Mexico Holbox- Whale Shark

Its not quite "the blue planet" production quality but you get the idea. Our budget for the underwater camera was 50 euro hehe! this gut was relatively small only 8 meters.. Wow.

Indonesia Part II

We still dont know HOW, but in the end we managed to leave the Gili's We heard about travellers who were stuck on the Gilis for even 6 months!!!! Anyhow, we were still "thirsty" and we wanted to see more of Indonesia.

So we decided to get a bit more adventurous and we went to the less touristy island Flores. It was a bit exhausting to get there though: a 27 hours bus ride and two ferries. Our "chicken bus" was not only loaded with chickens, but also with construction material and on top: a MOTOR BIKE, that means inside the bus, directly next to Adams head. At this moment we were not

sure if we make it alive to Flores....But the tough journey was worth it. Flores is vey wild and rich in the variety of animals.

So we visited for example the Komodo National Park in order to see the world famous Komodo Dragons. The worlds biggest lizard. Jesus, we felt like in Jurassic Park. These

creatures get to a length of 3 meters and very important they are NO vegetarians. On our Komodo Dragon walking tour we heard about six victims eaten by dragons (also one Swiss tourist) in the last few years. Of course we got a bit nervous when one of them was following us. Please watch the video...Our second experience with the wildlife were the Manta Rays. We met them on a diving/snorkling tour and for sure it was one of our most exciting moments.... Having a group of seven giant manta rays about four meters wide swimming around you was pretty cool! They glided in formation one after the other spiralling tumbling and twirling all in sync like they were showing off! They did a little dance formation for us.

Our next stop was back in civilisation in Ubud, Bali. We spoilt ourselves with several Starbucks Coffees, nice massages and really good "western food". these were our last days in beloved Indonesia until we got to California, but this a another chapter....

Indonesia

30 days ..thats all they give to visit Indonesia and me for one intially didnt grasp its vast size. That was until undertaking a 33 hour nerve wrecking bus jouorney in Java, just to get to Bali I started to understand "hey this is a bloody big country!"You may ask why we put
ourselves through that sort punishemnt,(yeh i know we wont get much sympathy!)well quite simply its the unglamrous side backpacking and making sure you stay on budget and as other hardened travels would say "how much can you see from an aeroplane".

But of course the epic bus journey was all worth it, although our first stop- Kuta is a bit of shit hole. Yeh its fine if your going on the piss for a week thats true. So we got the hell out of there after just one night and started an other not so quite epic journey to the gili islands. The Gili islands can be best described as a place where you just cant escape once you get there -its meant as compliment :). But we did manage to to actually get off the Island
and be a little more adventurous -we climbed Mount Rinjani. It consisted of 3 day and 2 night
trek and was pretty damn cool. I doubt there are many places in the world were you can see a
Volcano island within giant Volcano Rim!

The Gilis really were the closet thing to paradise we have come across on our travels nice beaches, great accomdation, good value, great food, nice snorkeling/scuba diving and most important thorougly great people.