A taste of Gili

The island life

(Dec 22, 2011)

The day after our freediving course, we checked out of Ozzy Bungalows and into Villa Almarik, the more upscale hotel that we discovered on our bike ride north of the island to Coral Ocean 2, the restaurant with delicious pizza but mangy cats wanting to steal food.

Almarik was beautiful. For double the price (apparently we negotiated a very good rate) of Ozzy, we got full housekeeping, excellent breakfast, free welcome massage, free introductory scuba dive, and a bunch of hotel amenities like DVD player, and shampoo.

It was a good thing we switched to this nice hotel too because we ended up spending a lot - and I mean a lot - of time in our room. Both of us were still feeling sick and mostly lying in bed or on the beach chairs. Too sick to even go into the water which was a shame because apparently the snorkeling here is excellent.

I suffered through a combination of drenching sweats at night, nausea that hasn't resolved over two days which is unusual for me, and lightheadedness.

Hopefully it will go away by tomorrow and we can do some snorkeling before we return to Bali.

I actually really like this island. It is similar to Caye Caulker in Belize in that motorized transportation is not allowed, so people get around on bike, horse drawn carriages or walks. It is more charming though, busier, and has real beaches.

It is a busy little place with restaurants trying to get your business each time you go by their menus. Dive shops galore line the street and accommodations of varying degrees of luxury can be found.

Although it takes a really long time for food to come out, the fresh mango juice more than makes up for the delay. Last night, Shannon and I had dinner beside the water watching a lightning storm over Lombok island.

It is dang hot here. It gets over 30C with heaps of humidity. Just laying under an umbrella reading causes me to be drenched in sweat. This would be a perfect time for a fresh fruit juice, except that the power has gone out on the island so the blenders don't work.

The power went out on me a couple nights ago when I went all the way down to the south end of the island to tell Steve we couldn't meet him for dinner. In addition to feeling sick, the chain fell off my bike, and the power went out. All of a sudden, the booming music was doused by silence, the street completely black with the stars emerging in the sky.

Sydney!

Mt. Cook

We left Queenstown and drove the 3 hours up to Mt.Cook. On the way Hannah called and we were able to have a catch up on the phone. Edward took over the driving so I could talk on the phone. Unfortunately we were cut off a few times in "low spots" so we kept having to call each other back! I will not forget when we were cut off for the second time I was waiting for us to drive over this one hill and all of a sudden there it was....A beautiful turquoise blue lake with snow covered mountains in the background! This was our first glimpse of Mt. Cook and it was breath taking. We pulled over onto the side of the road to take photo's. The water was so turquoise colored and the sky so blue and the snow covered mountains, a real picture of beauty.

The rest of the drive up to the mountain was gorgeous as we followed the lake all the way there.



When we arrived we found a place to stay at the backpackers place. A hotel room with a view of the mountains for $100 as opposed to the Lodge room for $230. These were our only options as there is nothing else there, just a Lodge with a restaurant, a pub, an activities center which consisted of a small planetarium/movie screen, and a backpackers hostel.

In the evening we watched a documentary on Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest. It was quite interesting. Later when it became dark we went on a star gazing tour. This turned out to be really good as we both learned a lot. We were able to see many stars through a telescope and also jupiter with 4 of it's moons and identify many of the constelations. The southern hemisphere can see stars that we cannot see in the northern hemisphere. Here we were able to see Betelguese (sounds like beetle juice) which is a massive sun that we aren't able to see from the north. It was really cool!

Betelguese is the low bright orange star
to the left of the mountain in the middle

The next day we went hiking (again!). Our guide from Franz Joseph Glacier recommended the Hooker Valley hike so that is what we did. It was a 3 hour hike that took us over a swing bridge which I was almost blown over due to the crazy strong winds! Along the way we followed a glacial stream all the way to the base of the Mt.Cook glacier. The water was freezing! This was a really nice hike, quite easy, but seemed to take forever and the wind was relentless! This country is extremely WINDY!! Very strong winds that almost blow you over! On the trail was a guy using crutches....not sure how he managed but he was determined.

You can see the base of the glacier covered in dirt just at the waters edge

walking back