come out to walk on the coral to collect fish and other sea creatures that got stuck in the shallow coral. It was a pretty amazing sight to see that the water we had just snorkeled in was all gone!
We walked along the beach and went to “town” on the South side to have some dinner, and then walked back to our bungalow and hung out on our side of the beach with our bungalow staff (mainly kids our age who live the island life) before heading off to bed. We also decided to stay here another night because we really like it here!
Starfish!
Evening search for fish on the exposed coral
Boats at sunset
No comments:
Post a Comment