Snorkeling in Turtle Paradise Gili Islands

Our start in Southeast Asia was made very easy for us in Indonesia after leaving Oceania. Admittedly, we started in Bali, one of the most tourist-friendly regions in the country, which made our entry into Asia easier. On our first evening in Bali, we met up with our friends Annika and Paul, whom we had met at Ayers Rock in Australia. During a cozy evening, we exchanged our experiences since the tour in the Australian Outback and immediately made plans for a full-day exploration tour on Bali the following week.

After that, we had to organize ourselves again, so we used the time in our beautiful hotel in Legian, near Kuta, to plan the next few days. We wanted to spend the time until the joint tour to the Gili Islands and besides extensive snorkeling, also relax a bit, after we had hardly had any breaks in the last weeks and months and one highlight followed the next, and we could collect incredible beautiful impressions and experiences.

For the first two days, we had booked a dream accommodation on Gili Trawangan, a last-minute deal in a private treehouse with 150m², private pool and private bar. In addition, bicycles were included in the price, which we would recommend to every traveler to the Gili Islands, as renting them is comparatively expensive and there are no other means of transportation on the island. The distances are too far to walk and there are no cars or scooters on the islands, only horse carriages, which should be avoided because of the poor conditions under which the animals are kept. Unfortunately, we had no choice and had to rent such a horse taxi to get to the accommodation.

The Gili Islands are a true paradise, as the following pictures impressively prove. In addition to beautiful sandy beaches, turquoise water and beautiful sunsets, you can easily snorkel from the beach during the day without the need for a tour.

We simply rode our bicycles to the beach for snorkeling and went directly into the water, where we could observe countless colorful fish at the intact reef.

At our second snorkeling spot, we finally wanted to search for turtles and stopped at the well-known Turtle Point. After only a short time in the water, we had already seen the first sea turtle, a giant specimen of over 1m in size. The second turtle would not keep us waiting long and shortly afterwards, we were lucky a third time. The last turtle should become the absolute highlight, as we had it almost to ourselves and could observe it for almost an hour, as it was not disturbed by us at all and leisurely fed on the seagrass. Of course, we used this opportunity for some incredible photos. Tip at this point: Keep an eye on the tides and go snorkeling during high tide, as it is much easier to get into the water and the chances of seeing turtles are much higher ;-)

By the way, we mainly spent the time on Gili T with Adrian and Laila, whom we had met on the crossing. We had a lot of fun together and also went to the night market for dinner. Thank you both for the fun and beautiful days =)

The night market is really recommended, as there is so much to try for relatively little money.

After the 2 days on Gili T, we spent another 3 days in the next paradise on Gili Air. The slightly smaller island is even quieter than Gili Trawangan, but has equally beautiful beaches and snorkeling opportunities. Our hotel, Gili Air Lagoon Resort, was also highly recommended, just like Gili Treehouse on Trawangan, and had a very well-designed pool.

(Picture from the internet)

In addition to smaller monitor lizards on land, we were able to admire beautiful colorful fish at the reef and were lucky again with a sea turtle.

Again, it didn't mind us at all and we had it to ourselves for over an hour, during which we took some more breathtaking pictures.

The sunset on Gili Air was just as impressive as on Gili Trawangan and at the famous swings in the sea, we could really enjoy the South Sea paradise.

After the beautiful days on the islands, it was time for us to pack our backpacks again and take a speedboat back to Bali, where we were already looking forward to meeting Annika and Paul again in Ubud.