dive! dive! dive!

OK, I'm going to skip Monday and come back to that later (note: I probably won't) because yesterday had photos that can jog my memory and today did not. Well, not any meaningful ones.

So why are we in Bali? Well, Sal won the accommodation but was not so keen on coming over, having been here before and not really loving it. I left it at that for a while until I decided to look and see if there was any decent diving in Bali. Turns out there is, so I thought rather than see the prize go to waste I could ring around and find a buddy and use it as a dive trip. I shared this idea with Sal and it very quickly became a family holiday.

Well, that's how I remember it.

But I do get a couple of days diving, I'd done a quick internet search and found Adventure Scuba Diving. They review very well and their website, though a bit dated, says all the right things. It wasn't until we got here that I decided my cold was far enough in the past, my lungs seemed to be functioning and I could clear my ears easily. So on Sunday I sent them an email asking if they had trips going to the manta rays and the wreck of the USS (or USAT?) Liberty. They got back almost immediately with a yes, sent an invoice, I paid and was booked on three dives today and I have another two on Thursday.

So I abandoned Sal and the kids at a bit before 7am and headed out to my pickup point. There I met another couple of divers, a dad and his adult son from Melbourne. Our ride came right on time, we loaded up and made out way to Padang Bai, the small port town from where you can out to Lombok and the Gili islands - or get on your dive boat.

Met the rest of the divers, did the paperwork, loaded up and headed out to see if the conditions were right and if we could dive Manta Point first. They were and we did.

Dive 1 - Manta Point.

Around 45min, max depth about 13m, water temp comfortable in my 3mm, visibility about 5-8m.

I was in a group of four. Benny, our local dive guide and a Japanese couple. I pulled on my own wetsuit, checked my nitrox (34%), got into my hire rig, put my own mask and fins on and rolled off the side of the boat into the water. Time to descend. Which was not a problem for me, but the Japanese lass did seem to be a bit floaty and was half dragged from the surface.

The water was a bit milky and surgey, waves hitting up against the cliff face we were at the foot of. The site a little uninspiring with not much in the way of coral and not many fish, so how about I cut to the chase and get to what fish were there. After a few minutes Benny started pointing upwards and there were manta number 1 and 2. They are a bit like elegant, flying snooker tables.

I lie. I've not seen a snooker table for a while. Manta rays are far larger, I just checked. It is maybe a little pointless trying to explain what it is like being in the water with these incredible creatures. They are massive, they move with an easy grace and seem utterly unconcerned by our presence at their cleaning station. We saw them on and off throughout the middle section of the dive. I saw two at once, so there were at least two of them there, maybe more. The closest once came to me was about 6ft away, as it drifted over top as I hugged the bottom.

We didn't stay in one place but did a sort of loop. I also saw a spotted eagle ray, a turtle, some anemone fish, various other tropicals. It was nice, but had there not been mantas at manta point it would have been a bit ordinary; not bad, but ordinary. As it turned out it was quite awesome.

Dive 2 - Crystal Bay

Around 45min, max depth about 21m, water temp comfortable in my 3mm but a bit chilly under the thermocline, visibility 15m+

A short steam away and we were at Crystal Bay. A sort of sloping wall from a shallow bay affair with far richer coral and fish life. More turtles and another eagle ray here, but no mola mola. Apparently they can be found here at times. Benny did his best to find one and dipped deeper than me into the 20m thermocline and headed off of the wall a bit for a look. I am not sure he was super pleased with the buoyancy of the Japnese couple. I was also a little bemused. Given the up-and-downiness they had in the water I thought having a camera was not a great idea. I didn't take my camera because I thought I was a bit out of practice, but different people have different benchmarks and they seemed to be enjoying their dives so c'est la vie.

The vis here was far better. And that thermocline was really rather distinct. I could see it below me and could not resist dipping in. It was quite refreshing, but I'd not want all thre dives to be in whatever-that-temperature was. It probably wasn't cold, but it was far cooler, and as the dive went on it seemed to be reaching higher in the water column.

Among the things seem were schooling catfish, more turtles, another eagle ray, oriental sweetlips, various small parrotfish, anemone fish - all the usual suspects.

All in all a very pretty little dive.

Dive 3 - Mangrove Channel

Around 45min, max depth about 16m, water temp warmest of the 3 dives, visibility about 10m, current pushing through.

The third dive, after a quite decent lunch for a dive boat (rice, chicken, egg, veg, coffee) was at Mangrove. A no-finning required drift over soft corals and sponges with a healthy dollop of fish life thrown in. I'll not go into detail, other than to say it was another good dive - and I found a mask. Go me! Lucky to grab it as I drifted past (the current was not so strong you could not fin against it for a little while.) Back at the villa I cleaned it up and it looks like a nice mask. Happy days. The splashes in the background are the kids off to pick rocks up from the bottom of the pool.


The weather had turned ordinary by the end of dive three. Rain - warm rain, but still rain. We hung about waiting for our ride back to Seminyak that, in the wet conditions, seemed to take about half the day.

Anyway, this is more a dive log entry than fully-blown blog post, so I'll whip through the rest of the day. I arrived back about 90min earlier than expected. Sal and the girls were still out so I spent about an hour outside the walls of the villa. Remember I told you about the broken glass on the walls? Didn't fancy trying to climb over. But the gate has an awning and was close enough to the house that I could get back on the wi-fi, so all good.

The girls got back - kids with hair braided, mum not. I had a quick hose down, kids jumped in the pool to get out of the rain. And then Sal and I did that rarest of things - go out for a meal together, kids left with a baby sitter. We went to Ginger Moon (go on, have a free shot...) and it was very nice. Ordered too much, ate it all.

OK, that's it, I'm done. It's still raining, Sal gets her free day tomorrow and I'm on lone parent detail, so we'll see where that takes us.

...it is raining quite hard. Maybe this villa would benefit from a couple of extra walls...