Moving day is the hard working one. Getting up really early; negotiating taxi, bus, boat, room, many want to take advantage of travelers in transit.
It took us one day and one night to get there. Fishing boat (Lembongan-Bali), van to the port, public ferry (Bali-Lombok), minibus, night in Senggigi and a last public boat to get to Gili’s. Of course we didn't took the short way...
During this "moving days" interesting things can happen, such as seeing a 2 mtr shark just fished, face to face!
The Gili Islands are 3: Gili Air = “lazy island” (our choice), Gili Meno = “honeymoon island” and Gili Trawangan = “party island”.
All islands have a beautiful landscape, what we usually think as "paradise", well... here we found it, we really recommend this place !!
After walking around we found some really nice bungalows in the opposite side of where most of the people stayed. Tourist doesn’t like tourists…
We had our own beach, our own “chiringo” and the best connection with locals.
Sabri, the “uncle”, was the man in charge. Calm, smiley and helpful. Kilan, “Mariuati”, was the leader of the young gang that was doing the work. Cool guy who had the big advantage against the others of speaking english. Rapa and XXXX the “che pibes” were always ready to get what we needed.
The place was pretty turned off but little by little we light it up, again being a big group helped a lot….
- When are you gonna open the bar on the beach?
- When the season starts…
- When is that?
- In June
- We are in June!!!
- Ohhh…. ok, tomorrow
Bring electricity to the bar, get lights, music, decoration, do some painting… in two days it was alive! We had our “warung”, where we played our music, made our fruit shakes and barbacues! The best part is that we could help in the way so we felt like part of it.
Days went by on local mood, lay down and humorous. Guys were busy:
- Fish hunting
- Surfing (very little, since the waves were rather small or inexistent)
- Barbacueing: corn, fresh fish; chicken and even a goat! Once you find a nice fireplace you can’t stop burning something…
The girls had their fun: walks around the island (around 2 hours for a slow full turn), talks on the beach, some snorkeling and some artworks.
Everybody felt “at home” in Gili Air, lazylanders were very open and we enjoyed the mutual chats and company.
Every time we were cooking many came to our table, maybe because they don’t eat goat that often, hopefully because they felt welcome …
After cruising around Bali and other islands we think this was our favorite stop, maybe that’s why we stayed 10 days... Good balance between peace, beautiful nature, welcoming people and fun activities.
We’re gonna miss you Lazyland!!
