A day of snorkeling... Gili Islands

I think we could have stayed on Gili Air for another 3 or 4 days, but alas, this will be our last full day here … But, it’s only because of the Nyepi Festival on the 12th. More on that in my next post. We woke up bright and early today, had breakfast and walked a couple hotels over to Manta Dive, where we met our group of fellow snorkelers! I found this sweet spear gun, leaning against the table!

There’s awesome FREE snorkeling right off the beach at Gili Air, but everyone kept talking about seeing Sea Turtles on their snorkeling trip, and we just couldn’t pass up the chance! So, for $8.00 each, we boarded the boat and headed out! 

I’m pretty sure it’s just not possible to ever take a cute snorkeling picture, but we always give it a good shot! 

The water was beautiful with perfect visibility, which is PRIME conditions for a snorkeling trip. Unfortunately it was sooo clear that we could perfectly see the thousands of baby jellyfish swimming near the top of the water as we swam right through them off the east coast of Gili Meno. UGH! 

We stopped off at 4 different spots between the three Gili Islands during our 9:30am -3:00pm snorkeling adventure! The guide told us that we could have our money back if we didn’t see any turtles, so we knew it would be a guarantee! And, YES, we saw them… beautiful, glorious, elegant giant sea turtles! I swam directly over one for a minute or two and Aaron swam within a foot of one for a long time off the west coast of Gili Meno! All in all we both saw 8 turtles total. Having the guide around to point them out was key, because those darn things camouflage like no other and are almost impossible to spot. As you can see, seeing those kinda made my day!

As an added perk, our snorkeling boat happened to be a glass bottom boat! 

At around noon, we stopped off in Gili Meno for lunch. 

This one’s for you Osteen’s and Rozzell’s! I think I married into the biggest diet coke loving family in the world!

I’m not a huge fan of buying little trinkets while I’m vacationing, in fact I usually never buy anything, but I couldn’t resist buying a turquoise stone bracelet. This guy was walking around selling his handmade jewelry and I told him I loved his necklace and asked if he had a bracelet. He didn’t, but walked over to a table in the shade nearby and made it, just for me! I paid him $3.50, which may be a tad bit more than most great hagglers would get it for, but he was such a nice guy and I wanted to support him! It may be his only sale of the day. 

After lunch, Aaron and I took a walk down the beach to look for shells and see the baby turtles which were all gathered together in a baby turtle pool, where they stay until they’re big and strong enough to make it out in the ocean! 

Then, it was back on the boat for one last snorkeling stop and then back to Gili Air. 

The rest of our day / night was just like the last 2, dinner on the beach, followed by a short walk through town to buy snacks for those late night cravings and then lounging on the balcony of our room, taking in the sounds of the birds, geckos, and whatever other creepy crawlies might be around!