We went on an adventure on a beautiful tropical island. And got proper sunburned!

We had bought “Gili island package”. So we got picked up early in the morning, to the harbour and with a boat to Gili Trawangan island. On this island we had 1,5 hours for cycling around and enjoying the idyllic scenery. Definitely a resort type of island with blue water, white sand shores, many restaurants and bars along the shores and the resorts being on the other side of the road. It was also beaming sunshine.

After biking, we had lunch. And then to what we both were super excited about; snorkeling!

We got our mask and fins, and headed out to the boat. We had 3 stops for jumping in and snorkeling. First up was an underwater statue. It was pretty cool, but as there was a lot of people at once, it was a bit too crowded for our taste. As there was no information around the statue, my theory is that it’s just made and put into there to give tourists something cool to look at, without any previous historical/cultural significance.

Stop nr two was the coolest! Turtle reef! There was a spot where 5 big sea turtles were hanging out on the bottom. And twice a turtle came up to the surface and went back down again. Very cool!

Third stop was for looking at the fishes, so like a coral reef, but definitely a declining one. There were some corals and fishes.

After this, we headed to the next island, which was Gili Air. Here we had about 30 minutes before we boarded our boat back to Bali. The ride was rather rough, and I’d say that at least half the passengers got seasick! We both got, and it was a relief when we got closer to the Bali shores and less big waves.

Once back on steady ground, the sun has set and we were tired and hungry. But we still had a bit of a drive to get back home. It took us over 2 hours to get back. Very tired and very sunburned. Like red crabs sunburned!

We did enjoy many parts of this day trip, but had a few lesser pleasant surprises. I’ll cover them in another post.

-Petra