We’ve finally made it to our final destination Gili Air. I learned to dive here 5 years ago, and had a very high opinion of the experience.
It took a rather long bus ride to the fast boats, and then two hours on a fast boat from Bali to the Island, with a short stop on Lombok. The Gili Islands are 3 islands off the coast of Lombok, and consist of Gili Trawangan (backpacker party island), Gili Meno (Very laid back, perhaps for the grey hairs, yeah I have a few) and Gili Air, which sits between the two of them as far as population and liveliness.
The Gili Islands (Indonesian: Tiga Gili [Three Gilis], Kepulauan Gili [Gili Islands]) are an archipelago of three small islands — Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air — just off the northwest coast of Lombok, Indonesia.
We’re staying at the spot I learned to dive, it’s called Oceans 5 Dive Resort. When I was here in the past, there were no bungalows for sleeping, so I stayed on the other side of the island. Interestingly, there are no motor vehicles, dogs or roosters (They get you up on Bali) on the islands, so you get around by foot, bicycle or horse drawn taxi. It is so unbelievably quiet here at night, I love it. Hearing the ocean without any other noise pollution is quite peaceful.
We had a great dinner on the beach at a BBQ place. There are not a lot of food choices, basically chicken and fish and done on a grill. It’s all very fresh and the environment cannot be beaten. We ate under a straw roof in a beach side cabana, I remembered these nights from 5 years ago quite fondly. I think the last time I ate in one I ordered a couple of buckets of mojitos, and unlike Canada, they actually filled the buckets and used copious amounts of alcohol.
The plan for day 1 was for me to do my SCUBA refresher course and get a couple of ocean dives in. Theresa will start her open water certification on Sunday, it’s basically 3 full days of “school” for her. There are no babysitters on the island, so we have to trade off who dives when. Once her day of training is done, I will do some night dives. I love being under water in complete darkness, it’s a very cool feeling.
I hit the pool early for some technique refreshers and then straight to the ocean at 11:30AM for a dive on a site called Meno Wall. It’s just off the shore of Gili Meno and you basically float on the current about 20 meters down looking up at a coral wall. There is a ton of life to see. I figured I’d be in good shape, so I booked an afternoon “fun dive”. This time we went to a great area called Hans Reef, here I saw a ton of goodies, my favourite being giant green turtles.
I was able to bring a camera on the second ocean dive, but don’t expect anything stellar in the photography department. One day I hope to have a proper setup with external lights. As you get deeper in the water, you lose spectrums of colour, so cameras that don’t have lights can’t really produce too much in the way of good photography, but it was still fun to watch and shoot.
List of notable species seen today:
- Giant Green Turtle
- Titan Triggerfish (Love it!)
- Moorish Idol
- Peacock Mantis Shrimp
- Moray Eel
- Humbug Dansel
- Clownfish
- Giant Puffer (Love it!)
- Cuttlefish
- Spotted Garden Eels
- Manta Ray
I missed an octopus, at it went into hiding before I could turn around. During the morning dive, people saw 7 blacktip sharks at one of the sites, which is amazing and I hope I get the same experience one of the mornings later in the week.
I’m a large human being, so I use a lot of air when I’m diving. I was hoping to take a twin tank certification course, but unfortunately that goes into technical diving and would take more time to complete than I have. They did have bigger single tanks available, and I was able to get my dive time to 40 minutes, which was great.
Caellum and Theresa spent the day shore snorkeling, and had a blast. Caellum took to it pretty quickly, which was good. He and I will be doing that over the next few days while Theresa has a blast in the ocean.
Caellum and I will do our boys night out post shortly, we were busy today!
