The reviews read online were telling us to expect terrible things during our fast boat transfers while island-hopping on Bali’s east coast. We were wondering if they were true, so we took our chances to check out some tropical beaches and aquatic life…
We woke up ready to take on the day but first we had our heart set on good breakfast with pineapple pancakes and some jaffles (the Indonesian version of ‘croque monsieur’). We walked with all backpacks towards the office of Eka Jaya where we would find ourselves in the uttermost chaos possible. People everywhere, trying to check in and trying to figure out what all the green shirted guys are doing there running around. In the meanwhile, Jens had received a call from what turned out to be the booking agency of our tickets, that we should come to their office first, but we were already checked in… Confusing… So yeah, be careful if you just type in Google the search term “Eka Jaya fast boat”: the correct and official website is https://baliekajaya.com. We booked via http://ekajayafastboat.com which only pretends to be the official website but is in fact the website of Indotraveline (a small travel agency). But hey, we were checked in and following a ‘green guy’ to the fast boat dock. The dock itself is totally not hard to find if you would find yourself without a ‘green guy’, which in itself seems already impossible to us.
So, there we were handing over our backpacks to put on the deck and boarding the fast boat. After an hour we reached the first of the Gili Islands and soon we would arrive to ours: Gili Air. But not before transferring to a smaller boat in the middle of the ocean to take us to shore. This intermediate transfer depends whether or not the pier is occupied by other boats at that moment and seems to be random. Once on land we walked to our new home in Indonesia: Banana Cottages.
The island is so small that there are no cars on the island. Only (electrical) motorcycles, bicycles and the traditional horse wagon. If you want to, you can easily walk around the entire island in two hours. We were getting a little hungry, so we decided to walk to beach, which was just at the end of our street, and have an Indonesian lunch in one of the warungs on the beach. After some fresh juice and mie goreng we changed into our swimwear and dove into the ocean. Well, not actually dove since it changed tides in like an hour or so and all of a sudden it was low tide. Not the best time to do some swimming or snorkelling because you are more likely to hit the reef and corals, plus you need to walk quite far in ankle-deep water before reaching anything swimmable. We decided to get out of the water and go to the pool at our hotel instead. For dinner we went to the beachfront again. We noticed during a walk in the afternoon that there are a lot of nice restaurants there that have the real island vibe going on. We made it ourselves comfortable on one of the little private platforms overlooking the ocean being lit by the moon, ate our dinner, enjoyed a beer and went back to the hotel, skipping the (in)famous nightlife. We did arrive on both nights quite early (around 18 PM) and seating tends to fill up quickly around 19 PM.
Our second day on Gili Air we started with once again a pancake and jaffles breakfast. After that we walked through town to a nice coffee shop, B52, were Jens worked on the website and I was studying for my advanced open water diver certificate. We knew from the day before that we shouldn’t wait until the afternoon to go swimming and snorkelling so before getting lunch we headed to the beach. And I am so happy we did! There are still some very good pieces of reef and coral. I spotted a lot of different fish species, but the highlight of my snorkelling adventure is definitely the green turtle that was scratching its neck on a piece of reef and swimming right next to me. If one could scream of excitement underwater with a snorkel, I sure did! Full of excitement we went to have lunch at another cosy beachfront restaurant. The afternoon we spend in the pool and looking at the pictures from my snorkelling trip. Again, we headed to the beach to have dinner in yet another beachy restaurant. We don’t remember the name, but it had a nice layout and these comfy seats for relaxed eating, so choose your pick!
In the morning we had to leave this little island to take the fast boat, once more from Eka Yaja, to one of the other islands closer to Bali, Nusa Lembongan. Can you guess what we had for breakfast?
