Indonesia: Gili Air - the island paradise

Hello!

We hope you're enjoying the summer temperatures at home! Hopefully the weather is as beautiful as we experienced on Gili Air.

During the crossing from Gili Trawangan to Gili Air, our passenger ferry stopped in the middle of the open water next to a small boat. The boat was packed with people who wanted to travel from Gili Meno to another island. Both boats docked at the very shaky 'platform' and passengers and luggage were transferred from one ferry to the other. Luckily, we were spared the adventurous boat change. In the chaos, we managed to see Jana's lemon-yellow backpack switch from our ferry to the opposite one. Fortunately, we were able to communicate to the crew that the backpack needed to come back to our ferry. Otherwise, Jana would have never seen her belongings again.

On Gili Air, life was much more relaxed. The island life here is deeply relaxed. You wake up in the morning, have a leisurely breakfast of tropical fruit salad right by the shore, go diving with the Manta Dive Family, and then spend a few hours immersed in diving. After the last dive, it's Bintang o'clock: we sat on white wicker chairs by the shore, sipping on a cold Bintang beer, everyone enthusiastically sharing their underwater experiences. After showering, we went for dinner on the beach at a nice warung (small local restaurant). With live music and beautiful sunsets, we had a nightcap and then fell exhaustedly into bed. Although we were on the small island for a long time, we never got bored. On the contrary - we could have stayed on Gili Air much longer!

Everyday life happens completely outdoors and people calmly accept the daily power outages. What could be so important that you would need electricity at that moment anyway? It always came back - sometimes sooner, sometimes later. Despite the simple conditions, the people are happy and very friendly! We quickly made contact with the local people. Whether it was Hero, who we told every day what we saw underwater, or Franky, the coconut carver, with whom we spontaneously sang Johnny Cash songs in his small store, sitting on the tiled floor, while he accompanied us on his guitar.

We spent most of our time on Gili Air diving in the 29°C warm water. The sea around the Gili islands is very rich in species and offers breathtaking reefs. A complete list of the fish we saw would be too long to write down here. We saw, among other things, reef sharks, starfish, shrimp, seahorses, clownfish, moray eels, and many turtles. During the night dive in the harbor, we were very lucky and were even able to observe the very rare mandarinfish! For me, the underwater world is indescribable. You have to experience this splendor and diversity for yourself!

With Jana as our guide, we had three very relaxed, fun girl dives! Under the motto 'Minions on a diving tour' we did our backward roll from the boat into the water with a shout of 'Three, two, one - Banana!' We had a lot of fun and as our guide 'King Bob', Jana confidently led us through the reefs.

We found paradise and our island home on Gili Air and we are sad to leave. We already miss our time on Gili Air and our Manta Dive family.

We will spend the last few days of our Indonesia trip on Java, where we will, among other things, hike to the craters of two volcanoes. You will learn more about this in our upcoming blog. :-)

Sampai jumpa - goodbye for now,

Vroni and Maria