Midway through my two month stay in Amed in North Bali, a friend invited me to join him and his girlfriend at a small dive resort called The High Dive on Gili Gede, a tiny island off the coast of the Indonesian island of Lombok. Gili Gede is 3.2 square km in size and only has about 1,000 inhabitants. We spent a few days there and did some diving and a whole lot of nothing. Since I left most of my stuff in Amed, it ended up being a wonderful “staycation”.
Here’s the main pier on the small village at the center of the island. We caught a two hour ferry from South Bali to get to Gili Gede.
The small village dominated by the round mosque.
The High Dive is a long walk or a short boat ride from the main village. There are four single rooms and a larger apartment for families. It’s an incredibly tranquil place.
It was my friend’s birthday while we were there and he’s just blown out the candles for his cake.
Here’s my friend and Nigel Burrow, the owner of The High Dive, having dinner at the one upscale restaurant in the village. Nigel and his wife escaped the corporate grind in Australia over eight years ago. Their second resort is expected to open in the next year and they have a third, much larger project, slowly winding its way through the local legal system.
We could see it raining in nearby Lombok a couple of afternoons, but we stayed nice and dry on our small island.
Here’s some Indonesian officials creating drama for one of the locals.
The room was small, but incredibly comfortable.
Nigel and his wife decided to go with a Cape Cod vibe when they remodeled the resort.
A Day Trip to Lombok
We took a short boat ride to Lombok and rented motorbikes to enjoy some of the dramatic scenery there.
The view of the tip of Gili Gede from the small village in Lombok we arrived at. You can see how young the kids are when they start riding motorbikes.
We left the village and took a long, winding, well paved road through some hills and saw spectacular views of the ocean.
Here we are about to start again after taking one of our many short scenery breaks.
As you can see in the videos below, the riding to get to these viewpoints is incredibly beautiful.
After our riding we had a relaxing lunch at the Sundancer Resort.
The Diving
There are a number of great dive sites near Gili Gede. I dove at Sunken Island, Batu Putih, Jay’s Cathedral and The Canyon.
I did four dives over two days and I was really impressed with how abundant and healthy the coral was here. So if looking at videos of healthy coral bores you, feel free to skip most of these videos 🙂
There was a nice, tight passthrough that led to a small coral covered canyon.
This foliage felt like I was flying over some green fields in Ireland or Scotland.
Seeing a cuttlefish always makes for a successful dive.
And a calm scorpionfish nestled under some coral.