Day 3 – Another day in paradise & Day 4 - Trouble in Paradise

Got a little more sleep last night and came to breakfast with more energy.  It's funny how quickly you get to know other guests and staff and how comfortable you can feel sitting down with someone new.  A large group of 14 guests arrived last night and they were still doing their own thing.  Serge was running around busy organizing everything and I felt bad hitting him up with a request to rent a computer.  My Oceanic VT6 wireless air-integrated wrist-mounted computer that is pretty new and had just been repaired at the shop was malfunctioning after the first dive.  Really annoying when you pay good money for something that should be top notch and it performs worse than rental gear.  Especially when it's critical life-support systems.  I got a computer and an SPG and started the second dive.  Sarah stopped me early on to signal I had a leak.  I looked at my SPG and the hose was leaking from half a dozen spots.  The dive guide signaled that I should go up, so I did.  The two boat guys really were pretty clueless and tried to fix it by wrapping it with masking tape which obviously didn't work.  I came back up and just removed the hose and replaced it with my original transmitter as a plug.  Got back to the group and still got about 40 min dive.  Unspectacular, but ok reef dive.

I learned that some hoses are designed to rupture in multiple places when they fail in order to dissipate the pressure and allow you to finish the dive as opposed to a single catastrophic fail point in the hose.  Serge later said that he had dove for like 2 weeks with a hose like that and it only lost about 10 bar (5%) during a dive.  Good to know for later.  Still, having a failed computer and SPG in less than 24 hrs is no fun. 

Our second dive was also a reef dive.  No major finds, but still nice to just float along and look for little things casually with good visibility and very pleasant topside weather.  Another 70+ min dive.

No one was up for a night boat dive, or even a shore dive, so I went on my own.  We're in sort of a bay, and max depth is probably around 20m so it's really hard to get lost.  I went looking for the wreck again, and although I didn't find it, I did get to take my time figuring out camera controls and taking some shots of shrimps, crabs, and nudibranchs.  I really enjoy the house reef – in a small area, it's got a little of every environment – muck, black sand, coral, and even eelgrass – sort of a mangrove.  At these shallow depths, you can literally go as long as you want.  My longest dive this week was over 100 min and I only came in when I started worrying that dinner was getting put away !

Day 4 – Trouble in paradise

Little bit of drama today.  There is one big group from Europe – they are a sort of dive club of people that all work at the European Space Agency.  Major egghead and rocket scientists, but as you might expect, some funky personalities and egos.  Apparently, some in the group were unhappy with the constant muck and black sand diving and wanted more coral reefs.  As a result, the groups were broken up into a group that was mainly muck diving, one that was mainly coral diving and one that was in between (or maybe mainly photographers).  We asked to be counted in the muck dive group and was put onto a new boat with new divers, which was fine.  We met a nice Dutch couple – Peter and Karim, Luis from Portgual (who now lived in Spain), and Wim, a slightly eccentric older gentleman.  Was still diving with Marnez, who has a quirk – he rarely signals with audible sounds, unlike just about all dive guides I've ever come across.  He just sits there and when you check over at him, he's waiting patiently with something to show you.  I suppose that's one way of making sure that you don't wander off and keep tabs on him, but I wonder what I'm missing and it doesn't seem the most efficient use of his time.

After we came in from the second dive, there was a group arguing loudly with it seemed other group members and either Simon or Serge.  I guess the boat came back to refill some of the large 15L tanks and some divers felt this was an inconvenience.  I think that's pretty crazy because a 15L tank is a privilege, not a right, and at most other resorts, you'd just have to suck it up and finish your dives early if you were an air hog.

At night we had a special treat.  Bent gave a presentation on marine life symbiosis and it was really educational and entertaining.   Among other things, we learned that some jawfishes live their lives in the anuses of sea cucumbers, eating their gonads and gaining nourishment through their excrement.  If  any anenomefish (clownfish) appear to be ventilating a lot or opening and closing their mouths rapidly, they could be carrying a parasite (some sort of 10 footed decapod) that lives in their mouth, eats their tongue away and then digs its feet into the stump of the tongue and stays there.  Sometimes even two can occupy the mouth, which really seems to bother the fish.  The fish sometimes will even suck on anemone tentacles to try to remove the parasite.  The image of this apparently grinning demon face peering out of a clownfish's mouth is the stuff of nightmares.  No need to make up monsters when they exist in real life!

Day 2: Hit the water running

We were up at 7am, and groggily rolled into breakfast by 7:15am.  Chow was buffet style, simple fruits, cereal, bread, and you could request eggs.  We set up and were ready to go onto the boat by 8am.  There were 8 guests with about 3 guides.  The boat was really spacious with plenty of space for divers to get setup without being in each others' way and backroll entry and ladder re-entry.  The distance out to the first site was longer than I expected – about 20 min.  Sarah and I were paired up with local guide Johan, who was a terrific spotter and always cheerful. 

I had high expectations and they were surpassed by the very first dive.  Muck diving is just about the only place in the world where trashing the environment actually has a positive upside.  The area around Lembeh Straits has mostly either a silty or a black sand bottom with some spots of coral reef or coral rubble.  For the most part, however, it's a barren, inhospitable environment that offers little shelter.  As a result, the marine life that survives is tiny, often cleverly camouflaged to blend in, and there's a lot of symbiosis.  Anenomefish living in stinging anenomes is a good example.  So is the gobies that stand guard while their blind partner shrimp ceaselessly dig safety holes and push sand and rocks out of the way.  When there's any sign of danger, the goby communicates this to its partner through the link provided from the shrimp's antenna on its dorsal fin and they retreat to the hole in the blink of an eye.  So how does trash fit into this?  It gives the animals an extra place to hide.  Tires, shoes, coconut shells, all become highlights of a dive because of what you can find in them.  You can't pick up a bottle without finding something peeping out from inside its neck. 

The first site was silt giving way to black sand, and surprises were everywhere.  Cuttlefish of all sizes, two mimic octopuses (by first encounter with them), nudibranchs (but not the huge variety I've seen elsewhere), a bizarre two-foot buried crab that shot out like an arrow when disturbed, many different shrimp, and best of all, warm temperatures (81F/28C), shallow depths, and a 70 min pleasant dive.  I came up thinking, "This is going to be an awesome week!"  The only downside was due to my own fault.  I had a new camera, a CanonS95 point and shoot in an Ikelite housing, but the strobe and macro lens I ordered arrived too late for me to bring it along, rendering the camera virtually unusable for anything but shallow, well-lit subjects.  So frustrating, because you come to this area to hunt bizarre creatures you won't find anywhere else and it's ideal to claim photos as trophies.

We did two dives, the second at a reef and not nearly as nice as the first and then returned around noon.  The crew was awesome, took care of everything and we just took our cameras, lights, etc.  Annoyingly, my Oceanic hoseless dive computer crapped out again on the second dive.  I just had it fixed earlier this year after it died about 100' down on a wreck. 

The resort has dedicated wet and dry camera rooms.  Lunch was served and as soon as you sat, plates were brought out to you.  Delicious and healthy local food.  Basic water, coffee, tea, and Milo are free and sodas/beers/smoothies are pay as you go.  There was a third boat dive after lunch around 2:30pm, but we were on the 2 boat dives a day plan and were pooped anyhow.  We caught a nap and then around 4:30pm, when the boat came back, a group of about 5 of us went for a twilight dive in the house reef.  The "house reef" is a bit misleading, because it's not really a reef, but just the area in front of the resort.  Still, I managed to see two octopus, a stingray, a Harlequin shrimp, leaffish, banded pipefish, sea snake, and a variety of crabs during the 70 min dive.  Came back, took a quick shower, and it was dinner time.

The guests are from all over.  We have Bent, Swedish university ecology professor who takes and sells photographs on the side; Liz, also a university teacher from Newcastle, Australia; Olaf, a single photo enthusiast from Germany, a couple from Germany, and Godfried and Micky, an older but really energetic and fun couple from Denmark.  Everyone is a competent diver, considerate, and pleasant.  We spent the evening just chatting with each other and the owners, Simon and Zee, who bought the resort in 2010 after managing it for two years.  It really is a labor of love and the remarkable thing – the one thing every well-run place has in common that I've stayed at – is that you can tell the staff is happy, empowered, and genuinely happy to be here.  A lot of laughing and smiles, though they clearly work hard in the background so the guests can chill out.

Chinese National Day Holidays in Indonesia

It's annual holidays in China (happens twice a year) and this year, we planned early enough that we could have our choice of dive destinations we hadn't yet visited.  The short list included: Fiji, Manado/Lembeh, Sipadan, Palau, and the Philippines (again).  The only criteria was that we needed to be able to use award miles.  Fiji and Palau just didn't have good connections and we were pretty indifferent to Manado/Lembeh or Mabul/Sipadan.  Both are renowned for muck diving, which is finding bizarre, tiny aquatic creatures in silty or black sand. 

I found award tickets  to Jakarta via Singapore and then we purchased domestic tickets to complete the trip to Manado.  There are about 10 resorts in the area, all that essentially package accommodations, full board, and diving (either 2 or 3 boat dives a day).  We settled on NAD, which seemed  like a reasonable  price but with nice bungalows.  Simon, the owner, was very responsive and we got a 7 nt package with upgraded bungalow, full board, and 2 dives per day (and unlimited house reef diving) for around 800 USD total.  Like I said, very reasonable.

We had a midnight flight out of Shanghai.  Sarah and I had both been so busy that we didn't have a good chance to pack and we threw everything together in about half an hour and jetted to the airport at about 9:30pm.  It was 24 hrs later before we finally arrived at our destination.

Our first leg was to Singapore via Singapore Airlines, my favorite airline.  Uneventful 4-5 hrs – I napped a bit.  Then we were in Singapore for about 3 hours waiting for our hop to Jakarta.  Of course Sarah made a beeline for the La Perla shop.  I took care of a few work emails and then did the male La Perla equivalent and hung out at one of the many technology/photo/audio/computer shops in the airport.  Singapore is truly a nation of geeks, but I'm thankful for that.  I picked up a wireless signal repeater that you supposedly can just plug in to increase the strength of the signal.  From experience, wireless signals don't go very far in resorts and I can't count the number of times I've literally dangled my laptop out of a window or been crouched in some courtyard getting bitten by mosquitoes to take that IP call or get that important email out.  It was only $70 too, so if it works, will be money well spent.

We got onto the Jakarta flight, also on SQ, and landed in Jakarta a couple hours later.  First step was getting a visa on arrival (most countries can do this).  This was painless and quick and cost USD 25 per person.  We paid in RMB, which was a bad idea because the exchange rate was much worse.  I always forget that the international arrivals terminal is quite a way from the domestic terminals.  You have to go upstairs and then take a taxi or free yellow shuttle bus (better) to T1 or T2 (starting from T3 Intl).  The transit easily takes about 30 min, so it's good to leave plenty of time.  We were lugging a good amount of dive equipment, but still made it under the weight limit.  For future info, the check-in limit is 20kg per person.  If you're traveling together, the limit can be combined.  We came in at about 34kg.  We had another 3 hrs to kill and first hit the ATM (usually a good idea to do this in Jakarta because a lot of the smaller places don't have ATMs or they are not the right network).  We found ATMs that would take Unionpay and also a Citibank.  Actually, in Manado we also saw several ATMs at the airport, but not sure if they would have worked.  

My experience with flights from Jakarta is that they are usually late and this time was no exception.  We were about an hour late.  One nice thing is that a middle-aged distinguished man stopped us and introduced himself out of the blue at the terminal.  Asked us where we were from and told us that he had lived in the US for a little bit.  Turned out he had been in San Bernadino, which is not a big county, and near LA.  I was surprised to find out that San Bernadino is a sort of community heartland for immigrants to the US from Manado!  Youke works in public health and we exchanged info.  Genuinely nice guy.

The flight was fine though Sarah remarked that the seats were more cramped than any flight she's taken in a long time.  Being a budget airline, food and drinks are not provided but can be purchased.  It was a 3-4 hr flight, and by the time we touched down, we were pretty tired and hungry.  Manado was a small airport, and the thing which stood out the most was that there were touts and taxi drivers everywhere.  Worth getting someone right away to drive the other touts from swarming you.  We found our driver from the resort and were on our way.  The drive from Manado to Bintang was about an hour through tiny roads where we were continuously swerving to dodge roadside traffic.  But the van was really comfy and we just fell asleep.  Arrived at the port, transferred onto a boat and took another 20-30 min to arrive at the resort.  So glad that we did not decide to stay in the town (which you can do for cheap, diving during the days).  It was quiet once we left the port.

Zee and Surge met us and greeted us by name as we stepped off the boat, which was a nice gracious touch.  We dropped our bags and were invited to have dinner and a welcome drink right away which was great.  The first impression of NAD, our home for the next week, was a quiet haven, well-kept, with most activities centered around a homey, but open eating and community lodge area.  There are little housing units on the ground floor, steps from the eating area, and then three bungalows about 50m away.  Our bungalow was really nice.  Not glamorous or mint-on-the-pillows luxurious, but clean, dry, attractive, big firm bed, working & quiet A/C, and a bathroom that didn't stink and had actual working hot water instead of the cold water in a basin ("mandi") that I was used to in Indonesia.  Really the perfect type of place that Sarah and I like.

I was ready to crash, but had a bunch of work stuff like payments, customers, and a paid webinar, etc I had to take care of, and with the poor wireless Internet coverage (we're on the edge), it took about 5 hrs before I could sleep and got about 3 hrs before I was up for our first full day.