Goodbye Gilis. Bye-bye Leonard- we love you!

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It's time to leave the Gili islands, a sad sad day. We have been on Gili T for 6 nights which is a record for us, usually wishing to move on after a few days.
If anyone is wondering where to go for their hols next year I can't recommend this place enough! Although it is really small, Dale and I walked around it a few days ago and the coastal path from start to finish only took about two hours, and some of that time was spent lingering on a completely deserted expanse of white beach we found -it was totally alien, not of this world! We also found an empty sea turtle shell, so hopefully the little guy got back to the water. Sea turtles are endangered but Gili T has a committed conservation project increasing their numbers in the area.

A major highlight of our time spent here was an amazing snorkelling trip to all three islands. The diversity in the reef is umbelievable as fishing in the area is prohibited (or rather there is an agreement in place that there's to be no fishing around the islands and some money changing hands). We saw innumerable brightly coloured fish and nine sea turtles!!! The Turtles were amazing I never thought I'd see such amazing creatures on a snorkelling trip! There's something so gentle and graceful about them. we also saw a huge reef shark but luckily me and Dale were on the glass-bottom boat at this point, yeah they wont harm you, but it'd still freak me out if I'd come face to face with it. Jaws has a lot to answer for.

Anyway, time to move on. It's gonna be sad saying bye to Leonard. He kept the mozzies at bay for us, just hope the next occupants don't try to scare him out of his house.

Hope everyone is well,

Sam xxx

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