Local Enterprise.

The guide who had picked us up at the airport had offerd to arrange a half day tour for us on our first full day and we agreed we would meet him to do this.

We met at 9.00 and were taken off up the coast line to see the Gili islands. The coast itself is beautiful and the Gili Islands, which are not that far off the coast looked like jewels floating in the ocean. It is really hard to describe the beauty of this place, but if in your imagination, you have a picture of a south sea Islam them this meets all of those expectations.

After the Gili Islands we were taken to the monkey forest where Macau monkeys prey on unsuspecting tourists. As we were getting out of the car our guide gave Rosemarie a pack of monkey nuts to feed to the monkeys, she didn't have time to walk around the car before one of the monkeys snatched the pack out of her hand and ran off with it. There is something quite sad about seeing animals like this begging for food from tourists.

After the monkeys we made our way through some spectacular scenery to Mataram the largest city on the island, where apparently a there isn't an awful lot to see apart from the old Dutch Colonial buildings whIch took all of two min

Uses, as they are used by the present government and are heavily guarded.As it was a Sunday most of the rest of Mataram was shut. 

Our next stop was a clay making village ran by a tribe called the Sassaks who seem to specialise in crafts as it was the same tribe who did the weaving we went to on our first day. We didn't buy anything because of the weight and to be honest were not that taken with the quality of the pottery.

Our guide then asked us if we would like to see his house and off we went. This was a fairly small house, where we met mother, and aunts and shared a plate of mango. None of the other adults could speak English, but they seemed genuinely pleased to meet us. We did feel honoured to have been invited.

We got bak to the hotel about lunchtime and had a beer on our balcony looking at the sea. As we're doing this the rainy season started and the rain poured down. After lunch both of us went to sleep for a while before heading down to sunset point to watch the sun go down over Bali. We had done this the day before and it had been worth seeing but the rain meant that there was not a lot to see, which was bait of a pity.

Being creatures  of habit the day ended with the restaurant coming to pick us up so we had a nice meal and then were dropped back at the hotel.