The next day, on wednesday 4th we took the ferry to Gili Air. I had heard good stuff about this island and Sandra was very much looking forward to going back there.

We started by going to Dive 7 seas, where she did her DM a few months ago, to say hi to her friends. Then once we'd checked in our backpacker, I went for a walk around the island.Not literrally around the island as it's bigger that Sandra made me believe but I walked a fair bit to the yoga place H2O only to enquire (I actually never went to any yoga class ! Lol!).

I joined Sandra at the Chill Out, her HQ, where she was having a drink with Sandra, a friend of hers. The Chill Out is the place we spent most of our time. That day, Fred, another friend of Sandra, joined us.The 5 of us drunk a fair bit and some of us managed a shower before going out to the Legend. To make it short, the Legend hosts a DJ every wednesday and the music is so bad that the only way to suffer it is to drink. Which we did. Too much. Way too much.

The way back was epic. I had a vague idea of where we where on the island and where we had to go. And it didn't seem right. Indeed ! Sandra made us walk around the island, almost literraly ! It was soooo much shorter to turn right as we went out the Legend but Sandra made us go left. And with alcohol in our system it took about 1,5 times longer than it normally would.We went to bed around 5am and Sandra woke me up at noon,

One of the dive instructor of Dive 7 seas was leaving Gili Air for a week and was looking for someone to stay at hers to look after Dakota, her 5 months old kitten. We had seen the place the day before and were moving in on hangover day. It was really nice to have a free place to stay for a week, especially with a kitten there ! But the place was disgusting ! So gross that Sandra couldn't take it anymore and got a cleaner to clean the place. We had never seen anything like this before. And i'm not even talking about the housemate whom we only met once as she was leaving for the week too. The weirdest person I have ever met.

She went in the house the day we met her, we were sleeping and I had left the key in the lock so I got up, opened the door and went back to bed. She called me when I was in the room and asked me if I was a photographer because I had left my camera and housing on the living room table. WTF?! So I said yes and went back to bed. But she called again and started talking with her horrible english. So horrible and as weird as she was, I didn't get a word. Just taht she was very odd and as she told me herself, praranoid...

So we had a place to stay, that got clean within the first few days of our stay. On the day I wandered around I aske a dive shop, randomly, how much a dive was and we got to talk about photography, macro diving and night dive.Then I saw they had a freediving course. And because Sandra couldn't dive (I would have gone with her with Dive 7 seas, for sure !) and because I had always wanted to try freediving, I did SSI Level 1 freediving course.Well, I'm not gonna talk too much about it as it wasn't the best bit of my trip.The instructor was going by the book but gosh he had no compassion, empathy or any human feelings and I felt like a robot (a tough one!) was doing the class. And I was by myself in the class, so no other classmate to have a laugh with. Oh and I had no tank, which is the point of the course but because I didn't have fun with the guy, I didn't enjoy the class. And I even hesitated going back the second day.i only did because I had started it and wanted to go all the way through, didn't wanna regret it. On top of that, the price was 3 times as much as what I had understood. I was gutted !!! It took me a good 2 or 3 days to start forgetting about this course.

We had 4 days left in Gili.The weather had been really bad for the last 2 days, during my freediving course and sunday wasn't any better.Only on monday did we have a gorgeous sun so we spent our entire day in the sun, baking more than bathing :) And we loved it.And we were happy we did because the next 3 days were simply awful !!! Rain, rain, rain and more rain. Besides reading books, drinking and eating we didn't do much. We managed to go diving on our last day for Sandra's ear was healed by then

The first dive we did was Simon's Reef. A gorgeous dive site with a sandy bottom at around 28m surrounded by coral formations, hosts of many fish and creatures. The visibility was15 to 20 metres. We saw a few really nice nudibranches (I always love finding some !), a blue spotted sting ray that was hiding just below me as I was swimming 1m above the sandy bottom and the highlight of this dive, my very first pygmy sea horse !!! So so so small but so so so cure !!! And very hard to take in picture as it was hiding well inside the coral. At the end of the dive, while heading for the safety stop we also saw a turtle and a cuttle fish. It was indeed a very good dive !!

The second dive was on Hans Reef. The first impression of the dive was pretty negative. Arlie, the DMT, checked the current and viz and told us the viz was very s***ty and the water green.Sandra knowing the place and because it was a muck dive site, I asked Sandra and also Raf, our guide, if this dive was worth doing... Sandra didn't wanna do it and I hesitated myself, for a while. Until I thought "f*** it, it's my last dive before I don't know when" so off I went. The first 10 minutes or so were in shallow water, no deeper that 6 metres. There the water was indeed very green and the viz about 2 to 3 metres. And suddently as we reached 10-15 metres, it opened up to a viz of about 20 metres. And we saw nudibranch after nudibranch, I spotted a tiny lion fish (about 7 or 8 cm long), some bommies where standing there in the middle of nowhere, some hosting an incredible amount of small fish. I stayed an hour and still had over 60 bar in my tank and I wished I could have stayed longer. I was a great dive !!

We came back on the island pretty late, around 2.30pm and needed lunch. We went to Garden Café to have a good internet connection and good food. We stayed there for a while. We only moved for happy hour at the Zipp (just next door) to find Mila (Sandra's instructor for her DM) and Fred. We drunk a fair bit and went for diner at an upscale restaurant (well, upscale for a local or a backpacker but not that expensive !!) where the salad bar is a buffet you can help yourself from, as much as you want. The food was amazing ! A big party was going on at the Legend again that night but none of us felt like going.

The next day, on thursday 11th, Sandra and I left Gili Air to go to Jimbaran, South of Bali.