Turtles and the Deep Blue Sea

Alicia and I decided to take a snorkeling trip on our last full day on Gili Air. What a great idea it turned out to be!

After a bit of wandering around the island we finally found a boat headed out for the day. The difficultly lay in actually getting to the boat. We had picked one of the lowest tides of the year to do our snorkeling. The boat lay about 50 meters out from the normal beach line. We had to make our way over slimy rocks and ankle deep puddles of normally covered ground to climb in the boat. Not a problem for myself and my trusty Teva sandles. Not so good for Alicia and her magical yellow inexpensive flip-flops. After a plodding walk we climbed into the traditional outrigger and headed over to Gili Trawangan. After some choppy seas we made it to the 'turtle area'. The Gili's are well known for their population of sea turtles and everyone said we'd see some. I was a bit dubious if we'd be so lucky. However in minutes after following the boat-helper teenage boy into the water I was swimming after a huge sea turtle headed away from us into the depths. The sight of the big turtle headed into the deep blue water away from the island shelf will be one of my most vivid brain-memories of our trip.

We continued seeing turtles here and there as well as encountering tiny jellyfish bits that gave a strong sting. Alicia got hit with quite a few of them and decided to head out of the water. As she was getting out another smaller turtle had been spotted. After getting stung on my upper lip, arms, etc... I made it to the friendly little green guy.

The turtle swam around with us in circles. They are so funny looking and graceful under water!

After turtle time we had a couple additional snorkel spots and lunch on Gili Meno (the third and least populated island).

Overall the rest of the snorkeling was not incredible. This is mostly due to the poor health of the coral in the area. The islanders and foreign hotel owners do have a fund to help preserve and repair the coral on the islands which is really great.

Even without bright vivid corals it was lots of fun to swim all afternoon. Thankfully we were under cloudy skies. I was also able to practice some free-diving with my basic skills my Dad taught me swimming in cloudy lakes in Idaho. I can assure you its much more fun to swim like a fish is perfectly clear and warm oceans!

Sadly, our day with the turtles may be our last ocean day on our trip. The beach here at Kuta has some very scary undertow and is also terribly polluted and shockingly full of litter. So we thankfully ended our ocean adventures on a high note.