Paradise... at a price

Gili Air is a beach paradise. White sand, coral reefs, turquoise water, unpaved roads... However to get there from Bali involves a bumpy hour in a speedboat. And when Aisha fights taking her car-sickness medicine, plus you decide she might be all right since lately she has been fine in all the car trips, plus the sea is pretty calm, the price you pay is a load of semi-digested chocolate milk and pancake on your lap 10 minutes into the ride. So Aisha may have been improving in the car, but you can't extrapolate that to boats. By the end of the ride Esther was also looking a bit green. Only the boys were right as rain. Except for my scraped knee, which spent an hour pressed against the seat in font.

But it's worth the price. Which could have been worse - many boats depart from the South of Bali and take a fair while longer (or better, Gili Air is a stone's throw away from Lombok). There are 3 Gili islands. First we stopped at Gili T, the largest and supposedly most party-friendly, where most people got off (and we did a bit of a cleanup and changed seats). There were no passengers for Gili Meno, the smallest and quietest, so we skipped it and went straight to Gili Air, which is sort of in between: not party but not completely laid back either. Also it has some of the nicest beaches and snorkeling areas.

A quick look at the map told us we could walk to the hotel with our luggage (there is a mafia of horse-and-cart drivers charging extortionate prices to take you round). It's lovely to be able to walk around without motorbikes or cars whizzing past (though the cart drivers do a fair job at taking their place), only the occasional rusty bicycle.

After dumping our luggage we ran straight to the beach. It is brochure-perfect so we took a few thousand photos. Had lunch on an elevated platform overlooking the beach, with Lombok in the background.

Completed our first day in Gili with more sandcastles, a bit of swimming, strolling into the sunset, and dinner watching Minions at a small open air cinema at one of the beach restaurants. After the film Lucas made friends with another boy and they discharged their batteries running around for a bit in preparation for a good night's sleep.