Project Runaway

My permanent home is on Vancouver Island. To get to the mainland, one hops on a B.C. ferry for the 1 hour and 35 minute trip across the Strait of Georgia. I have been asked how often I make this trip and the truth is not often. This usually leads to a puzzled look on the face of the person who posed this question. Which then leads them to ask me if I ever get ’stir crazy’ living on an island. This is where I patiently explain that I don’t live on ‘Gilligan’s Island, with 1 palm tree and a 360 view of the ocean. My island  is over 30,000 sq km. It is bigger than Timor and Sicily, and just smaller than Taiwan. If you flew in blindfolded not knowing where you were, you would not know you were on an island.

That is not the case on the tiny Gili Islands off the coast of Lombok, in Indonesia. We are on the ‘biggest’, Gili Trawangan. At 3.5 sq km, you know you are on an island, there is no denying it. White sand and the most mind-blowing turquoise waters left us gaping when we first arrived. If hanging out on a small island may lead to going sitr-crazy, then this place is a really really good spot to test it out.

There is not much to do here but snorkel, dive, and relax. You do not need to charter a boat or pay for a snorkel trip, just walk out your door to the beach. To say it was fantastic is an understatement. I love to snorkel, I could go everyday for hours, so I do. Luc, as much a fish as myself, also spends the days with me in the deep blue, and when not tanning her bottom, Nic joins us also. I have snorkeled off the coasts of the Hawaiian Islands, Turkey, and Thailand, and for me, snorkeling here has been the best. The diversity of the sea life along the reef  is rich and abundant. There are turtles, squid, red snapper, and about a zillion different kinds of fish. How could someone get bored with such an aquarium at our fingertips?

There is one main street on Gili T, there are no motorized vehicles here and the taxis are sketchy (in my opinion) horse-drawn carts. You can rent bikes and bike around the island so we give it a shot. It takes a whole entire hour, and that included having to push the bikes where the road was soft and sandy and a pit stop to cool off in the water. Hmm…okay, so you really wouldn’t want to do that every day, but there were still no signs of stir craziness.

I decided to take a closer look at the locals. Most are young males who seem to be trying to be Bob Marley. Is that because island life and reggae just naturally fit or is it because they think we think it goes hand and hand? After a few days, O.K. it was more like a few minutes, you realize that almost all of these guys are stoned. Then when you take the time to actually read the restaurant signboards, you see that some advertise super-duper-mega-radical-maximum-f#*kin-bloody-fresh-magic-mushrooms. I guess you need to test, test, test the merchandise in order to ensure quality control?

As Indonesia has a shortage of power, the electricity on the Gilis goes out every day, often in the evening. Some businesses have generators but many do not, and it is not uncommon for us to be sitting in a restaurant in the dark. We learned to order BBQ a lot.  Every night as we walk back to our bungalows, in the dark with our flashlights, trying to navigate the huge puddles of water on the sandy uneven road, we pass by many many places with no generator, thus no power. The only evidence of life is the glow of cigarettes and the murmur of voices as they sit in the dark. Sometimes these voices offer the above mentioned super-duper-mega-radical-maximum-f#*kin-bloody-fresh-magic-mushrooms. That might make sitting around in the dark more interesting. Not surprisingly we still opt out. There is not enough boredom in the world to convince me to try some sketchy fungus on this tiny island.

Apparently, the phrase “stir crazy” is a prison term, “stir” being slang for prison. A prison with turquoise waters and white sand beaches? Hardly, but eventually we decide it is time to leave the island. Perhaps instead of the restlessness from being stuck in one place too long, it is visions of heading home dancing in our heads that causes us to decide to move on.