Showing posts with label Diving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diving. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Top 10 Dive Spots in Indonesia


Raja Ampat. Utter these two words in a coterie of erudite divers and knees weaken. In slack jawed wide eyed day dreams, cameras are clutched and exotic itineraries purchased. Raja Ampat presents the bulletproof thesis in the lengthy tome of Indonesian diving. A place so pure that its strongest ally in its quest for preservation is its remote location, it calls out to the world's divers in a tantalizing whisper from a far out land.  It is a better version of Sipidan without the tshirts and dive centers fist fighting over the daily diver quota. Hitting Raja Ampat 10 years ago was like catching Springsteen at his elementary school talent show. Hitting it today is more the same, albeit with more shutterbugs jockeying with flashbulbs for wobbegongs. But it is not all about r4 as it is known colloquially, the whole of Indonesia diving has sort of an indie rock charm that eludes divers in mega locations like The Great Barrier Reef or Thailand. Spreading out across the equator for 3000 miles from Pulau Weh in the west to Papua in the East, the bustling residents and corals of Indonesia's underwater scene remain consistently brilliant.



Here are 10 superb Indonesian diving locations

1. Raja Ampat (4 Kings), West Papua 

 
2. Komodo, East Nusa Tenggara

 
3. Bunaken, Sulawesi 

 
4. Lembeh Straits, Sulawesi 

 
5. Wakatobi, Sulawesi 

 
6. Nusa Lembongan, Bali 

 
7. Tulamben, Bali 

 
8. Pulau Weh, Sumatra 

 
9. Banda Islands, Molluccas 

 
10. Find a new place with a local guide and name it something menacing like Shark's Fang Pinnacle 







Tuesday, July 21, 2009

There will be blood (Pemuteran, Bali)


It was a massacre.  They outnumbered us and came while we slept.  They got exactly what they wanted, and what they wanted was our blood.  I awoke at about 3 am, and noticed some blood on my pillow.  I figured it was a bloody nose, attributing it to our rigorous travel schedule.  I inspected my nose, found no problems and went back to bed.  About 2 hours later, Kristin and I both woke up, and our sheets had numerous blood stains.  We looked up at the netting that draped our bed, and what we saw made us shudder.  Mosquitoes, everywhere.  We had been eaten alive while we slept.  A fleeting attempt at genocide was made at this point.  We went around the room like desperate banshees smashing bugs in our hands, spraying 100% deet bug juice around like an assailed woman wields a bottle of mace.  There was panic and deliberate attempts were made to kill, but our comfort would not come.  We had to wash our own blood from our hands.  This is never a good thing.  We laid in bed smacking at our arms and bodies, waiting for the morning to come. A rooster jestfully crooned on in the distance, and our Indonesian innocence slipped right through the cracks in the floor of our lavish bungalow.  Staring at the ceiling, both of us realized something, mosquitoes suck.

"I dont know, maybe 60 or 70 bites," I told Kristin as we sped away from our villa the following morning heading towards the westernmost point in Bali.  I would try and count them, but it was a futile endeavor.  We both knew which appendages were peaking out from our sheets because our bodies told the tale of their feast.   We pictured mosquitoes sucking blood until they exploded, swerving around the air like drunk maniacs, stopping only to high five.  We must have been fun, two exhausted american travelers, too starry eyed to notice that pitfalls of Indonesian living.  My face looked like that of a 6 year old with chicken pocks.  Kristin's shoulders looked like she spent a whole day wearing a backpack with straps made from poison oak.  We looked like a couple of freaks, and we were about to be right at home.  We were on our way to Gilimanuk Bay, a driftway between Java and Bali, home to some of the strangest creatures that the world has to offer, essentially an ocean freak show.

Our dive was great.  We saw a bunch of weirdos down there, and Kristin even liked it.  Our dive partners were an Italian couple from Paris, and we had a good time talking with them at a local warung for lunch.  The dive site was like a desert, littered with small oasis of quaint villages filled with odd residents.  I will let the pictures explain it below.

After our dive and lunch, we returned to the Amertha to settle our bill with the hotel and dive shop.  We spent millions.  Gusti returned to pick us up and take us to south Bali.  He took one look at us, and said, "You need Bokasi."  Bokasi is apparently an all natural salve popular in Indonesia.  He told us to rub it on our bites, and we would be bagoosh (good).  We were informed that people even use this antidote for stomach aches, with a few drops in a glass of water.  I have no idea what sort of alchemy is going on in this bottle, but it works.

Gusti took us through the rice terraces and mountains to south Bali.  It was a very long but beautiful journey.  We even stopped at a real Balinese department store on the way, and were very impressed with the deals.  They also had super nintendo and sega genesis games for sale, as if they were new.  This brought back fond memories for me.  We arrived at our hotel, Le Meridien Tanah Lot, just in time to watch the sun set over the Indian ocean.











A young Lionfish

Some slugs


Nice camo buddy


A village of weirdos


The big ole mean mug of a frogfish


A cagey abode

A sunken ship


A family of lion fish


Maybe friends, maybe not


The strangest creature that I saw, Kristinfish


Gross


A large school

A bunch of urch


Mean looking clams


What are you looking at punk?

Orange frogfish


Kristin sat out the second dive

These creepy things were everywhere

Large star


Seahorse


Pretty colors


A fish hauling by

An eel face


Very weird creature of some kind


Close-up of creature

Cuttlefish


2 cuttlefish which look like squids


Another ship

whats up man

Bottom dweller


Luxury accommodation


More underwater scenes


from a very weird place


Last day of underwater pictures

Coming up in Secret Bay

My bites


Rice terraces on the way through central Bali


Just nerding along

A random roundabout statue in Tabanan


Tanah Lot at sunset - more on this place tomorrow

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Chanteek Menjangan Island, Bali





Today, Kristin and I hired a driver, boatman, and an underwater guide to take us snorkeling at the Menjangan Island Reefs.  Menjangan Island is part of the protected area of West Bali National Park.  It is a very famous dive and snorkeling site in far West Bali, and many people place it on their shortlist for best in the world.  We can both see why.

 
Java mountains



On our way to Menjangan



Our little boat that we had all to ourselves



Some corals



Yellow fish that would not let me get close enough



The drop off to the ocean below



Lots of life down here



Clown



My nemo shot



Dinner time, hard to tell in this pic, but this was a big fella



So much to see, obviously, this place blew our minds


A big clam



Pretty black, white, and pink fish



They looked like they were on their way somewhere important



Such beautiful colors



I think these are some kind of batfish



Thanks for the pic, Geda



It goes down really deep



Scorpion fish - very poisonous



Can you see him?



I saw this freak on my way up, he let me in close



Geda (our guide) and me taking a break from the chanteek (beautiful)



Bali



A bat cave, click through for all its batty glory



The temple on Menjangan Island



On our way to site number 2



The bigger red guy would climb right into your hands


A Moorish Idol


Some of the coral is so intricate you have to stop
and admire it



I took about 300 pictures underwater, most look like this



An exotic lobster



A weird large fish



Geda cradling a sea cucumber, man those things are weird
 
A fish cruising by



Medusa looking



This fish came to check us out, very friendly.



A Blue clam



Some crazy



This fish had the prettiest markings



Chasing the fish off



Another sea cucumber



Another cool fish escaping my lens



Other-worldly


The deep beyond



We surface to this, wow



Docked


Our pool



Young Balinese girls practicing dance



Tomorrow, we have to get up real early to dive Secret bay, which is in between Java and Bali.  We will hopefully see some serious Strange there.