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Published: July 23rd 2010
This entry has been a little late as our computer broke down!! A lot has happened since our last blog, so here it goes....
Gili Trawangan (24/05/2010 to 28/05/2010)
The Gili islands are a trio of small islands off the north-west coast of Lombok, Gili Trawagan, Gili Meno and Gili Air. Each island is round and surrounded by a coral fringe. We went over to Gili Trawangan with our friends Jye and Chinta for 2 nights but Andy and I ended up staying for 4 nights. On the day we arrived we found some cheap accommodation and had a look around the dive centers. The Gili Islands are renowned for world class diving so we thought it was a great opportunity to do our PADI Open Water SCUBA diving certificate (3 day course with 5 dives). Fish bombing with dynamite killed a lot of the coral sometime ago but there are still parts that were left intact.
There are no police, scooters or cars on any of the islands and the main modes of transport are horse and cart, cycling and walking. The beer truck is actually a horse dragging cart full of bintang (beer)!!! Gili Trawangan is
also known for its partying... throwing 3 big parties a week (monday,wednesday and friday), on the nights when there were no parties people would relax. As we were doing our diving course... we did NO partying (for once) but had a few drinks every night to watch the sunset.
The diving course was excellent and we are very glad to have done it at Gili Trawangan!! Because the tidal movements were fairly large, there was so much current rushing between the islands. When you go down to the bottom you didnt even need to kick your flippers because you are already flying past the reef like you were gliding though space.
On our last dive we had a professional photographer Foued take photos of us, we saw some really cool things... sharks, turtles and plenty of fish including 4 huge bump-head parrot fish which are supposed to be very rare and only come out of the deeper water during full moon. Our instructor said that he had only ever seen one by itself let alone 4 in a group chewing on a massive piece of coral!!! We were all a bit anxious because we didnt know what they
were going to do so we all hung back a little except for Foued (photographer), he was getting right in there next them!!! Crazy man... check out the photos!!
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