Gili Air - Welcome to Tourist-ville!

Gili Air is one of three small islands on the northwest corner of Lombok. After sailing for 2 days from Gili Banta, we had a decision to make. Favorable winds had enabled us to sail faster than we anticipated (even with a 2 knot current against us), so at the rate we were going, we would arrive at 9 pm in Marina Del Rey. That wouldn’t work. Instead, we could either sit out at sea for a night until the sun rose or stop somewhere along the way to stay for the night. Once we looked at the charts and saw the many stops available, it wasn’t a tough decision.

The Gilis were only 20 miles north of our final destination and were known to be THE vacation spot for locals and tourists alike. Coming from remote Komodo, the scene we came upon was quite a shock to the system. The shorelines were lined with beach umbrellas and tanning tourists. Resorts, restaurants, juice bars and dive shops crowded behind them. Huge passenger ferries barreled into the harbor, dropping off boatloads of sun-seeking tourists all decked out in floppy sun hats, glitzy sunglasses, and lugging overstuffed beach bags. Long fiberglass skiffs also zoomed in, carrying young backpackers wearing only swimming suits and squeezed tightly alongside each other, backs against the hulls like sardines! It looked like they’d all been rescued after weeks at sea!

We tucked and tied up the boat, said a quick hello to our friends on Adomaster (who had come for a day or two on their way down to Marina Del Rey and had ended up staying over a week!), and headed into shore to check out this popular vacation destination.

The dock we tied the dinghy to was by far the nicest one we’d tied to since New Zealand. Maybe this tourism stuff has its perks! When we stepped onto the dusty road, I’m sure we all looked a bit dazed and confused as we struggled to take it all in. Crowds of people wrestling with rolling luggage along the rutted road were lining up to catch the next ferry. A local woman sat selling an assortment of deep fried ‘who-knows-what’.

On the corner, a coffee stand like I’d see in any international airport listed cappucinos and lattes on their entirely English menu. College-aged travelers milled around, discussing their next destination on their gap-year tour, some wearing only bikinis and others in full-length maxi dresses hefting oversized backpacks on their backs and smaller packs secured in front of them. Families passed by with sunscreened toddlers lagging behind, busy licking icecream cones and oblivious to anything else. This seemed to be the convergence zone of all tourists, and Elizabeth and I began playing “name that accent” as we caught snipits of conversations amongst the crowds. Australian, Irish, Russian, German, Portuguese, Swedish, French - it was a united nations of flip-flopped vacationers!

Oddly, no motorbikes with noisy mufflers or buses blaring music and beeping their horns roared past us. As if in an effort to balance the bustle that the first-world travelers brought to this little island, the only modes of transportation were bicycles and pony-drawn carts. Quickly, the kids learned to listen for the jingling bells that hung around the ponies’ necks. “Horse back,” Michael would announce to ensure that we all got out of the way in time to see the carts roll by (a knock off of ‘car back’ which his cycle-savvy Nana had taught him to call out when bicycling). We debated hiring a pony cart to tour around the island, but in the end we decided that after a few days sailing we needed to stretch our legs a bit.

The island was in a state of construction along most of the shoreline. Jess and James on Adomastor had told us the story they’d heard about how any businesses that had built on the land between the main road and the beach were forced to move inland and the old buildings completely bulldozed down.  Perhaps in an effort to broaden the beach to fit in more lounge chairs and umbrellas?  Who knows.  But it caused quite the dust storm when the ocean breezed blew in. Shop owners sprayed water on the dust to subdue it, but even as we walked along enjoying a cone of gelato I imagined it was being coated in concrete dust, as were all of us.

We walked around for nearly three hours before stopping at one of the beachside resort/restaurants for dinner. Michael had a hankering for a hamburger, and we were in just the right place for it. Nearly every menu we looked at included this American staple, and there were some restaurants even named after it - Hamburger Station and Hamburger Harbour. Yes, welcome to tourist-ville, where all foreigners come to get a taste of island life… with cappuccino and a burger.