DAY 4: I'm on an Island!

Last night was an adventure, for SURE! The Gili Islands are known for power outages, and we had one! While we were eating dinner, the power went off on the ENTIRE island and it was pitch black! I was dying to take a shower, so I showered in the dark, with freezing cold water! Gotta love traveling!

I have to include this picture of the bathroom in my bungalow! Have you ever seen such a huge shower?! It's too bad they didn't put a sink in that huge area! Oh, and the water you shower with here is all salt water! :)

It rained all night last night, with loud clangs of thunder and lightning every couple minutes! Believe it or not, my bungalow was completely water resistant! :) Pretty cool looking, huh?!

It rained most of the morning too... :( But we were both so happy to be on vacation that we didn't really care!

We took a little walk on the sand during low tide to look for shells in between the rain storms. I've definitely found my match when it comes to shell searching! Aaron is quite the pro!

Check out this gigantic crab we found!

I've never, in my entire life (that I can remember), held a live starfish!

It started to rain again, so we thought we'd eat some breakfast... When we ordered at the restaurant by my place, the guy said "Ok, I smoke (marijuana) 1st, then I cook. Okay?" haha! Gotta love the honesty. Apparently it's completely fine to smoke on these islands...

We decided we'd walk a little further and ended up ducking into this little pagoda and ordered some breakfast! 1 banana pancake and some fruit please!

Aaron ordered some eggs, and this lady, who was taking our order was smiling and said, "Eggs. Oh, I don't know that!" She was definitely high from smoking marijuana!

There was no electricty the entire morning, and since their water is pumped through pipes which need elecricty, there was no water either! So, I brushed my teeth outside on my porch with my water bottle!

At 3:00pm, we caught the boat to Gili Meno! (Just barely too! We had to run!)

We had no idea where to stay when we arrived, so we jumped on this pony drawn carriage and rode until we found a place!

Our driver recommened Sunset Gecko, so we let him lead us there! I like to think we are 2 of the luckiest people alive, because the beachfront "Honeymoon Suite" was available and it had 2 rooms and overlooked the beach, all for the measley price of $37.00 a night! Um, YES PLEASE! Split between the 2 of us, that's 18.50 night!

We thought it was kind of ironic that it was called the Honeymoon suite because there is a bedroom upstairs and one downstairs... Maybe it's for those newly married fights, when the husband moves to the other room! None the less, it was perfect for us!

Here's my room!

The view from my staircase!

Our bathroom/shower is outside! Pretty awesome huh?! I took a shower before dinner and then Aaron took one after me. The water ran out before he was finished! haha. They only have a small supply of fresh water at this hotel. We're hoping we can get some more tomorrow!

Ahh, reminds me of Korea...

This place is extremely eco friendly! So much so that I had to wash my hair with a bar of all natural soap!

We took a walk down the beach and found all these sand dollars!

Sunset from my balcony!

There are lots of baby kitties around here! 

We had dinner at our place with the 4 other people who are staying there. This island is pretty secluded and small. It only takes about 2 hours to walk around the entire thing. There's really nothing to do, so most people don't come here... but we love it! From left to right: Aaron, Baola and Max (Barcelona, Spain), Michelle, and Luis (Frankfurt, Germany). We had a great dinner and an awesome time meeting and talking about life and traveling!

We definitely love Gili Meno!

DAY 3: I'm on a Boat!

I'm on a bus... I'm on a boat... I'm in a van... I'm on another boat... 13 hours later - I'm on an Island!!!

Day 3 was definitely a TRAVELING day! We had no idea it would take us so long to get to Gili Meno Island.... but we made quite a few memories along the journey. I'll bullet point them for you, so you don't spend all day reading the details... I know some of you need to get back to work!! :)

* Got picked up by a driver at 6:00am

* Drove an hour to a pier.

* Saw a lot of temples along the road.

* Noticed quite a few offering basket made of bamboo propped up near the entrance to stores and homes.

* Finally arrived at the pier. (2 hours before the 9:00am ferry was scheduled to depart... This is all part of the tour agencies plan. They told us to get off the bus and order breakfast at a certain cafe. We had fallen into their little trap, but whatever!)

* The 9:00am Ferry Boat was to capacity, so we sat here and waited for the 10:00am. We were continuously haggled by locals trying to sell sunglasses, fruit, snacks, etc... Funny thing is that the same guys selling sunglasses would come by over and over and over again asking if we wanted to buy some!

* I spotted these adorable little girls selling fruit and snacks by the port.

* There are wild chickens EVERYWHERE on this Island!

*And puppies too! The owner of this shop tried to sell this one to me for 20,000 Rupiahs, which is about $2.50! Anyone want an Indonesian puppy?!

* The women in Indonesia can all do this! They carry huge things on their heads! I saw one woman carrying about 50 lbs of wood! Amazing!!

* Aaron and I decided we should buy some food for the ferry... So, we bought some from this lady. It was 20,000 Rupiahs, and we had 18,000, so we haggled with her. I offered one of my razors to cover the extra cost and she obliged! :)

* This was the spicy chicken and rice we bought from her.

* The weather has not been so great since we arrived. Usually it's either raining, cloudy, or SUPER windy... which made our 5 hour ferry ride a bit of an adventure! Not to mention, it literally moved 2 miles an hour across the ocean... Picture the ferry in Balboa going cross the ocean! There were so many sea sick people! We were happy when we finally reached land!

* When we finally got to the pier in Lombok, we had to wait about 30 minutes for the boat driver to line up the car ramp! It was actually very comical. Definitely wasn't the most efficient Ferry docking I've seen.

* Once we arrived in Lombok, we jumped in another van and drove about an hour to another pier with some other people.

* Our van driver was an old Indonesian man with about 3 teeth! I was sitting in the front seat next to him and he was enthralled with anything I did. If I took a picture, he wanted to see it. IF I ate something, he wanted to watch me eat it. When I took my ipod out and started to listen to music with Aaron, he quickly reached for the play button on his Van CD player and cranked up the volume!! We listened to American songs set to trance music. He would tap his fingers to the music and would honk his horn with the beat. It was hilarious!

* The scenery was really beautiful, and the towns we drove through were filled with character!

* Have you ever seen such green mountains. There were filled with foliage: grass, trees, palm trees, etc! This picture DOES NOT do it justice!

* Saw tons of monkeys on the side of the road!

* Played a game with Aaron called stray dog. Whoever spotted 10 stray dogs first won! We played it 3 times! That should give you an idea of how many there were! (And those were just the ones that happened to be walking near the road!)

* We finally arrived at the pier where we would jump on the boat to Gili Meno Island... Although when we got there, this was what we saw... YES, our boat had sunk!


* So, we all piled back into the van and drove through the jungle to a makeshift pier where we were finally able to jump on a boat.

* As you can see, it was almost night time. We waited on the boat for quite a while, hoping the waters would calm down. Finally, as the sun was fading into the sea, and the moon was shining through the clouds, we were off on our boat ride! I'll be honest... It was terrifying! We were going through 6 foot swells, rocking back and forth and up and down! I had my head buried into Aaron's shoulder almost the whole time. The Indonesian local sitting next to me said, "Memories for you!" haha...

* We finally arrived, but it was not at the Island we had planned to go to. We stopped at Gili Air and were told that the waves we too big to take us to Gili Meno and that we would have to catch a boat the next day! You really have to be laid back around here! You never know what's gonna happen. So, we arrived in the dark and walked, in the dark, till we found a place to stay! I'm happy to report, we did!!! We both stayed at Salabose Cottages... Bungalows right on the beach!