Location: Gili Trawangan, Lombok
Close your eyes. Now imagine you wake up in your bunk. It’s a little on the warm side, so you wander up on deck to get a bit of breeze and a breath of fresh air. Stretched before you are miles of flat, calm, turquoise waters backed by two low islands, and then, as the early morning haze clears, you see the dramatic mountainous slopes of Lombok rising precariously out of the sea in the distance. There is no way to describe a day like today other than to compare it to Christmas morning at age 6. You know that Santa Claus is on the way. Once the stockings are opened, the fun only begins soon. There will be a ridiculously large lunch and more presents to tear through. And so my morning proceeded about Argo. The beautiful daybreak was quickly followed by a short transfer to shore and a dive with one of the local operators.
We headed to a site called Manta Point at the southern end of the island, and as the heat of the day really started to kick in, we plunged into the crystalline blue waters. This is the coral geek in me talking, but the coral cover was phenomenal, with beautiful stands of branching Acropora spp. Mixed with beds of foliose Echinopora sp. and the odd bommie of Porites sp. And I wasn’t the only one appreciating the marine life, although maybe the only one so excited by the corals, a passing white tip reef shark, and pirouetting manta ray ensured all the shipmates jumped out of the water grinning from ear to ear. How do you round up a day diving in Lombok? Well, you sail to Borneo, of course. We set off after lunch with our first sail for quite a while. The wind felt fantastic after weeks of hot motoring, and there was a festive feeling aboard as if the good times were only just beginning. We rounded out the day with a bit of poetry as the crew recited sections of their favorite poems. Dr. Seuss won, hands down. As for what’s next, roll on the orangutans!