Gili Meno, and onto the mainland (Lombok)

So we caught the 1500 (3.00 pm) public boat (costing IDR 40,000 (NZD 4.10)) each from Gili Air, and took the 10 minute ride across to our new base in Gili Meno. It’s definitely a ‘chillax’ island, and we chose a ‘beach front’ bungalow (Sunset Beach Bungalows), which meant we basically overlooked the sea.

The island is a similar size at approx 2 km by 1.5 km, so we continued our walking routine and on one day we accidentally circumvented the entire island – meaning we covered a total of 16,754 steps (or 13 kms). The locals live a very simple life of caring for their families, going fishing and growing vegetables/fruit – with only a very small number of younger people (who speak english) involved in tourism.

Alan managed to spend time chasing down turtles, this was his favourite past-time, which meant he disappeared for 1-2 hours at a time. In addition to spotting turtles at sea, we also took time to visit a turtle sanctuary on the island, run by a local man who not only cares for injured turtles, but also secures eggs from locals in the Gili’s to raise the baby turtles (both Green and Hawksbill turtles) in ‘tanks’ until they are old enough to have a better chance of survival. Unfortunately, the young (only 10/12 cm big) still had another 4 weeks before their shells were hardened and they would be released, so we were out of luck to see this occurrence. However, the owner did ‘dig up’ a nest for us, just to check the baby turtle eggs were ok.

The cost on Gili Meno were slightly higher with dinner costing us IDR 25,000 (NZ$ 2.60), for Nasi Campur (rice with a mixture of side dishes). But as we went to the same Warung (restaurant) the meal sizes got larger and larger- lol.

At the end of our time on the island we headed back to the port and caught the ‘Fast Boat’ to Lombok (costing IDR 85,000 (NZ$ 8.75)) each. The slow boat was only (IDR 21,000), but catching it would have meant missing brekkie. After taking a taxi (costing IDR 150,000 (NZ$ 15.75)) from Bangsal Port to Mataram we arrived in our new location so we can visit the Indonesian Immigration Office to extend Helena’s visa – more information will be provided in the next blog (s).

D