Moving on and narrowly avoiding death by drowning

And so our time on Gili came to an end..........I’m not going to lie, we were both ready to move on. Living cheek by jowl with the natives.........(who seemed to spend the majority of their lives asleep.....wherever they happened to find themselves they would curl up and have a kip. There was a little covered area at the entrance to the “hotel” under which one would always find a group of (mostly men!!) staff, flat out and snoring gently, and the tiny space in the back of the taxi’s of death was the perfect place for forty winks when business was a bit slack.)...........was fine as the Balinese were generally happy laid back people , they enjoyed a chat and spoke very good English, which of course they learn in school and loved to practise whenever the opportunity presented itself. All the young men we spoke to, mostly waiters, said that they would love to travel but hadn’t the money to achieve their dream of seeing the world. Football was something which they loved and were happy to chat about..........much to the distress of Dear Richard, a die hard Chelsea supporter, Manchester United tended to be the team of choice........I generally stopped listening after the first five seconds, preferring instead to peruse the menu and decide what I would be eating in the dark that night !!

The morning of our departure dawned clear and sunny...............and flipping hot. We had managed to squeeze everything back into the cases.............heaven knows how as we seemed to have three times as much as we arrived with two weeks ago!!........and now had only to tell the manager............it was early so he wasn’t napping on the floor behind the counter.............that we were leaving early. He was fine about it and only charged us for the days we had stayed, which was pretty good of him and much appreciated, as it gave us a few more rupiahs to play with on the next stage of our Indonesian travels. A taxi was summoned, we squeezed our luggage and ourselves into the tiny space behind the driver, said a quick prayer and hurtled off along the track for the last time.

I had arranged the ferry and a driver to collect us at the port on Lombok, online. Said driver was clearly very excited to be collecting us and also eager to ensure that there were no mix ups at the meeting point, to this end he sent a picture so that we would instantly recognise him. I didn’t return the favour, figuring that it only needed one of us to be clued up on who we were looking for!! I was also pretty certain that a man with a parrot on his shoulder wouldn’t be hard to miss!!

Against all the odds, and despite a couple of near misses with dogs and a chicken, we arrived safely at the port and were dropped, almost literally, outside the office of the ferry company, and of course there was no one there. The door was open, but inside was deserted........I did a quick check behind the desk, just in case the staff were having a crafty doze between customers, nothing..........and so we waited, inside and then outside, it was very hot and humid and in total contrast to the other side of the island, extremely busy.

Boats were coming in and going out every few minutes, backpackers wandered by carrying impossibly large rucksacks, bicycles, pedestrians and of course the taxis of death all vied with one another for a share of the narrow road outside the office......we took refuge on the steps as to stand anywhere else was inviting death by trampling. We were both feeling a little concerned that we were in the wrong place, so I walked along the road towards the area where people seemed to be embarking and disembarking and looked around for someone to ask..........confirmation that we were was given by a helpful man, and so I legged it back to the office where we continued to wait..........and wait...........finally, when the time for our ferry had almost arrived a very harassed little man came running along the road.........he was carrying a clip board and waved cheerfully as he approached. He signed us in, gave us a sticker and indicated that we should follow him. He led us to the dock..........and then buggered off.....and so we were left looking around and wondering where to go...........finally we were ushered towards a boat, our luggage was taken away and we boarded.

He muttered something about the dock on Lombok being closed which left us even more concerned.....but an announcement on the boat explained that as this was the case we would be taken there from the place where the boat was going to dock. Every thing was very rushed and confused, but there was nothing we could do so we settled down and prepared for the short crossing to Lombok. We set off.......our destination could be seen across a narrow straight of water, the captain opened up the engines....and nothing happened.......there was a noise which indicated that something was very wrong with the machinery down below, and a smell of burning oil........the boat stopped moving and began to drift sideways. Crew members raced to the front of the boat and there was the sound of banging, the captain tried again..........joy, we began to move towards the other side ..............short lived, as a grinding noise heralded engine failure once again............more banging ( Dear Richard was losing his patience and doing a lot of tutting!!) and we set off very slowly ........and so we proceeded, forward for a bit.........drifting for a bit.........until finally we reached the pier and came along side.

I need you now to try and picture the scene......our boat was bobbing up and down energetically along side a concrete pier which was at least ten feet higher that the deck. In order to disembark we had to step from the boat onto a set of concrete steps which were very narrow, steep and slippery, and they went up to the left, rather than straight ahead. I had a large rucksack on my back and the gap across which I had to step, was ranging from about a foot to three feet, depending on how close the captain was able to get. My turn came, Dear Richard had managed the gap and was waiting with an extremely concerned look on his face, the boat was bobbing alarmingly and the gap was increasing and decreasing...........falling between the boat and the pier, especially with the rucksack on my back would have spelt curtains and no mistake............I suppose I could have taken the rucksack off but I was in a queue and felt pressured to get on with it, so I picked my moment and jumped onto the steps........there was a second when I felt myself falling backwards, there was nothing to grab hold of..........but thank goodness for Dear Richard.....he grabbed me and hauled me onto the steps and disaster was averted............I had to crawl up the steps on my hands and knees though, they were so flipping steep!!! I have no pictures as I was quite busy staying alive, but afterwards I wished that I had taken some as my description in no way does justice to the hairy nature of the situation!!!]

Once at the top I said a silent prayer of thanks and we set off to find our transport..........confusion reigned once again as no-one seemed to know where to go, finally we were paired up with a young couple who were going to the same place and were invited to step inside a vehicle which didn’t look big enough for two of us, let alone five, I elected to sit in the front, which turned out to be a huge mistake as the chauffeur’s driving skills had clearly been honed on a stock car circuit. As we left he asked where we were staying and said that he would take us to our hotel as it was on the way..........which was fine but there then ensued twenty minutes of hysterical messaging as I tried to let Dani know that we didn’t need him to pick us up.......during which it transpired that he wasn’t waiting at the port, but had gone to the airport where he was sitting ( he didn’t mention the parrot!!) waiting for us. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing I managed to get the message across, and was free once more to enjoy the rest of the dodgem car ride to our hotel. Our driver, a chatty man ( a little too chatty for me as I felt that while he was chatting he wasn’t watching the road, although he managed to avoid the many mopeds, dogs, chickens and a cow we met along the way ) pointed out various sights and negotiated the up and downhill road in a way that only a native of the area could. He clearly knew when a steep incline was coming up as he turned the air con off in order to give the engine a little more oomph, as soon as we crested the hill he would flip it back on again........and so we went from freezing to sweating all the way to the hotel, which we finally reached in one piece..........the trauma of my near death experience on the boat and the drive had removed all thoughts of the hotel from my mind.........I was really hoping that it would be a lovely as it looked on the internet ..............my heart was in my mouth as we pulled off the road................I needn’t have worried, it looked beautiful.....and so it proved to be as we were shown to the most enormous suite I had ever seen. We had a lounge/diner with a TV, a separate bedroom with the biggest TV I had ever seen and a dressing room/toilet/shower that was roughly the size of a small country!!........I will admit to having a huge grin on my face, after Gili it was like checking in at the Ritz.

We immThe hotel ( and this one actually deserved to be called one) was right on the beach. Everywhere were fountains and water channels ( I made a mental note to spray vigorously before coming out after dark as this was perfect biting bastard breeding territory ). There were three pools, one of which was for children only.....we both decided that we would not be going anywhere near this one.........and one of which was glass fronted on three sides and made the whole place look impossibly glamorous. It was lined with sun beds facing the ocean.......luckily the hotel wasn’t busy as there were nowhere near enough to accommodate everyone during high season.....I had visions of glamorous guests scrambling to get their towels down at dawn in order to ensure they had somewhere to park their high maintenance bums for a day of sun worship and posing in their tiny thongs.... there were a few of those in evidence, and not always on bottoms that were best suited to them..........anyway, it was to one of these beds that we made our way, and as the ferry and car trip had left us both traumatised, we ordered a large vodka tonic each, laid back and watched the sun as it started to set over a calm, blue sea.

We had dinner that night right next to the ocean, the service was wonderful........and the food was delicious........the lights were low, but not so low that we couldn’t see what we were eating and we didn’t have to negotiate a sandy track to get there. It felt as though we had been dropped in paradise but luckily we weren’t having to pay a fortune to be there...........although I had decided on Gili that for the rest of the trip I was not going to choose the cheapest accommodation...........I had had enough of sharing a room with ants and other wildlife( Dear Richard being an exception to that rule!!) and not having clean sheets for a fortnight.

And so we took ourselves, tired but happy, off to bed.........and sank onto a mattress which we weren’t afraid to examine under the sheet, and the softest pillows imaginable. I fell asleep thanking the angel that had saved me from a watery grave.........and counting my blessings.........which took quite a while as there were rather a lot!!!