Diving and relaxing on the Gili Islands

The Gili islands are all so small, and so close together that diving from any of them allows you easily dive all the sites in the general region. So in retrospect I reckon we definitely picked the best island to base ourselves, as Gili Air has a bit more life that Gili Meno, but isn't as crowded or touristy as Gili Trawangan.

The Irish owner of Blue Marlin had explained to us that the PADI diving rules had changed in recent years. Before you had to complete a full, and expensive, Advanced PADI diver course to be allowed dive deeper than 18 meters, but the term 'Advanced' was thought to be putting people off, and so now PADI have split up the advanced course and they allow divers to be certified for each of the individual dives that previously had made up the complete Advanced course (i.e. deep dive, navigation dive, search and recovery dive, etc.). So Sarah now had the option to simply get certified for deep diving without any of the other (basically in my experience) unless dives that make up the full Advanced certification. The certified deep dive cost more of course ($60 instead of the usual $35 fun dive cost), but once completed she would be free to dive any site I would be able to dive, and basically frees her up to dive anywhere.

I thought this was a great initiative from PADI, and so Sarah's first dive was a deep dive with her very own personal instructor. After successfully completing that dive she was now free to dive practically any fun dive site in the world.

So our first dive was at Shark Point, and it turned out to be probably the best dive of all 5 that we did (you also get a further discount for doing a 5-dive package). Although myself and Sarah weren't together (she had specific stuff to do with her instructor), we were both in the same area. It was a fantastic dive with great visibility and no currents or swell. I got to see two big white-tipped reef sharks, both really close, a few turtles and lots or other life (Sarah got to see sharks and turtles too, and 3 octopuses, 2 of them free swimming).

After our dive we got dropped off on Gili Trawangan to explore it for the day, and although it had some great looking bars, cafes and a couple of very tempting restaurants, we never bothered to relocate there. Basically the main stretch of beach was quite crowded (although the snorkeling from there was great), and I suppose in the end we just felt really relaxed and comfortable on Gili Air.

Since we had lots of time to spend on the Gili's we spread out our 5 dives over the next good few days. It gave us plenty of time to check out the various restaurants and to discover the cool little shack of Warung Fatima that had the best Nasi Campur I'd had so far tasted in Indonesia, and by far the cheapest at 5,000 a pop (although she put her price up to a cheeky 8,000 while we were there - still well below the usual 15,000 - 40,000 of everywhere else!)). Fatima herself was a mad 'auld dear, with a crazy toothy smile and a cackling laugh, and although her shack had no sea views like all the 'proper' eateries, her personality, seriously tasty Campur and honest prices certainly made hers my favorite place on the island (a young Aussie traveler who sat beside me there one day said he loved the place too but he couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was that he specifically liked - when I said it was simply it's 'honesty' I really don't think he had a clue what I was talking about!).

Anyway, on our third scuba-dive we met a lovely English couple who happened to be on their honeymoon, Richard and Claire. They weren't your typically stereotyped honeymooners pretending to be all loved-up though, in fact they were totally relaxed and laid-back about everything. Their wedding had cost the princely sum of 1500 pounds and their honeymoon was a very respectable 5 weeks long - both were in their early 30's and had traveled extensively before, so they were pretty savvy compared to your usual Epsilons.

We ended up diving with them for our last 3 dives, and then traveling back to Senggigi in Lombok with them for a couple more days. Our remaining dives were all very good I must say, although I think most of my previous dives on this trip have been in pretty poor conditions by comparison.

Our last dive was on a 'wreck', which was just a pontoon, but it turned out to be a huge pontoon and I was well impressed (I got to see a couple of really cool free-swimming cuttle fish, changing colour in real-time and everything, and a huge octopus, although he was mostly hidden inside his rock).

In fact we left Gili Air a day early because Richard and Claire were heading back, and it just made things a bit easier to travel independently as a group. So after 11 days of wonderfully relaxed lazing about, chatting with Richard and Claire over Bingtang's and sunsets, and good scuba-diving, it was time to head back to Lombok.

Early in the morning we grabbed the same brekkie we'd had every single morning at Lucky's (banana pancake and tomato/egg jaffle), and strolled to the public ferry departure point. After waiting about an hour (and finishing our hastily grabbed breakfast), we were back on the local boat to the mainland of Lombok, and on our way to the local Indonesian tourist town of Senggigi.