Back to the Gilis

Try as we may any attempt to follow in David Attenborough's footprints are foiled at every Indonesian turn. We decided to book a flight to Flores so we could go to Komodo and see the dragons. Glitch number one, if using a credit card you need at least 48hours. We had 46. So we headed to a travel agent who was very nice and told us to come back after our cycling tour. By then lion had sneaky doubled the price so sadly we didn't book. Onto option C and back to Gili we decided to go. This time we checked out the boats a bit more and ended up on a much nicer ferry - with a sundeck - and it was a delightful journey complete with dolphin spotting. Not so much for Sophie as the breakfast was banana based (no likey bananas) so arrived with very low blood sugar. A quick sprite and lunch later things were back on track.

We rented some SUP boards, went for a bit of a paddle and the renter guy suggested we paddle over to the next island and said he'd take us the next day. The next morning (possibly after a few too many the night before) we met him and his friend and paddled on over. He'd brought some snorkeling things for us so we went for a bit of an explore where I promptly scraped the top of my foot open on some coral. When back at the shore he suggested we go to the lake, I double checked it was fine to go a) with no shoes and b) with no clothes. Yes, yes, 2 minutes. Which actually meant 15 minutes over blisteringly hot and very pointy coral. Rank as my feet are they are nowhere near as hardy as the local's super resilient soles and by this point the felt very raw. And so we journeyed back over to gili t but the wind had picked up making it quite the bumpy ride. We (finally) arrived back very tired and searched for a nap spot on the beach.

We are off to Lombok tomorrow to climb Indonesia's second highest volcano, Rinjani. Of the three things I wanted to do on this trip this was very definitely below orangutans and dragons and it is the only thing we are doing due to time. Sophie is basically dragging me away kicking and screaming. Hill walking over wildlife. Ugh. Supposedly the views are amazing and make it all worth while so I'll let you know I'd that is in fact the case. And I guess I look back on D of E with fond memories...