Day 3 in Lombok saw me the eager beaver, excited to go diving off the famed Gili islands (Gili Air, Gili Menos and Gili Trawangan) West of Lombok off Senggigi.
It was a 2 hour drive from Kuta to Senggigi which probably gave Wei Yuet ample time to decide if he would be (and he was!) up for trying an introductory dive despite not having a certification. I am glad he said yes as he was (as I guessed it) calm and like a fish in water after all.
The first dive off Deep Turbo dive site was rewarding with us sighting a black tip shark resting on the sandy bottom the moment we submerged beneath the surface at 30 metres. I was thrilled the moment my dive master made the hand sign for shark and eyes went wide scouring the vicinity in no time at all, and definitely beaming at having seen a live shark after seeing so many dead ones at Tanjung Luar just the day before.
We had surface interval time for lunch at Gili Trawangan which was teeming with tourists, dive centres and accommodation sites. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the floating rubbish of empty snack packets, drink packets, cigarette boxes etc amidst the clear blue close to the shores of the island either. Sekotong where Kern and I went diving back in September in Southwest Lombok was definitely more picturesque and untouched comparatively.
Second dive off Bounty Wreck turned out to be a drift dive where I started to feel unwell and was unable to control my buoyancy for most parts of the dives and almost threw up into my regulator at the end of the dive. Nice reef fishes, crabs and micro marine life we got to see, nonetheless.
It was a fruitful dive day for me, save for the vomiting and fever I ran up later in the day which we figured must have been a result of the lunch at Gili Trawangan island. Good things Gili Ecotrust are doing there too with getting the coral reefs restored and preventing the fishermen from dynamite fishing in the area but it was such a pity to behold polluted shores around the island indeed.
