Pictures And Words

I didn’t even know I was going to go to the Gili Islands, Islands that I had heard of before and nearly went to 8 years ago. They have always been on my mind as the prospect of being able to live on an island that you can walk around in about one hour seemed beautiful, maybe its the isolation that I would find comfortable, the small world aspect. In my mind was the idea of watching the sun rise on one side of the island and watching it set on the other side, and ideas of playing Robinsoe Crusoe. And no roads was a wonderful prospect as well. As you can see the islands had been on my mind for sometime.

So when I arrived on Bali (specifically Kuta, Bali I later realised is a unique and beautiful place) and it was god awful, absolutly hideous I realised quite quickly that I didn’t want to be there, and since I was close to the Gili Islands I made arrangements right away to go there in the morning. In the Kuta area of Bali which made me want to leave so badly, the roads are busy with cars and mopeds, and the narrow paths are busy with mopeds and cars when they could fit and there was one stretch of beach that was refered to as Macdonalds beach, since it was locatd adjacent a Macdonalds restaurant. I could go on and on about the horrors of that place but since I left so quickly I don’t remember them that much.

The next morning I woke up at 5.30am, got ready and got in a minibus, like them really MINI minibuses! In that for nearly 2 hours, into a cafe, told to wait, ferry arrived, got on a ferry for, 4 hours, got off, got in a taxi for 1 hour, got out for 10 mins, got back in, stopped at the shore, waited for a boat, got on a small boat which took me to the largest of the Gili Islands, Gili Trawangan. It was amazing really, there was a main road going around the island, well it was a path really, but there were small horse and cart vehicles that sped around on it, making it very road like. The bussiest strip on this road was amazing, some of the rooms on there there super lush, as far as backpacking rooms go anway, they had flat scren tv’s air conditioning, mini bar, waiter, FRESH tap water (most places just had rather salty ground water coming out of the taps) and one of them bars in a swimming pool where you sit at a bar literally in the swimming pool, these rooms cost about US$50. Considering this is on some super pretty tiny far away paradise island it was kinda gobsmacking for me. I arrived there with 2 English guys and a girl from Denmark who I had got talking to on the journey here, we decided to pick somewhere together to stay since we all wanted the cheapest place on the island. After “checking in” I started to kick back and enjoy a slower life, something that I had not experienced in all of Java.

The first pic is from the first boat I caught to Gili Trawangan, and the next is the boat I caught from Gili Trawangan to Gili Air, notice the odd angle of the horizon in the second picture, the sea was rather choppy.

Wild life, as usual, amazed me on these islands, when I first saw the shore from the boat I imediatly saw a lion fish, indicating the life filled waters around these islands. Lots of shells used for decoration hinted at the strong connection between the local people and the ocean. Actually I jump ahead of myself, the first few days on these islands was spent drinking with the English guys, since I had partied in such a long time, especially with English guys who seem to be able to do it better than most. So yeah, two days later I left Gili Trawangan for the cheaper and quieter Gili Air, where, Wild life as usual, amazed me…..I saw so many things I had never seen before!

I had seen one of these crabs elsewhere, that elsewhere being another island in Indoensia. A key feature of this crab is its lack of violence, I had picked other, more violent crabs up before and have been punished for doing so. This crab however was comfortable with its armour and camoflage, thus it wasn’t violent.

Another non violent and well camoflaged crab. I was lucky to find this one since it blended in so well.

A blue starfish! There were many types of starfish in this area.

Another starfish, and the underside, I filmed the underside as all them clear protrusions were wriggling away, maybe i’ll upload it someday.

This isn’t strictly a starfish, but its closely related, I think its called a brittle fish, or maybe a brittle starfish, someone told me this.

Here’s one of them brittle thingies that has something odd going on with it, if I had to make a guess, I would say its full of eggs, if I was wrong and I was given another guess I would say its infected with a parasite, if my second guess was wrong and I was given one final try then I would say its a genetic anomoly.

More camoflaged crab action. And I don’t know what that green thing is, looked interesting though.

There were, along with all the crabs and starfish, many SEA URCHINS!! I was scared to swim in the waters really, as it was shallow for some distance, and the floor was full of them black sea urchins, spikey poisonous things.

More poisonous spikes. And them white tentacles belonged to some mystery creature underground, I touched them and it pulled them into the hole.

A cluster of sea Anenomone’s (spelling?), and a cluster of weird seaweed.

As you can see from up above photographs I had a lot of fun looking for wildlife, everytime I went out I found something new.

Some shots with a touch of creativity and style, maybe on the front of an in flight magazine (seem to have read quite a few of these mags lately).

A Tokay Geko, I know the name because when I lived near Bolton with my friend Kaye she bought one as a pet, angry little b’stards they are.

Had a break from juggling to try and photo some mid air juggling balls, and I did it!

The sky was so blue and the plants were so green it was hard not to take pictures of them all the time, but i’ll just put two up as they don’t get across the real beauty of the place.

Local people, the child and his younger sibling called at me to take a picture of them as I was walking around with my camera, then they did this cute pose for me, im not normally one for taking pictures of people so im quite proud of getting this one. And a pretty island girl in my hat.

On both islands I went to there were turtle conservation area’s. They would find the turtles nest and collect all of the eggs and hatch the lot of them, rear them all to a safe size and let them all go! Now, im no wildlife expert but I do know that naturally only a handful of possibly 100’s of baby turtles would make it to adulthood, so rearing ALL of them seems a little wreckless, such an abundance of turtles will surely have some knock on effect. A few days later I went scuba diving and saw an adult turtle chomping on coral! Breaking pieces off with its parrot like mouth and crunching it up before moving onto another piece. I guess at the end of the day though WE can eat turtles but we can’t eat coral…Anyway, they were great fun to play with in the conservation pool, I stopped by there at least once a day to watch them and play teenage mutant hero turtles.

The first picture is the biggest volcano on Bali, which you could see clearly when the sun was setting in the evening. The second I took as I was leaving the Gili Islands, it the large Island of Lombok which is next to Bali.

Some beautiful shots of the light from the sun.

The first is of local houses on Gili Air, and the second is the guesthouse i stayed in on this island, I stayed there for about one week.

An old wrecked boat on Gili Air, and a beautiful cow on Gili Air.

That first shot is from Lombok looking through the trees at Gili Air. And on Lombok a major sport is to hook up giant wooden skis onto two powerful buffalo’s, get them to run like mad and then hold on for dear life, Experience the wonder!

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And this is where I found most of the sea life, zoom out to see the Gili Islands themselves.

And thats my Gili island experience, mainly I was on my own, the two English guys only stayed for 2 days, I did get to know a few of my neighbors but I didn’t spent too much time socializing, I was more than happy and content to sleep in my hammock during the day, read, write, take pictures, juggle, eat and of course look for wildlife.

Also whilst I was on Gili Air the Muslim festival of Ramadan ended, which was a cause for big celebration for the Muslims. Ramadan is a month long festival where you do not eat, drink or smoke when the sun is up. So the Muslims would eat a massive breakfast before the sun comes up, and then eat a massive dinner when it went down. So when it ended people enjoyed sleeping pas the sunrise and then upon awaking they had a massive meal with all their friends, I was invited to a local house to enjoy this big breakfast, it all kinda reminded me of Christmas day the way people pop round to other people’s houses to wish them happiness and that. It was a happy day for all.

And thats it, I finally repeated the journey to get there but in reverse. I didn’t go back to Kuta on Bali, I went to a town called Ubud, which was very close to where my brother and Lisa (upgraded from girlfriend to wife now ) were staying. It was great to hook up with them, to see a familiar face, and to share my way of life with someone close to me, something I don’t get to do a lot. We saw monkeys, ate delicious food, drank beers and went for rides on mopeds. Bali came across rather charming in these days, it became clear to me that Kuta wasn’t really what Bali was all about.

Im outa here!