Indonesia Day 7-8
Sun, Apr 9 2017 02:01
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Indonesia Day 7 and 8
Another two days of diving under our belts. Yesterday we did three dives, two in the
morning and one in the afternoon. They
were all really nice dives with lots of colorful coral and marine life. We dove Mike’s Point, Mandolin, and
Fukui. There are turtles everywhere
here. We saw a big school of bat fish that
were very cooperative and Eric was able to get a couple good photos of
them.
Today we woke up and the ocean in front of the resort was
like glass. The last few days it has
been a bit choppier but nowhere near being considered rough. We did two dives today after breakfast. There was finally another guest at the
resort, so the three of us, Spencer and our guide, Eric, headed out for the
first dive at 8 a.m. The dive site was
only a short distance from the resort and it was a nice relaxing dive with not
much current. Our guide, Eric, pointed
out lots of macro life, like orangutan crabs, nudibranchs, shrimps, etc. Most of it was too small for me to see--even
with my new bifocal dive mask.
We finished the dive and got back on the boat. The other guest that was diving was already
back on the boat and apparently had had some issues with his ears being slow to
clear, etc. He decided it was wise not
to do the second dive, so the boat captain took him and Spencer back to the
resort. We headed out for the second
dive which was again a very short distance from the resort. After our surface interval, we dove in. This was again another nice, relaxing dive
with lots of macro life (along with the turtles). Eric had been having some issues with one of
his camera strobes not working properly on the first dive, so he decided not to
take his camera on the second dive.
I had my camera with me and we decided to put the tripod on
it to see if that would help stabilize some of the shots. The camera is still very new to me and it has
obviously been a while since the last dive trip, so I am still getting used to
using it and how to get the best shots. After
a lovely dive, we headed back to the resort for lunch and to relax.
After lunch, we headed to our bungalow and had an afternoon
nap. Then Eric got up and did some work (have
to pay for the trip somehow) and then handed the computer over to me to type up
the blog.
Whilst I was typing the blog, Eric decided to try and figure
out why his one strobe on his camera was not working properly. He emptied the batteries out and cleaned out
the battery compartment, put new batteries in and then it worked fine. He then put the old batteries back in and it
worked fine again—still a mystery. Then
he went to open the strobe that had been working just fine and discovered that
it had flooded. What a mess. Now he is in the process of trying to figure
out if he can clean it, dry it out, and make it work again…
Comments (1)
Indonesia Day 5-6
Thu, Apr 6 2017 07:22
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Indonesia Day 5-6
We got up around 6 a.m. in order to eat some breakfast and
get ourselves ready before making our way to the airport. We headed down to the reception desk around
7:30 a.m. in order to check out and catch a taxi. It did not take long to get to the airport
and once there, we made our way to the Silk Air check-in counter to check in
for our flight to Manado, Indonesia.
Once we were checked in, we headed downstairs to the MRT ticket booth in
order to turn in our 3-day Tourist Pass cards and get our $10 per card refund. The ticket booth opened at 8 a.m., so we only
had to wait in a short line for a short time.
We then made our way back upstairs and through passport
control and went to find our departure gate.
The Singapore airport is set up a little differently from most
airports. You actually don’t go through
security until you get to your gate. We
found our gate and since we had some time before the gate opened for our flight,
we wandered around a bit and got something to drink.
After some wandering, we decided to head back to our gate,
went through security and sat down for a bit before they starting boarding the
plane. It wasn’t even close to a full
flight, so we got lucky and had an aisle and a window seat in the exit row with
no one between us. It was about a 4-hour
flight to Manado. We were still booked
for a vegetarian Indian meal on the flight, so not long after take-off they
served the food. It was actually a very
tasty meal with cauliflower and paneer with just the right amount of spice. Dessert was even better—chocolate covered
vanilla ice cream!!—you won’t get that kind of food in coach on a 4-hour
domestic flight in the U.S.!
It was a smooth flight to Manado. We made our way off the plane and through
passport control, which did not take much time at all. Waiting for our baggage was another
story—they obviously aren’t the fastest at unloading the bags from the
plane. After a bit of a wait, we collected
up our three checked bags and made our way to the curb where someone was to be
waiting for us. We finally located our
driver, who loaded us and our luggage up and drove us about 35 minutes across
the city in very busy (Filipino style) traffic to the boat which would take us
to the island of Bunaken.
The boat ride was a bit bumpy leaving Manado headed for
Bunaken, but gradually smoothed out. It
was about a 45-minute ride. Once we
reached the island, we were greeted by Spencer, one of the resort managers, who
escorted us to the resort where they had a welcome drink (my favorite—Mango
juice) waiting for us. After we filled
out our dive paperwork and some other paperwork, we made our way to our
bungalow on the top of the hill. It was
a bit of a hike, so you don’t want to forget anything and have to go back up
the hill too many times. I’m hoping it
will burn a few calories, though.
Once in our room, we got busy unpacking all our dive gear
and Eric got the cameras set up for the two morning dives the next day. By that time, it was about dinner time. The meal times here are 7 a.m., 1 p.m. and 7
p.m. We made our way down to the dining
area and enjoyed some good conversation a very good meal with the property
managers, Spencer and Chi. At the moment
we are the only two guests at the resort.
We finally made our way back up to our room around 10 p.m.
and crawled into bed. We sat our alarm
for 6 a.m. the next morning so we could get up in time to go down to the dive
shop and analyze our tanks before breakfast.
The dive boat was scheduled to leave at 8 a.m. for the first
two dives of the day. After a wonderful
breakfast with Chi and Spencer, we all boarded the boat for the short 10-minute
ride to the first dive spot. The first
site was one of the few spots with a slope.
It made for a good site to do the first dive to get back into the swing
of things. There were tons of fish. We discovered the currents here are very
strange. One minute it is going one
direction and the next minute it is going the other direction—making the dive
profiles a bit interesting. However, the
local guides are very good and know exactly which way to go and when.
After our first dive and our one-hour surface interval, we
made our way to the second dive site.
This was a site with a wall, which is typical of most of the diving
here. We dropped down onto a beautiful
coral garden and then over the edge to the wall. The coral and fish life here is amazing. There are tons of every kind of fish
imaginable and they are everywhere. We
saw at least 8 or more turtles on this dive, along with a frog fish, scorpion
fish, and all the other usual suspects.
We decided to just do two dives today and relax in the
afternoon. Normally, lunch is served at
1 p.m. and then the afternoon dive boat goes out around 2 p.m. for one
dive. After a relaxing lunch, we
wandered out onto the pier and saw a small spotted eagle ray along with masses
of fish. We then headed back to our
room and had a little afternoon nap—we are on vacation after all!
Singapore 2017 Day 3-4
Tue, Apr 4 2017 05:03
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Singapore Day 3 and 4
Today was a VERY long day.
We set our alarm clock to get up at 6 a.m. so we could get an early
start. We had decided we would try to go
to the Botanical Garden/Orchid Garden and then the Jurong Bird Park. However, we woke up at 6 a.m. to a massive
thunderstorm and pouring rain. Unlike
most tropical storms which are usually heavy but very brief, this one seemed to
go on and on. The lightning and thunder
put our worst monsoon storms in Arizona to shame. Needless to say, we did not leave when
planned.
We finally got going around 9 a.m. as it looked like the
rain was just down to a drizzle by then.
We made our way out of the hotel, through the shopping mall, and across
the street to the MRT station for the ride to the Botanical Garden MRT
stop. Getting around Singapore is
incredibly easy using the MRT, and with the 3-day Tourist pass you get
unlimited trips on most methods of public transport. In about 30 minutes or so we made our way
across town to the Botanical Garden, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage
Site. It is completely free to get
in.
If you like plants and flowers, I would highly recommend the
Botanical Garden. The garden is huge and
you could very easily spend an entire day or more. However, if it is sunny out, I would highly
recommend going very early in the morning.
I believe they open at 5:30 a.m.
We got lucky in that it was cloudy, bordering on very light showers,
most of the time we were there.
Unfortunately, the clouds did not last and about the time we got to the
Orchid Garden (which I also highly recommend at S$5 pp) the sun finally broke
through. It was so hot and humid I think
Eric was about to pass out. They do have
one cool house for orchids on the premises and we made our way there to get a
bit of relief from the heat.
One thing you look for in Singapore on a sunny day is any
place with air conditioning. After just
about walking ourselves to death in the heat, we stopped at one of their
on-site restaurants for lunch before heading back to our hotel. We actually sat outside to eat lunch as it
was in the shade with ceiling fans and was cooler than eating inside (which we
figured would be air conditioned, but wasn’t).
We got back to our hotel and relaxed for a little bit before
heading out for our late afternoon/evening adventure. Eric downloaded the 260 or so photos that I
took of all the flowers at the Botanical Garden (I’m a little picture happy).
After a short rest, we headed out around 5 p.m. to make our
way to the Gardens by the Bay. Last time
we were in Singapore we visited the Gardens by the Bay during the day and again
it was a sunny day so it was so hot and humid outside we really could not
wander around for very long. However,
they do have several huge indoor air-conditioned domes which we visited—which
were wonderful as well as being cool.
This trip we wanted to visit in the evening in the hopes that it would
be a bit cooler as well as we wanted to see their free light and sound show in
the Supertree Grove, which we had heard was quite spectacular.
We wanted to make sure we got there before sunset so we
could scope out the best vantage point for photos, as well as get some dusk
photos. After a bit of wandering
around, we found a pretty good spot and staked our claim. Then it was a waiting game for the sun to go
down. It was a bit hot waiting, but as
soon as the sun started setting, it was not horrible. The sunset was around 7:11p.m. and the first of
the two light shows starts around 7:45 p.m. Eric sat up his camera on a little
Gorilla tripod we had with us and put it on a fence post. Once the show began, Eric commenced the
picture taking process using a longer exposure and I took a few videos and
attempted to shoot pictures (not nearly as good as Eric’s).
After the light show ended, we decided to wander around the
Gardens and see if we could find any other good night-time picture spots. By that time there was a nice breeze and it
was actually almost enjoyable to wander around.
By one of the lakes, we found a large metal dragonfly sculpture that was
lit up with the Supertrees behind it in the background. It was also a good vantage point for a shot
of the Marina Bay Sands. We found
another spot that wasn’t bad for a picture of the Singapore Flyer (giant Ferris
wheel).
After we thought we had about all the photos we could get in
the Garden for one night, we headed over to the Double Helix bridge near the
Marina Bay Sands. Unfortunately, the
football stadium which is adjacent had its massive flood lights on, which
pretty much ruined most of the picture taking.
We wandered down the helix bridge for a while and finally they turned
the stadium lights off. Eric got some
really good pictures of the helix bridge, Marina Bay Sands, the city skyline,
and the ArtScience Museum.
I don’t know about Eric, but my calves were about to moo
they hurt so much from walking and being on our feet all day. When we finally decided to head back to our
hotel, it was approaching 10 p.m. (way
past our bedtime, Ha!) By the time we
got back to the Expo MRT stop where our Hotel was located, the mall was
actually closed, so we had to walk all the way around the building to get to
the front door of our hotel—I thought my legs were going to explode.
After our approximately 9-10 miles of walking around the
city (we tracked it on Eric’s Strava), I was ready to take my shoes off and put
my legs up when we got back to our hotel room.
Eric was anxious to check out the photos he took, so he got his computer
out and got busy. I was so tired, it was
all I could do to crawl into bed and pass out.
I did not even hear Eric come to bed some time after midnight. We thought we might go to Sentosa Island
tomorrow, but since we were out so late, we decided we would have to reevaluate
in the morning.
We got up around 7:45 a.m. and Eric did some work. We looked at some of the photos we both took
the day before and we lounged around until around 11 when we decided we would
do some laundry. It was almost
completely clear out and thus extremely sunny and probably beyond unbearable
outside. I think that pretty much
determined the fate of going to Sentosa Island.
In that kind of weather, about the only things bearable to do are in the
air conditioning.
We rationalized not going out and doing much by telling ourselves we needed to save something to do for the
next time we come to Singapore--the Jurong Bird park and
Sentosa. It was around 2 p.m. by the time we finished our laundry, so I started the research on places to eat. I decided Italian sounded good and I found a place on TripAdvisor called Rosso Vino which was in Robertson Quay near Clark Quay. It was a ways to travel for food, but there is nothing really around our hotel in the business district (other than the mall and the mega grocery store).
So we started the trek across town on the MRT and then walked about a 3/4 of a mile to get to the restaurant. Needless to say, it was not a cool walk by any means. We were the first patrons of the evening. It was mostly an open-air restaurant; however, they had an air conditioned area which we gladly occupied. We made a very wise choice with this restaurant, as it was the best meal we have ever had in Singapore. It was so good, we already have plans to stop there on our way back from Indonesia.
After dinner, we walked around the area a bit to see what was around and then walked back through Clark Quay to the MRT station to begin the trek home. Unfortunately, we picked rush hour to make our way back. The one train we had to ride on for about eight stops was absolutely packed. We were pretty much wedged in like sardines.
We finally made it back to the hotel and after posting the blog, got busy packing our luggage for the trip back to the airport tomorrow morning for our 9:45 flight to Manado, Indonesia.
Singapore 2017 Day 1-2
Sun, Apr 2 2017 04:44
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Singapore Day 1 and 2
Luckily we were able to get all our luggage packed and all
our errands run early enough on Thursday in order to get to bed by about 8:30
p.m. It was an early morning on
Friday. We got up around 2:50 a.m. in
order to eat a little breakfast and be ready for our 3:45 cab ride to the
airport. We flew out on United and
obviously terminal 2 was not busy at that hour of the morning. It was one of the fastest security lines we
have gone through. There was absolutely
no one in line and with our TSA pre-check we just walked up, threw our luggage
on the belt and walked through the metal detector.
After we were through security, we headed to the United
Lounge to hang out for a little while before our flight. When it was time to board our flight to San
Francisco, we headed to the gate. We got
upgraded to first class for our flight from Phoenix to San Francisco, but
unfortunately there was some crazy old lady that sat in the seat directly
across from me. She was extremely loud
and obnoxious, but luckily once we took off she pretty much fell asleep for
most of the flight.
We made it to San Francisco and had several hours to kill
before our flight to Singapore. We went
to our gate and exchanged our United boarding passes for Singapore Airlines
boarding passes and then headed out into the terminal to look for something to
eat for breakfast. There isn’t much to
eat in the International portion of the terminal, but we managed to find a
place that served breakfast potatoes and bagels. After eating, we then headed to the Singapore
Airlines lounge to hang out. We had
approximately three hours before our flight to Singapore departed. We hung out in the lounge with some of the crew
for Carlos Santana. They had a concert
in Singapore on April 4.
As it got closer to time to board our flight, we headed down
to the gate. We flew premium economy
this time, which is kind of like domestic first class. The seats are a little nicer with a foot
rest, etc. and more leg room. We
departed on time and began the nearly 17-hour nonstop flight. It was a long 17 hours. As soon as we took off, I started my nearly
16-hour movie marathon. I watched one
move after another until about an hour before we landed. I didn’t fall asleep until about an hour and
30 minutes before we were scheduled to land.
We were served two meals and several snacks during the
flight. We had ordered the Indian
vegetarian meals. They were very tasty,
but a bit on the spicy side. I hardly
ate any of the second meal because I really wasn’t that hungry.
Other than being very long, the flight went pretty smoothly
except for the fact that there were about six small children seated just behind
us in coach that screamed and cried excessively during takeoff and landing and
a good portion of the rest of the flight as well. It didn’t bother me too much as I have
learned to tune out pretty much anything and Eric had his noise-cancelling
headphones so it didn’t bother him much either.
Once we landed in Singapore around 7:15 p.m., we made it
through passport control and headed for the MRT station to see about getting
some 3-day Tourist Passes. We double
checked at the information desk and she told us if we purchased them now they
would consider it the first day (which was already gone). So we decided to just catch a taxi to our
hotel and come back tomorrow to get the passes.
At the time of night we arrived, the airport wasn’t busy, so we did not
have to wait long for a taxi. Our hotel
is very close to the airport, so it was just a short ride.
We got to our hotel and got checked in. After dropping our luggage off in our room,
we headed next door to the shopping mall which is connected to the hotel to see
if we could find something to eat for dinner.
We didn’t see anything too exciting, so we hit the grocery store and got
some almond milk and cereal for breakfast in the morning and then came back to
our room and ordered a pizza via room service.
The Capri hotel is the same one we stayed in four years ago
when we were in Singapore. It is more of
an apartment style hotel where the rooms have their own kitchen with stove,
sink, fridge, microwave, and dishes. After
we ate dinner, we crawled into bed and had no trouble falling asleep. I haven’t been so happy to see a bed in a
long time. It felt really good to be
able to lie down.
After a good night’s sleep, we got up around 7 or 8 o’clock
and Eric did some work on his computer and I researched what we wanted to do while
we were in Singapore. We were a bit on
the lazy side today, so we didn’t get going until around 1 o’clock. We caught the hotel shuttle to the airport so
we could get our tourist passes for the subway and then rode the subway back to
our hotel from the airport. Again, upon
walking through the shopping mall on the way back to our hotel room, we weren’t
able to find anything decent to eat, so we came back to the hotel and had lunch
in the restaurant.
After lunch we decided we would head to Chinatown to do some
souvenir shopping. Last time we were in
Singapore I bought some hand-made items from a woman there. I had no idea if she was still there or if I
could find her stall, but I got lucky.
Interesting Food Choices |
After getting my souvenirs, we decided to walk down toward
Clark Quay (along the river). We walked
down to the river and walked along the area with all the restaurants and
shops. It was approaching dinner time,
but neither one of us was really hungry after having a late lunch. We ended up sitting on the patio overlooking
the river and just ordering a snack and a couple drinks. After enjoying our drinks, we headed back to
our hotel after our nearly 4 miles of walking for the afternoon. As soon as we got back to our room, we were
both ready to crawl into bed. As soon as
Eric’s head hit the pillow, he was out.
Malapascua 2016 Day 9 & 10
Sat, May 14 2016 06:15
| Permalink
Malapascua Day 9 & 10
We got to sleep in a little today. We were up around 7 o’clock. After getting the cameras and our stuff
ready, we headed to breakfast. We mixed
it up a little today and I had a bowl of fresh fruit (including mango of
course) and some homemade bread toasted, while Eric had garlic rice.
Today we were doing a day trip to Kalanggaman island. It takes about an hour and a half to get
there by boat. After our sleep-inducing
ride to the island we jumped in for our first dive along the wall. It is very pretty with lots of large fan and
soft corals. One of the guides pointed
out a pigmy seahorse to me and after staring at the fan coral for quite some
time, I was finally able to see it move.
They blend in so well, and are so tiny, that it is extremely hard to see
them. There was nothing overly
spectacular, it was just a very nice place to dive and the visibility was good
as well.
After our first dive we headed to the island for lunch. For lunch we had BBQ with rice, vegetables,
and vegetarian noodles. After we
devoured our yummy lunch, we walked down the beach to the sand bar. The island has a large sand bar that
stretches out into the water that is almost as big as the island itself. It is a very pretty island that is a popular
place for the locals and tourists to take day trips.
After we had all relaxed and explored the island a bit, we
hopped back on the boat and headed out to do the second dive, which was along
the wall, but in a different direction.
Toward the end of the dive we ended up on top of the reef with lots of
little things to see such as the gobies with their “housekeeping” shrimp.
We were on this trip with a group of 8 divers from Singapore
who were all photographers. As we were
coming up to begin our three-minute safety stop, we noticed there was still one
guy laying down on the bottom, taking pictures.
The guide started banging on his tank and I started shaking my
noisemaker trying to get his attention.
We finally got his attention. By
that time he had already gone into decompression time of 17 minutes, which
meant he had to stay under water for his safety stop for that length of time
(instead of just 3 minutes). We all sat
on the boat and waited for him and the guide to surface and get on the
boat. By the time the diver was able to
surface, he barely had any air left—he got really lucky. That is why it is so important to always keep
an eye on your air and no decompression time—no matter what you are doing.
After everyone was back on the boat safety, we started our
hour and a half cruise back to Malapascua.
By the time we got back to the resort, it was about 5:30 p.m. We got cleaned up and came back to the
restaurant to have some dinner before heading to bed for another early
morning.
Today is our last day of diving. We signed up to do the early morning Kimud
Shoal/Monad Shoal 2-tank dive at 4:45 a.m.
Kimud Shoal is an underwater island where they have seen hammerheads in
the past, so we thought we would give it a shot. After our Layang Layang schooling hammerhead
trip a few years ago was a bust, we have yet to see a hammerhead. After the almost hour trip to get out there,
we jumped in and swam around for about an hour.
There were lots of assorted jellies, but no hammerheads.
After everyone was back on the boat, we headed back to Monad
Shoal to see if we could spot some Threshers.
After an hour surface interval on the boat, we dove in again. I don’t think anyone saw any Threshers, but
it was still a nice dive. I did manage
to see an anemone all balled up—which I have only seen a couple times. It is really neat to see as some of them can
be very colorful—this one was blue/purple.
We did these two dives with the Singaporian group as well
and everyone did a little better with watching their air/time. We only had to collect up one diver that did
not stay with the group on the second dive.
After everyone was on the boat, we made our way back to the resort. We got back around 9:30 and I ordered
breakfast for both of us before breakfast time ended at 10 a.m.
We enjoyed our breakfast and the wonderful breeze coming off
the water before heading to our room to have a little nap before our afternoon
dive at 2:30. After our nap, we returned
to the restaurant to have a snack before our dive on the house reef. We had not yet had an opportunity to dive the
house reef, which is really nice, so we were anxious to go today as it would be
our last opportunity.
Gino was our guide for the dive and it was just Eric and
me. There is always some current on the
house reef, but it wasn’t horrible today.
This was an awesome dive—the best of the trip and a wonderful last
dive. We saw all kinds of stuff—a
stargazer (which I had never seen before), octopus, decorator crabs, porcelain
crab, snapping shrimp, squat lobster, emperor shrimp, zebra urchin crab, box
crab, urchin carry crab, clownfish with eggs, cuttlefish, nudibranchs and other
usual suspects.
After a great last dive, we rinsed all our gear and started
the drying process in preparation for packing everything up. We then returned to our room, got cleaned up,
checked out the photos and video from today, and then headed to the restaurant
to have dinner. We won’t be diving
tomorrow so we can stay up as late as we want and sleep in tomorrow. We will be leaving tomorrow afternoon around
5 p.m. to get the last boat crossing before dark. Our flight leaves Cebu just after midnight,
but we don’t like cutting it too close getting to the airport since it involves
a boat crossing and then a 3-4 hour drive to get there. You never know what traffic or the roads are
going to be like getting to the airport.
Malapascua 2016 Day 7 & 8
Thu, May 12 2016 04:44
| Permalink
Malapascua Day 7 & 8
Day 7
Today was another busy diving day. We got up around 4:15 a.m. for the 5:15
Thresher shark dive. It was a nice dive
today as it was just the two of us with our guide, Jo. The rest of the divers were with other
guides. We saw quite a few Thresher
sharks, and the current was much better today—much easier to stay in one
place—but the visibility was still an issue.
I didn’t get any decent video but Eric got one or two photos that
weren’t too bad.
After the dive, we collected everyone up, including one of the
owner’s, Matt, and his student who were diving on rebreathers. We had stopped the boat and were waiting for
them and the next thing we knew someone was knocking on the hull of the boat. As the rebreathers make no bubbles, there was
no way for the boatmen to tell where they were.
After we got back to Evolution, we had our usual French
Toast breakfast with fresh sliced mangos and relaxed for a short bit before our
next dive at 9:30 to Lapus Lapus.
This was our first dive to Lapus Lapus on this trip. We jumped in and there was a fair amount of
current. We managed to see a couple
seahorses before we had to head up more shallow as we were running low in our
no decompression limits. We actually
stayed down a little longer and our guide, Jo, headed up as he only had 1
minute left of no decompression time. So
Eric and I cruised around for a while longer before we surfaced. Eric got some practice deploying his SMB
(surface marker buoy—AKA safety sausage) under water.
After the boat collected us up and everyone was accounted
for, we headed back to the resort. On
the way back we got to see the boat parade circling the island. Today and tomorrow they are having a big
fiesta here on the island and the boat parade was part of the festivities.
We rinsed off a bit and then headed to lunch. We sat and talked with a diver that just
arrived from France yesterday, Francois.
We had a nice chat, ate our lunch, and then relaxed for a while before
our 1:30 dive to Deep Slope.
We had already been to Deep Slope twice before, but because
of the tides today there was too much current to dive just about any place
else. The seahorse was still in the sea
fan here and we saw an orangutan crab, nudibranchs, and all the other usual
suspects. In the beginning of the dive
there wasn’t much current, but by the end it was starting to get pretty strong,
so we headed up.
We got back to the resort around 3:30 or so and got cleaned
up and looked at the pictures and video we had captured today. Afterward, we headed to the restaurant to get
some dinner and chat with people. We
might also wander into the village and check out the fiesta as well.
Day 8
Today I decided to sleep in and Eric got up at 4 am to go do
the shark dive. I ended up getting up
around 6:30 and the boat got back from the dive around 7:30. Eric said the sharks came in close and he got
some really good video—he decided to take my video camera instead of his
camera. I had ordered breakfast as soon
as I saw the boat returning, so after Eric rinsed his gear off, we had
breakfast sitting in the loungers by the beach and looked at the video he
shot. He did get some really good
video—I told him of course he would see something good, because I did not go…
Our next dive was at 9:30 to Bogtang Bato, which seems to be
the staff’s favorite dive site. It is a
rock pinnacle that is covered in soft coral.
It is possible to swim circles around it, but the current is pretty
strong a lot of the time on some sides.
We saw at least three or four different color and size frog fish, and
the highlight was a mantis shrimp just standing out in the open (which we have
never seen before—usually they are hiding in a hole or under a rock and won’t
come out for anything). He/she was very
cooperative and I got some video and Eric got a really good picture. We managed to swim around the entire pinnacle
in the current and were the next to the last people to surface.
We headed back to the resort and had lunch before our 1:30
dive to Devil Ray Corner (at Monad Shoal).
There was some pretty good surface current here, as there usually is,
and we followed the mooring line down to the bottom. We cruised around at around 100+ feet for a
while and actually saw a couple whitetip sharks and a Thresher. After that we cruised along the wall and
found a huge puffer fish and some other interesting stuff to look at. The staff here trusts us enough that they
usually let us finish up the dives on our own as most people run low on air way
before us, so we look around for a while longer and then do our safety stop
before surfacing. Eric and I managed to
find a mooring line to go up to do our safety stop, but we probably should have
just floated away with the current as there were a lot of jellies floating by
us. Eric got a sting on his chin and I
got some on my hands (about the only parts of our bodies exposed). It just turns red and stings a bit for a
while. We put some white vinegar on it
to help calm it down when we got back on the boat.
After returning back to the resort, we got all our gear
rinsed out and got cleaned up. We looked
at the video and pictures that we had taken today and then walked over to the
restaurant for some dinner. We ended up
sitting and chatting with one of the other divers who has been diving with us,
Aidan—from Ireland. After dinner and
some good conversation, we all decided to walk to the main part of the island
and check it out. It was a good night to
do so as it was really windy, which makes it not so steamy once you get away
from the beach.
We wandered around the barrio for a while and then made our
way back to Evolution. By this time it
was around 8:30 and we headed to our room so I could type up the blog and we
headed off to bed after a hard day of diving…