Indonesia Day 12

Today was our next to the last day of diving, so we decided to take full advantage and do three dives, two in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Yesterday a new guest, Peter, arrived at the resort when Hinne left.  Peter flew directly from Denmark so was a bit tired when he arrived yesterday afternoon and was not sure if he was going to feel like diving today.  However, he said he slept very well and was ready to go out and do the first two dives of the morning.

After we all had breakfast together, we left around 8 a.m. for the first two dives of the day.  The first dive was at Fukui.  I am running out of words to describe the dive sites.  They are all so beautiful with lots of colorful coral and tons of fish and turtles.  We had a very relaxing dive gliding along. 

The second dive site was at Likuan 2, which we have done before, but is very nice also.  Of course we saw more turtles than you can count along with tons of fish.  This dive site got a little busy after we jumped in, but I’m sure it can get much busier in high season.  We have just been spoiled having most of the dive sites completely to ourselves. 

After the second dive we made our way back to the resort and got cleaned up in time to have lunch at 1 o’clock.  Peter decided he was going to take the afternoon off, but Eric and I were going to do the afternoon dive at 3 o’clock.  Following a nice relaxing lunch and good conversation with Chi, Spencer, and Peter, we made our way back down to the dive shop to head out for our final dive of the day. 

Our last dive of the day was at Muka Kampung.  It was another very nice wall dive.  At several points during the dive we had some pretty good current, so we were flying down the wall with turtles coming at us from above and below and head-on.  I have so much turtle video by now we could probably make a couple hour documentary on turtles. 

Eric had so many problems with his strobes on this trip he finally packed them up yesterday and called it quits on the photos.  One strobe flooded and then the other one was having so many issues it only worked half the time, so he just decided to take the Go-Pro out today to get some boat shots and some shallow water shots when possible.

Day 13

Today was our last full day in Indonesia.  I woke up this morning feeling like I might be coming down with a bit of a head cold, so I decided to skip the diving and just rest.  After breakfast, Eric and the other guest, Peter, set off to do the two morning dives. 

They made the bit longer journey over to the other island, Manado Tua (the volcano-looking island) to dive two sites on the south side.  Eric said the first dive site had a lot of current and the visibility was not great, but of course they still saw a ton of fish.  The second dive site was a bit more relaxed with a lot less current and better visibility.  At second dive site they saw two sea snakes hunting—which we had been wanting to see. 

After the two morning dives, they made their way back to the resort and we began the process of attempting to get all our dive gear dried out and start packing everything up. 

We will be taking a boat back to Manado, Indonesia tomorrow morning around 9 a.m.  The boat ride can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how rough the ocean is, and then it is about a 30-minute to an hour car ride to the airport, again depending on traffic.  Since it is Easter weekend, we aren’t sure if the traffic will be light or heavy.  Our flight leaves Manado airport for Singapore around 2 p.m.

If everything is running on time, we should arrive in Singapore around 5:30 p.m. and we already have dinner reservations at the Italian restaurant we ate at and really liked, Rosso Vino.  We will then be spending the night in Singapore and fly out the next morning for the 16-hour direct flight from Singapore to San Francisco.     

This vacation has gone by way too fast.