Goooooood morning divers!
A brand new day, and a brand new opportunity to discover the best scuba diving scenes for you to plan your own trip to this slice of paradise!
In this part of the blog, we visited Meno Wall, Bounty Wreck & Manta Point, on which you will find the details below. And we even got "attacked" by a Remora and caught it on tape for you to make fun of me!
Now to start with the fun start: Above you'll see a Remora. These fish are also referred to as "sticky fish" because they tend to attach themselves to sharks, whales, and turtles. Occasionally they will attach themselves to your tank, doing no harm. But this fellow was after something it seemed. Below is the initial "scouting" and after that, we found out why he was following me for 15 minutes straight!
He first swirls around me, then tries to attach or bite(?) my leg, which doesn't hurt, but it gave me a bit of a scare!
He wouldn't back off and then he found his "prey" below :)
I've spent 5 days in Gili Trawangan now and the island is growing on me for sure. Besides diving and the main boulevard I've walked around the entire island and discovered many hidden "inland" gems. As you leave the coast the island becomes much more basic. In a good way in my opinion. The food is cheaper, the people friendlier and the shops less insisting. There are still parties every night on the east side of the island if you wish, but if you want to slow down and chill, I would suggest going more inland!
Also, I have booked a stay at Nusa Lembongan for a week, since I feel I haven't fully explored all the dive sites yet. Nusa Lembongan is just beside Nusa Penida and I hope I can fit as many dives here as I could do.
The next stop will be The Philippines in July.
You can read about my last visit in 2018, but I'm eager to return to this diving paradise and find the hidden gems, nobody has told us about, so stay tuned!
First Dive "Meno Wall": We depart at 9.30 AM after a short briefing me and Yohan, my guide get on the boat and we sail for about 5 minutes just east of the harbor of Gili Trawangan. The dive site is just off the coast of Gili Meno in the northwestern part of the island.
We descend to 5 meters first to make sure everything is okay, then continue to 25 meters.
After a while, you will encounter the "wall", which is around 100 meters wide and runs from 5 meters deep to 18 meters. The wall has an abundance of life, fish, and corals and we see turtles, pipefish, moray eels, etc.
After about 30 minutes the wall ends and continues into a slope and you will end your dive somewhere there.
The videos here will give you an impression of the dive site:
Second Dive "Manta Point": The second dive started again at 02:00 PM and was Manta Point! I wanted to do this dive, not necessarily because I wanted to see Manta's, more so because the dive centers generally aren't too fond of going there and my interest was peaked.
They told me they haven't seen a Manta since 2018 which is 4 years at the time of writing, so I wanted to change this! Unfortunately, it wasn't me who spotted the first manta in 4 years, but a fellow diver. Once we ended the dive the entire boat and dive center was witness to this incredibly rare occurrence that is: A Manta, at Manta Point!
The dive site itself is very bland. It's mostly a slope of 25 meters deep into a sandy bottom. There are some big rocks and coral colonies here and there, but not much to see besides the Manta ray which is very rare nowadays. I truly believe this dive site should be removed unless they can offer a certain guarantee to see manta rays like in Nusa Penida for example.
Please check out this amazing clip filming an octopus changing color!
The next day: Mirko's Reef & Seahorse bay!
Mirko's Reef:
Mirko's Reef is a dive site not many centers go visit, except for when demand is high enough (5 people minimum usually). I decided to put my name up 2 days before, and we actually got a group together for this, and the next dive!
The Reef is just east of Gili Meno and the name comes from a diver whose favorite dive site this was. It's a deep dive, meaning you will dive deeper than 18 meters. The reef starts from 15 meters to about 40 before a sandy bottom continues.
We started at 15 meters at which you will see a beautiful coral garden stretching along the entire east coast of Gili Meno. After a while, the garden drops down, almost to a wall dive!
We had a great encounter with a cuttlefish here, who was not afraid at all!
I have posted some pictures below. If you want to watch the videos of these moments, scroll down below or visit my youtube channel
Seahorse Bay
Now, this is a different dive than you're used to when diving on the Gili Islands!
Seahorse bay is actually just off the coast of northern Lombok. A beautiful little bay where diving is between 5 - 20 meters, making this ideal for open water divers and macro lovers.
This site has a sandy bottom where you can find mostly small stuff, except for the occasional turtle and massive frogfish that resides here! You will see shrimp, moray eels, ribbon eels, scorpion fish, cuttlefish, and octopus!
Want to visit Gili Trawangan yourself? Book your stay and/or travel guide here!
Don't forget to check out the clips I've made below!
Want to visit Gili Trawangan yourself? Book your stay and/or travel guide here!
Don't forget to check out the clips I've made below!