Woche 12 - Gili Trawangan

7 full days on Gili T! A small island without cars and scooters. Almost everyone is cycling or running and the atmosphere is immediately quieter and more pleasant. I hit the jackpot with my hostel, which made the whole stay better. The House Hostel was like a little oasis in the middle of the hot, dusty island with a party street at the front. I was happy to live far away so that you can think about whether you want to celebrate or not every day. The host from the hostel (Candra from Indonesia) is a really great person, with calm, positive energy that could be felt throughout the hostel. In the morning you would be woken up with soft jazz. He also gave a lot of tips, took us on sunset walks and served up the obligatory banana pancakes every morning. When I always went to the diving school early in the morning, he made me the pancake at 7 in the morning🥹 Diving was a big part of my stay on Gili T. It wasn't on my radar that this was a snorkeling and diving paradise is absolutely. After arriving, we walked to Turtle Point in the afternoon and rented snorkels and masks in a small hut. Inhabitants of the hut: Mogs and Moss😂 We were greeted with big grins, one snorkeled with us and looked for turtles for us and the other welcomed us sitting on the table, singing and playing the guitar. Great experience and saw Schildis for the first time😍 The next day I refreshed my scuba diving knowledge. This takes one day and includes theory, practice in the pool and a dive. I really needed that after five years. Despite poor visibility, it was a nice dive at 'turtle heaven' and I saw a huge turtle that was at least 1m tall. You can also swim pretty close, but that usually doesn't bother them at all. After a dive, I was of course immediately hooked again and thought for ages about whether I should do my advanced course. Since it is monsoon season, I was afraid that visibility would be permanently poor and there would be strong currents. After a one-day snorkeling trip around the three Gili Islands, I decided to do it because I wanted to do the course sooner or later anyway and would get more out of it on my trip.

Because of the low season, I was alone in the course and was almost always able to dive in pairs with my diving instructor (Simon from Sweden). This is a huge advantage because you don't have to wait for anyone underwater and you can discover a lot more. And oh, I was able to see a lot. Afterwards, all the diving instructors said they had never seen so many different animals in one course. And there were several times when all the experienced divers hung around an animal for ages, so it was clear to me even underwater that it must be something rare. There were the following sightings, all of which I saw for the first time:

• large Marble Ray (2x2m)
• Eagle Ray
• Mimic Octopus
• Normal octopus
• Whitetip reef sharks
• lots and lots of turtles, some over a meter tall
• Frogfish
• Scorpionfish
• Razorfish (such fun parts, swim vertically in groups)
• And much more!

Overall, diving here was much more interesting than on Koh Tao as there were a lot more colorful corals and fish. You can put together the advanced course yourself by choosing 3 of 5 adventure dives yourself. That's why, in addition to the deep dive and navigation dive, I also did a Nitrox, a perfect buoyancy dive and fish identification. There are always a few skills that you have to perform underwater. My last dive was on December 24th. and was a great start to the day!

The Christmas days were very relaxed and were mainly spent on the beach and eating with a few other hostel people. On the 25th there was an Italian woman there, so we went to a very good pizzeria 😋 Especially in the last few days I've settled in there a bit and was actually a bit annoyed about having to leave. Unfortunately, I had already booked my hostel on the next island without canceling. Well, there are worse things 😁