On eating lizards...

Alicia and I have arrived on Gili Air, a small island off the coast of Lombok. Lombok is the next major Indonesian island to the east of Bali.

This is a very chilled out place with no motorized transport. Only the jingling bells of horse drawn carts. Electricity arrived only ten years ago.

Some friends of ours that we met in Ubud, Bjorn and Chantel, are here as well and invited us to a family-style dinner at a different bungalow than ours. On the menu that night was freshly caught lizard! mmmmm!

There are many wild monitor lizards here. They live off whatever they can find, including the duck eggs of the bungalow owner where we had dinner.

There was an extensive effort to catch the lizard, all documented by a wonderfully hilarious fellow named Leon, who ate with us. The lizard was first caught with a big fish hook baited with a fish head. Then the restrained-via-hook lizard was stuck with a spear gun (used normally for fishing) and then finished off with a solid whack to the head. I was 'fortunate' enough to see all of Leon's pictures. Totally bizarre.

The lizard was going to get cooked to feed the new pet dog. But when Leon spoke up that he wanted some, it went up on the grill. Lombok and the Gilis are almost 100% Muslim, and they are apparently now allowed to eat lizards. So the cooking of the lizard for the tourists was a topic of much amusement.

Bjorn and Leon had a good bit of the strange BBQ-d lizard. I had a very small taste. Not bad - kind of like tough pork!

After the lizard topics moved on to more terrible subjects like dog and horse. Both eaten in different parts of Indonesia. The conversation went downhill from there...

-Jonathan