Indonesia

Travel Blog: Indonesia: Part Two- Why Do All Of The Good Stories Start Next To A Carpet Anemone?

Selamet Siang!

Welcome back curious reader! If you’re new here the class has officially moved on to part two of this specific adventure, but if you’d like to be caught up I’ll link part one just below this little bit of conversational pretext! Be sure to give that a read before continuing on here, context & establishment are important to storytelling after all!


INDONESIA

PART TWO:



Day Three

We start out this day in the usual way, rising early, grabbing brekkie, then going off to pack up for the full day of diving ahead. The only noticeable difference about this day’s breakfast was that I created my new obsession for the week; Toast with Raspberry Jam & Nutella, & I made a little Jumping Spider friend. I found her first climbing on my shoulder where I gently gathered her & set her aside on my chair, but no matter what I did she kept coming back to me in one form or another. Finally I just gave in & let her sit on my arm & watch me eat breakfast.

For all of you out there freaked out by this notion, Jumping Spiders are actually very personable creatures that have very interesting personalities about them. They will often even appear to look you in the eye & will, as witnessed above, watch people do things out of what seems like nothing more than curiosity. Though now that I’m thinking about it she may have been using me as a trap for the insects potentially drawn in by either my food or my blood. Either way, at the end of my meal, I set her on a leaf just off the dining pavilion & went about collecting my gear.

Our first dive site of the day was lovingly named “Hairball #2.” Why? Well, as it was explained to us, there are two separate explanations, the first is that the balls of netting/rope & the flora growing on the seabed resemble balls of hair, the second explanation was due to the abundance of Hairy Frogfish, of which we did see one, but apparently my camera did not. #MinimumFocalLength

This dive had an abundance, & I mean an abundance, of Mantis Shrimp of all sizes. Not only that, but you didn't really have to search for them, they were just kind of out, cruising along the sand or, in my case, attacking you. We’ll get there, we’ll get there.

I’m going to assume it was the scenery that lent itself to the plethora of decorators in the area as well, from Decorator Crabs & Hermits to Gorilla Crabs, it seemed every few feet near the top of our dive we’d find a new one. Additionally the Seahorse/Pipefish family came out to play as well.

Many of you know how much of a love for Seahorses I have, I used to raise them in my tank at home including, at one point, having an Erectus Male get pregnant & birth a clutch of fry in my tank! I’ve actually been flirting with the idea of setting up a specialty tank for them somewhere in my house as they don’t do well in big tanks with more aggressive eaters, but enough about my aquarium hobbies. All of that was a massively round about way of saying that I saw the. cutest. seahorse. I have ever seen. He had a bit of red macro algae growing just above his left pectoral fin which made it look like he had a flower in his hair. Simply adorable.

The site was truly a masterclass in what muck diving has to offer between the (in my personal opinion) horrifying Snake Eels with their heads popping out of the substrate, the pairs of Cardinal Waspfish, the numerous varieties of Shrimp Goby with their hovels in the sand, Lionfish, Trumpetfish, Carpet Anemones, & Snapper. But, let’s back up one step to one of those Carpet Anemones for a moment shall we?

Here is where I shall lay the chronicle of the viscous, subaquatic affront I received at the punchy mits of the afforementioned Peacock Mantis Shrimp:

So, I’m sitting there, filming a colony of Clownfish & Ghost Shrimp, doing my best to get the Porcelain Crabs as the current rolls up the sides of the anemone. I have my pointer buried around half a foot in the sand when all the sudden a hear a “thwack” & get a sharp pain in the hand holding onto my substrate anchor. I look over & there, puffed up in the sand, is about a three to four inch long Peacock Mantis Shrimp. It is presenting its antennal scales to me & keeps leaning in to go for another strike. What has gotten this Mantis so worked up over my presence? Well, I guess the fact that I’m a good meter+ from its burrow. It had come out a fairly long distance for an itty bitty shrimp from its defenses to smack my out of territorial spite. You can actually hear the smack, as well as my yelp, when it hit me on my GoPro footage. I was however fortunate with my Mantis encounter for two reasons. One, it was a little one, they can grown about a foot & a half in length. Two, it was a “punchy” variety, meaning that its raptorial appendages were blunted, not sharp like the alternatively “stabby” variety with their sharp appendages.

On our way back up we encountered a Male Ornate Ghost Pipefish, a Napoleon Snake Eel, several more Cardinal Wasps, & a Flamboyant Cuttlefish!

Our surface interval was once again supplemented by Tea, Coffee, Milo, Water, Papaya, Pineapple, & Cake. Dive spot number two was Jahir #1. I guess it’s worth noting at this point that a lot of the dive sites in Lembeh had numerical quantifiers as well. This is because a lot of them are the same towns, villages, islands, or locations, just different mooring sites & thus different entrance/exit points & therefore different dives.

Jahir was another muck dive that leans a little more on the sandy side. Here we found a whole host of Flamboyant Cuttlefish (including some eggs), Scorpionfish, Pillow Starfish, Blue Spotted Rays, Black Lionfish, Banded Pipefish, & the like. However there were two very distinct things that happened on this dive & I’m so excited to share them with you all!

The first made me absolutely geek out.

Maybe it’s the fish lover in me or my fascination with marine life in general, maybe you’ll also find this as cool as I did, please let me know if you do. Anyway, I was planted near yet another Carpet Anemone teeming with Clowns. Slightly above the anemone were a school of Cardinal Fish. Y’all I am literally geeking out typing this story simply because of the insinuations it carries. All of the sudden the largest of the clowns, the female, departs the anemone & makes for a piece of debris laying on the sand bed, It was just under a foot in size & looked kind of like a piece of cardboard or maybe a patch of dutch tape. Puri, our guide, immediately grabs my attention & motions to me to start filming, so I do. The clown drags the debris over to the anemone & stashes it right in the middle of it. She then proceeds to duck under it. After a few seconds she picks it up again & does the same, over & over. What was she doing? Y’all. This clownfish was fishing. It was upholding its portion of the symbiotic biological agreement between clowns & nems & trying to feed its home. It was using us, three big, scary, bubble making beings in the water next to the anemone as a tool implying she understands the basic nature of fish, specifically cardinal fish, & was trying to get them to swim under the debris & use it as “shelter” to hide from us, all the while luring them to their inevitable death. Wild. I guess it’s true what they say, the best stories happen around a carpet anemone.

The second thing that happened was actually something I’d discussed with Simon, the resort owner, the night prior. I had inquired as to what Simon’s favorite Lembeh creature was, to which he said something along the lines of “it’s always changing. However, this time of year the Fire Urchins make an appearance & I think they’re something truly spectacular.” That they are. Towards the end of our dive we came up the slope back towards the boat & were immediately met by about twenty or so massive Fire Urchins! I wish the photos & video I took did them justice but they unfortunately don’t. They’re iridescent, they genuinely look to be ablaze with their dark red spines & bright red & blue bodies so luminous they appear almost like LED strips. A breathtaking species of Urchin to say the least! The way their spines move across their bodies offsetting the view of the farther parts of their body makes them truly look aflame.

Following dive two it was time for lunch. We headed back to NAD Lembeh where we were met with a lovely spread once again provided by Tommy, the resort’s excellent chef. Following our exquisite sustenance it was time, once again, to head back out for another dive.

Dive three was Nudibranch Falls. For those of you dear readers that do not know what a Nudibranch is, they are a family or shell-less mollusks with exterior gills that often feed on corals & sponges. They are often poisonous & thus come rather brightly colored to ward off predators & blend into their lunch. As for the name of the site, Nudibranch Falls is a wall dive meaning you’re diving along side a wall, pretty self explanatory. It is named as such because the ascending bubbles from the divers often knock the Nudies from their place of munch & send them cascading to the depths below. Thus the nudibranch falls.

While exploring the first bits of this site it became extremely dark out of nowhere & I’m talking like ‘felt like we should be in a cave or passthrough’ dark, therefore a lot of the pictures that will accompany this section will probably make heavy use of my flashlight, as will the following, but we’ll get there when we get there.

Around Nudibranch Falls is primarily rubbly reef; waves, creatures, boats,…divers…, etc crash against the corals causing them to break & fall to the bottom below where they either expire or continue growing, hence the rubble. The venue had many of your typical reef fish as well as, yes, many a variety of Nudibranch & Flatworm. The coolest incision of the reef however where the Sea Fans that played host to Pygmy Seahorses.

You shan’t be seeing any picture of Pygmy Seahorses from me seeing how the are, as the name implies, Pygmy & my camera could not for the life of it figure out what the hell I was trying to film. When I say these boogers are small, I mean it. I would say the largest was no bigger than the nail of your little finger.

I’m going to throw Sam under the bus a little here just because I find the story to be a tad humorous & it comes back around later. Sorry Sam if you’re reading this.

After viewing the seahorses Sam, my dive buddy & roomie, set about exploring the rest of the reef wall. Little had we all notice but the current had started to pick up because, as we’d come to find out, it was pouring rain above us, hence the darkness. Sam, having been blown backwards by current & not entirely realizing, was mere inches away from running her fins right through the sea fan containing the entire colony of pygmy seahorses. We all motioned frantically to get her to stop moving, which she did & Gigs, another guide, & I came over & pulled her away from the coral wall manually all the while she remained posed like an astronaut freshly sucked into space. She later had to save me from a similar situation where I was blown into a bunch of coral & could not move for fear of damaging them. In either case there was no harm, no foul. No corals or sea life were harmed in the making of this blog…by us anyway.

Another cool discovery on this dive was a Lembeh Sea Dragon, which looked like a mess of hair until we got close to it. Yet another thing my camera said “Focus? Who’s she?” to, the Lembeh Sea Dragon was truly no larger than a bit of wire & about the length of the pad of your thumb. They are apparently rather rare, hadn’t been seen by Puri in a very long time, & are exclusive to the Lembeh Strait. Even Googling pictures of them they’re barely in focus in each instance.

We made our way back through the rain, which I’ve got to admit was kind of fun to dive in. I took a shower to warm up, started downloading my footage, & took a wee nap. Post nap I hit the coffee bar for what would be one of my only coffees the whole trip. I went the LA Australian Cafe route & made myself an Iced Milo Latte, basically an iced mocha sub chocolate sauce for Milo! I took my concoction back to the patio of my room & continued to edit.

While I sat there a squat little crab scuttled out of the burrow it had made under our neighbor’s steps & began picking through the dirt for food. Once it noticed me watching it immediately retreated though not all the way back into the burrow. I sat & watched it remoisten its eyes & trying to decide whether to continue its forage or hide for a good while.

This would be the first day in which we had four dives planned instead of the previous days of three. Well, our boat did anyway. I guess, I forgot to mention that our group was so large they’d split us in two, each boat containing eight people & four guides along with the captain & the deck hand. Our boat went back out to Aer Prang around 5:45 PM when the sun had begun to set. By the time we arrived a mere ten to fifteen minutes later the light was minimal at best & the sun was all but gone from our view. This was to be our first night dive.

Now I’d never been on a night dive before & if you recall from my pre-Fiji blog, in which I thought we were going to do a night dive, I was just as nervous about it as I was my shark dive. Now I’m craving both. I’m far from being a Thalassophobiak, but there’s something about the inky black of the ocean at night that I found rather off putting. My fears were misguided both in this instance & in my nervousness around sharks.

If you don’t know how a night dive works you’re basically plopped into a dive site in the pitch black. The lights on the boat are set to red as to not mess with the wild life below & each person brings along a torch to light their way. Additionally different methods of communication are used.

In normal light circumstances you give different hand signals to communicate with your fellow divers. In the blackness those signals are far from visible so they move from being off the body to being over your flashlight. Simple enough. Additionally when you want to get another diver’s attention in the light of day you make noise; bang your tank, carry a rattle, blow a whistle, click a carabiner, etc. Here when you hear a noise reverberation from the dark you have no idea what direction its coming from, who it’s coming from, or even if it’s a member of your party or another dive party. The solution? Wave your flashlight back & forth like a maniac in front of your fellow diver’s line of sight. I think this method often actually works better than the sound alternative.

So down we go, lights aglow searching for critters what dine on marine snow.

I’m once again going the throw Sam under the bus here, I promise this won’t be a trend in the remainder of this blog, nor part three to follow.

We get down to the bottom, I’m following Puri, Sam is following behind me, & I notice the light from her torch flash then disappear so naturally I think she’s trying to get our attention. I whirl around in search of her & she is no where to be found, lost to the darkened maw of the ocean.

I can hear some of you saying “check please, she got snatched” in your head, mine however didn’t go there until just now when I was typing this.

I continue searching for her, looking all around from the ocean floor to the water’s surface, no luck. Next thing I know I feel fingertips & a hand fiddling around the back of my neck trying to grasp the handle of my BCD (Buoyancy Compensator/Control Device). I look up from the arm now attached to me & there is Sam waving back at me extinguished light in hand.

So what happened? Well, Sam forgot to charge her dive light with full confidence in it & ironically it had decided to crap out at almost the exact moment we were all like “All ready? Okay, let’s go exploring.” Sam’s solution, which I’ve got to say was a smart one, was to grab ahold of my gear & basically hitch a ride with me the duration of the dive, which is the exact thing you’re supposed to do. Only I didn’t know that. So while I’m whirling around in search of her, she was whirling around trying to grab the back of my BCD to continue the dive. Fortunately the Eagle Scout in me came prepared & I had a second, smaller light, to give her so she didn’t have to play Remora with me the whole time.

Night diving is an interesting experience, it’s a completely different world. We’d dove the site during the day so I knew what to expect in terms of terrain & fauna but it truly is something to behold when the lights go out. A lot of the fish in the reef enter a form of sleep drastically reducing their metabolism while still technically staying awake to keep them alert from predators but during this state of stasis they basically go into a less reactive & mobile state. You find a lot of the fish that you would see during the day resting & they don’t stir or depart nearly as quickly at night. Sometimes you end up right up on them without them paying you much mind.

We stumbled upon many ‘sleeping’ Dwarf Lionfish, Pipefish, Crustaceans & Starfish that had come out to eat. We found our first Octopus of the trip, a long tentacle that would splay its arms out, following each divot of the sea bed, then retract them once it came up dry with nothing to grab onto & snack on. Additionally we ran into many snoozing Cuttlefish & a massive, meaty looking Blue Crab swimming about the shallows, hunting fish. You also get the microscopic critters that you miss during the day who are drawn to the light, darting in & out of the beam as you cruise along. (We’ll get more into them on the Black Water Dive in part three next week).

With our night dive concluded we made our way back to base where it was now dinner time. The groups who’d stay’d behind were already digging in by the time we returned but we were assured dinner would wait for us to return from our showering. The Tomato Soup & Indonesian Chicken Curry that were on the evening’s menu really helped to warm the bones as well & it wasn’t long before we were all sound asleep, zonked by the many adventures of the day, ready to face the next.

End Of Day Three


Day Four

Day four felt ripped right out of the archives of a nature documentary. There were so many observed happenings on this day that I don’t think for the entirety of the remainder of my days as a diver I will find another jam packed day such as this, at least where the circle of life is concerned. The day started out early, with breakfast. One thing I really appreciate about diving Lembeh is that you actually get to have the breakfast of your choosing because you’re not dealing with massive swells on the way to your dive site. I think, in this case, it was an egg sandwich day with bacon.

The first of the day’s animal encounters happened without even having to leave the shore. You see, each morning, on my way to the boat I’d stop to see which sea creatures had gathered around the dock over night. Day one it had been a Batfish just off the end of the pier, day two; schools of butterflyfish, but I think this morning took the case of coolest things spotted. Just off the main part of the dock there were a few schools of fish, that wasn’t the cool part. Amongst these shoals was a singular Cuttlefish, cool on its own, sure, only this Cuttlefish was hunting. It was pulsing dark & light colors over its body in an attempt to hypnotize the fish belonging to the schools. When it got closer it would extend out its two harpoon-like tentacles & snag one of fish. I watched it do this over & over until it had successfully snagged two or three fish & it was now time to depart from the shore to head out into the strait for the day’s dives. I promise you, this Nat Geo/Discovery Channel/Animal Plant-esque day was far from over as the remainder of this segment will surely show! Buckle up kids, it’s gonna get wild!

As the week moved on & my editing work began piling up more & more I began to get lazy with logging my dives. At least that’s the excuse I’m going to be using going forward for the fact that I lost track of some of the names of the dive sites going forward because the online log book required me to make a new entry with address (um…ocean?) & coordinates as well. So if I can’t give you the name of any of the dive sites on this here day we shall be referring to them here numerically.

Dive #1 popped off immediately & actually ended up being one of my favorite dives of the whole trip. This one, fortunately to us, dear reader, does have a name. It’s called Angel’s Window. Similar to the Cathedral of Lanai, Angel’s Window is the remnants of an old lava tube, supplying it with a number of pass throughs & caves. The “window” is a massive, 100 foot tall rock, that rests just below the surface of the water & is covered in beautiful reef. Where deep diving is concerned you always start the day off with your deepest dive & always start said dive off with the deepest depth, working your way back up.

Slowly we began our decent down the side of the rock, taking in the fish & corals before we reached the first cave. There a school of Squirrelfish had taken up residence & their reflective silver & red scales flashed the light of our torches back at us lighting up the cavern. Directly below us the rock had a vertical pass through that let out right at the entrance to the actual window of which an Angel, either by name or title, possess. I should mention, the above pass through is where Sam had to save me from bumping into the reef, so we’re square. On the other side of the window we came our to find sand bed waiting for us. Much to my joy, off in the distance I could see the ‘sway & snag’ of a colony of Garden Eels.

I love garden eels, I absolutely adore them. They burrow in the sand in clusters, popping their heads & a good portion of their bodies out, & collecting zooplankton as it drifts by. They’re very, very shy & this group of Spotted Garden Eels was no exception. I did my best to sneak up on them to no avail, but that still didn’t stop me from squealing at the glimpse of them that I had been fortunate enough to gather.

Back to the rock we went where we began to spiral our way up & around. I did glimpse another cluster of garden eels down on the other side of the rock but I ended up distracted by Octopus #2 of the trip.

This was a Day Octopus, a close relative to the GPO or Giant Pacific Octopus. You know, that octopus that comes to mind when we all think of them. Solving puzzles, squeezing through tiny spaces, tucked up by the glass in your local aquarium? Yeah, that one!

It was tucked & hiding away so we moved on quickly running into a rather large Moray Eel, several schools of Box Anthias whose colors seemed to glow neon at depth, & a rather aggressive Damselfish who came careening off the reef to attack my fins. Though after what happened next, I’m not surprised that it wasn’t a fan of divers.

On up the rock we found a rather large school of Klein’s Butterflyfish pecking at the rock. Puri pointed out that they were eating fish eggs, specifically the fish eggs of the Damsels on the reef. I was fascinated by them swarming the rocks but Puri urged me on. Noticing me watching them as we swam away he wrote on his pad “they will follow us.” A little lost I chose to trust & continued on after him. Sure enough here they came, the entirely of the school of Butterflyfish was now following us. The damsel below was just a precursor, a foreshadowing of events to come it you will because the butterflies had learned that the damsels would much rather defend their clutch from something large, more likely to wipe out the spawn, than a school of fish. They used our being there to draw the damsels off of the reef & would then swoop in & pick off the eggs left behind leaving the damsels to fight off the butterfly fish frenzy.

Don’t feel bad for the damselfish, please. The entirety of this trip I had probably a dozen or more damselfish try to pick fights with me just for swimming by. Even in my own home aquarium I had to evict my Staghorn Damsels because they were killing my corals to lay eggs in the middle of the tank & then would fight all of the other fish the came within feet of the nest. They’re a-holes.

The butterflies followed us for a good while, feeding along the way, taking the piss out of the damsels but departed from us when we swung around the north side of the rock & found the current.

I’ve always kind of enjoyed a slight current while diving, the sway back & forth reminds you just how small you are & its exhilarating to start in one spot, kick to ride the current where you want to go, & then sweep back just a little bit. I was distracted by the immaculately vivacious Sun Coral colonies to notice that Sam had completely disappeared. I signaled to Puri asking where our dive buddy was & he simply gave me the gesture of “the boat.'“ Turns out while I was reveling in the current, Sam was developing sea sickness. I scouted the reef for a few more minutes before returning to find Sam applying Dramamine patches behind her ears.

Angel’s Window sits near the top of Lembeh Strait, hence its oceanic influences. That meant we had a bit longer of a trek back south to get to our next dive site. Just off the shore from a small town, dive #2 was a full on muck dive, hard contrast to the morning dip. We sat & watched a small Indonesian girl & her father training their dog how to swim while we loaded up on warm beverages, water, fruit, & once more, cake. Once it was time to dive & Sam’s Dramamine (Samamine) had begun to kick it was time to dive once more.

We spent a good while doing simple observational tasks on this dive. We found a set of Sea Slugs ‘racing’ towards one another & sat to watch them & see what they’d do. Initially we were all taking votes on mating but it ended up being only coincidence & the slugs recoiled immediately when they finally made connection with one another.

I managed to film my second “feeding” of the day as we descended down farther when a Lionfish chased a Boxfish off the mooring line where it was perched & consumed it out in open water above me. Probably was that Lionfish’s last meal as Boxfish are poisonous.

Our dive into the muck included many Hi Hats, a massive school of Shrimpfish, Sand Divers (yes, they are as the name suggests), Porcupine Puffers, several types of Frogfish (Hairy & Painted), a Seahorse, several live Sand Dollars, & a Queen Conch. We even found another set of the same variety of Sea Slugs inching their way towards one another, only this time, they ended up mating! Post dive it was once again time to head back to the resort for lunch.

After lunch I sat editing, milking a Pacori Sweat while editing. All of the sudden I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. There, above me, pilfering through the rafters was a slender brown & grey snake. It was darting around looking for food amongst the roofing. I asked one of the staff what kind of snake it was & I was informed it was a Brown Coconut Snake, probably looking for geckos to eat up there, though normally they stick to the trees. I sat there editing & watching the snake for a good while before it was time, once again to go dive.

Our afternoon dive was at the Island just across the strait from the resort. In the water we went, ears adjusted, down through the muck where I excited discovered a large Crete, or Sea Snake below us. We all gathered around but found ourselves a bit puzzled as it wasn’t really moving. Our collective though seemed to be that maybe it was snoozing, resting, or trying to burrow after food, but upon closer inspection the snake was missing its head. 40 feet below the surface, a quarter mile off the coast of an unsettled island this discovery still perplexes me.

Abandoning the dearly departed we continued down the island’s slope til I came upon a Black Ribbon Eel. Many of you saw the moment I’m about to describe on my Instagram or TikTok but I’ll be more than happy to describe it to you all here! This Juvenile Eel was buried deep in the substrate, swaying patiently in the currents, passing the water through their specialized nostrils that act as antennae picking up the scent of any passing prey. P.S. I knew it was a juvenile because it was black. The adult males are blue, the females, yellow. In our passing we had startled a small cluster of Cardinal Fish close to the eel’s den. (Truly we are a terror to the safety & security of the cardinal fish). The eel immediately stopped its swaying & closed its mouth, looking now more like a blade of seagrass sticking out of the ground. Puri noticed this & motioned for me to lay low, stake down, & start filling, which I did. The group of cardinals, disoriented by us, had scattered a bit & were still paying much more attention to the three black clad monsters in the water with them than the seemingly innocuous blade of grass at their rear.

The fish population of Lembeh are clearly opportunists, many adapting to use human influence to their advantage, case in point. This eel used our presence to hone in one a singular cardinal that had drifted a little too far from the flock & had found itself very much in line for an easy lunch. However, the cardinal was not entirely unwise. It narrowly avoided the strike of the eel but, I guess stuck between a rock & a hard place of us or the eel it wrongly chose to stay in the proximity of the eel who creeped in for a second strike, landed it, & drug the wriggling fish back into its hovel.

Farther down the slope we encountered a pair of Chocolate Chip Starfish before Gigs, one of the other guides started banging his tank to get us to come over to see what he & his group had discovered. Enter octopus #3.

Gigs had found a Blue-Ringed Octopus, only about the size of your thumb, the Blue-Ring is one of the most venomous animals on the planet & it isn’t afraid to show you that it is not to be messed with. This blue-ring, in the typical fashion, was fairly mundane looking, that was until it decided we were a threat & it was in danger. These octopuses, as the name implies, are covered in a series of blue rings. What the name doesn’t tell you is that these blue rings aren’t always there but instead are used in mating & as a way to flash at predators, or in this case us, to back the eff off. The electric blue rings are extraordinary almost appearing to have a turquoise luminescence to them. Never one to waste its venom, the blue ring quickly slinked away to a hidey hole after it realized we weren't going to watch it & that we weren’t fooled by it pretending to be bubble algae or just another rock so we let it be & departed as well.

Farther up the slope was came across a reef with some of the most amazing Bubble-Tipped Anemones I’ve ever seen, massive mounds of Galaxia, huge Feather-Duster Worm colonies, Maze, Bird’s Nest, & Torch Corals. We found Juvenile Sweetlips squiggling around the bottom, a colony of Venomous Coral Catfish dive bombing the sand, & many a Filefish, Cleaner Wrasse, & Puffer tucked in the rock along with a Crete, only this one was alive.

The rest of the evening played out as usual; shower, editing, dinner, more editing, bed. I kept finding myself reminiscing about just how incredible the day had been & couldn’t fathom how Lembeh was going to out do herself, boy was I wrong.

See you all in part three! Have a great weekend!

Much Love Always,

-C

End Of Day Four


End Of Part Two


Travel Blog: Indonesia: Part One-A Plane, A Boat, A Truck, & Diving in the Muck

INDONESIA

PART ONE:

Prologue/Day One

Singapore

We’re starting day one off in the airport, specifically the Singapore Airport where my eighteen hour LA to Singapore leg had come to an end at 1:30 on Monday morning. Regrettable I was unable to get much sleep one the flight so I was dragging. I found an open street food stall in the airport & got a bowl of Wonton Noodle Soup with Veggies. Before finding a spot to crash I stopped at the in airport 7/11 for something to drink & some candy as well as the airport Butterfly Garden & Cactus Garden. I found a spot behind a row of seats to bunk down for a few hours before my flight to Jakarta was set to take off at 6 am. By the time I’d setting in for my nap the time was around 3 am.

It was, unfortunately, short lived. Apparently a section full of people napping is the perfect place to take a phone call & play with your toddler, as the woman who loudly sad beside me somehow discerned. Having slept only around 30-45 minutes I begrudgingly gathered my things & went in search of caffeine.

I’d switched from coffee to tea a few weeks prior so when I ordered a lemon black iced tea at what was now just short of 5 AM, the sleepy barista looked at me like I had three heads. It truly didn't cross my brain until I’d left the region entirely that I was smack in the center of part of the coffee world, literally about to board a flight to the island of Java. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say & next time I’ll be sure to scout coffee options.

The rest of my dive crew joined me just after I downed my tea & right around the time our gate & security opened to let us through to the gate waiting area. The Singapore Airport does this interesting thing where there is minimal security when simply entering the terminal, but each gate is glassed off with its own private security line that you can reserve a specific time to be in if you plan in advance. We all got through security, I paid Deb the $3 I owed her still from Fiji & we promptly boarded shortly there after.




Indonesia

I had managed to book a window seat into Jakarta though it was in the far back of the Singapore Airlines plane, the seats get more & more narrow the farther back you go. I slept majority of the hour long flight but woke in time for the in flight meal of Chicken Congee, which made me question why I don’t make Congee more often.

Once we began our decent into Jakarta I noticed something interesting, rows & rows of something out in the ocean just off shore. Later I would find out that those were pearl farms after boating by a few in Lembeh Strait.

We had a four hour layover in Jakarta & while we thought it would be a casual stroll through the airpark, we ended up needing every minute of it.

The first hurtle was immigration, we got in one line just to be told it was wrong once we got up to the front, then we went over to buy a 30-day visa for $30 USD, which then had the be taken back to the original line. Our baggage took a while to collect, coming out in spurts in ten minute intervals, though Joe & my dive partner/roomie, Sam’s, bags didn’t end up making it entirely. We waited while they filled out the missing bag reports, then we started to make our way through customs.

I don’t know why I found the immigration/customs process in Indonesia so intimidating, but it was. Everything was taken very seriously, each little form had to be filled out precisely or the officer viewing it would throw a fit, the only other similar customs experience I’ve had was entering The US at BNA from The UK.

Once we were all through customs we had to board a monorail to a different terminal, of which, the directions for use were very confusing, but we made it, though half of our group got separated trying to figure out the sky rail system.

The local terminal was overwhelming with, once again, little to no direction on where exactly you’re supposed to go. Have you ever seen the pictures of Kathmandu, Nepal where the streets are just wall to wall people, buggies, & vehicles? That’s what the local terminal at Jakarta International felt like. It was especially overwhelming trying to roll suitcases & bags through in addition to everyone basically being in the same attire from the soccer/football match the evening prior.

We finally found where we needed to be & stood in line to check in for Batik Airways. This took some time. The problem was that everyone in the group, with the exception of Sam & I were on a singular booking, so we had to assemble & check in each of those people as a group, paying the baggages fees individually as they went. The acceptable baggage weight fluctuated between 20 kg & 17 kg depending upon which ticketing agent you asked so some people ended up having to go halfway across the terminal to pay their baggage fee & others ended up getting off scot-free. Once we were all paid & bags were dropped we made our way to our gate.

The gate situation here was similar to Singapore with the gates being the security check point but had more in common with MCI where there were 5-10 gates behind each security check point. Our flight was slightly delayed so I went in search of food. I landed on a coffee stall that had Thai Tea Boba & Coconut Steam buns.

Once we were boarded I’d been resorted to a middle seat in the very back of the aircraft. For the two & a half-three hour flight I sat watching Shang-Chi & passively enjoying the Curried Chicken I’d been given.

Once we’d landed in Manado & gathered our belongings we were shown to cars where our stuff was packed in & two-three of us were shoved in & off we went.

I’ll say this about the Indonesian drivers as a whole, the lane markers seem to only be a suggestion. We cruised across the country side past Gunung Klabat to Bitung where we disembarked from the vans & we ushered through the village to a pier with a small overhead cover where we sat with our gear waiting for a boat, we’d finally made it to Lembeh Strait.

Our chariot was, ironically, one of the dive boats from the resort. We all got in, our bags were passed down & placed in the non-seated areas. The ride across the strait only took around ten minutes & we were greeted at the dock by Simon, the owner of NAD Lembeh Resort.

We were instructed to leave our bags on the boat & head into the bar area where we were meant to fill out the resort & dive paperwork. We were met there by some of the resort staff & a Calamansi beverage of the resort’s creation. While we filled out our paper work our bags were being brought to our rooms & we were briefed on the resort, its amenities, & our dives.

I retired back to my shared room with Sam & we got ourselves sorted before it was time to go back to the main part of the resort for dinner.

NAD has a resort chef named Tommy. Tommy’s job extends not only to evening meals but also includes lunch, breakfast is handled by several of the women on the resort staff. Each meal, no matter the maker, is served buffet style with dessert or fruit being brought out around twenty minutes into the designated meal time. Dinner was always a soup, a salad, several entree options & at least one veggie dish. Our first night Chicken in Yellow Curry was the main course.

Over dinner I remarked to Simon about the various species of “rare” plants scattered around the facilities; A Variegated Philodendron Burle Marks on the check-in desk, several species of rare Monstera, Hoyas, & Pothos & he explained that their gardener is world renowned for going out into the jungle of Indonesia & even discovering new species of plants! He even offered his contact info & told me to contact him about shipping some to The US!

After a delicious dinner we seemed to be reaching our individual points of expiration so we called it an early night, each of us heading off to bed by 8:30 at the latest. I took a rinse off shower in our room’s “shower room” (a literal room whose only purpose was to house the shower) & was out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow.


End Of Day One


Day Two

Our boat call was 7:30 AM. Breakfast each morning began service at 6 which consisted of Toast with Jams, Cereal, Fruit, Yogurt, Eggs, Bacon or Sausage, Fresh Juice, & occasionally Nasi Goreng (Indonesia’s National Dish of Fried Rice) or Fried Noodles. I opted for Two Eggs Over Easy on Wheat Toast w/ Chicken Sausage, Fresh Papaya, & Pineapple, along with a Jasmine Tea.

After breakfast it was time to assemble the gear. The staff had come the night prior to retrieve our BCDs (Buoyancy Compensator Device), Dive Computers, Fins, Wetsuits, & Regulators, along with anything else we didn’t want to carry down ourselves the next day. That left me with my Mesh Scuba Bag filled with my Dive Socks, GoPro Kit, Bits & Bobs that I Dive with (Pointer, Torch, Etc.), & my out of suit Swimwear. I topped off my water & climbed into the boat where Sam & I were introduced to Puri, our would-be guide for the week ahead.

Now Puri is an Indonesian gent from just outside of Bitung that I’d place somewhere in his 30s. Whether through natural occurrence or corrective lenses he has dark blue eyes that sit cheerfully atop his stout, dark build. From what I gathered from Puri in the week’s time we spent together he can be a bit of a jokester which is fortunate because his laugh is both cacophonous & infectious.

NAD Lembeh has the benefit of being positioned almost smack dab in the middle of the Lembeh Strait, meaning that a lot of the dive sites were only around a 10-15 minute boat trip from the resort. Our first of which was Pantaic Parigi 1, which translates to Parigi Beach 1.

We started our week of dives off, appropriately, with a muck dive. For those unaware a muck dive differs from other dives by the substrate. A muck dive consists of a soft, muddy bottom & it requires one to have a true handle on their buoyancy because one false kick or move & you kick up the silt ruining the visibility. A lot of muck dives also take place on a slope as you’re on the banks of the strait & could easily swim all the way up on shore if you weren’t careful.

We were briefed & entered at around fifteen feet of water, we hung out there for a minute while we all got used to being submerged again then descended down the slope. I was immediately amazed that half the things Puri had begun pointing out to Sam & I were around the size of a finger nail; translucent Shrimp, little Nudibranchs, Shrimp Gobies buried in the sand. I suppose it’s worth noting, if you hadn’t picked up on it already, that we were diving in trios. Typically resort dives consist of one or two dive guides per group of eight-ish. NAD Lembeh does two per guide so that the small things aren’t missed, the commotion around the animals doesn’t stir up the bottom, & the guides aren’t fighting the visibility to keep their group together.

At one point we came upon a submerged fishing net that had long been abandoned to the bottom of the ocean. That didn’t stop the fish & corals from using it to the best of their abilities. One of the buoys for the net was still holding it aloft while the rest of it sat strewn across the sea bed. There were many corals that had taken root, clusters of Cuttlefish & Octopus eggs covered the netting, schools of Cardinal Fish hid amongst the low netting, Eels & Lionfish used the coverage & camouflage options for hunting, the net was teeming with life.

Farther down we found Medusa Worms hosting Emperor Shrimp, Anemones filled with Clowns, Pufferfish grazing in the muck, a beautifully puffed out Gurnard, & many a Filefish.

I, for once, was the air sucker of the group. I guess being at least a foot-foot & a half taller than the rest of your part will do that. I was getting low on air while Sam & Puri both still had just short of half a tank upon our resurface. This would be the trend for the rest of the trip where usually I am the one with all of their air left over.

Our surface interval was supplemented with Papaya, Pineapple, a Loaf Cake, & your choice of either Coffee, Tea, or Milo (Australian Nesquik). We rehydrated & disbursed the nitrogen from our bodies all while traveling over to Aer Prang 2 which I guess roughly translates to “Air Crash 2” though I don’t believe there’s a plane wreck below the surface, at least not that we saw. Aer Prang 2 sits right next to a water depot which really just looks like a cinderblock building with a thatched roof & a small aqueduct running down the dock to the water. Aer Prang would be a popular destination over the next week, as it is half coral reef/half muck. This was the site that really solidified it for me, this was the site that immediately made the 40+ hours of travel to Indonesia worth it for me. Allow me to explain why.

This is going to truly sound like first world diver problems & to some degree it is but I want to wind things back to Fiji for a second. When I was in Fiji, with the exception of the shark dive, all of the dives we were doing were amongst some of the most beautiful reefs I’ve ever seen. This is not to dissuade you from going to do Beqa because if you have the desire I highly recommend it. Hell, I’d love to go back myself! BUT when you’re diving 2-3 dives a day, all of them, as I mentioned, the most beautiful coral reefs you’ve ever seen, it begins to feel a tad redundant. Told ya, first world diver problems. Indonesia has the benefit of variety. You can go from wall dives to muck dives to massive sprawling reefs to giant rock cathedrals swarming with life, sometimes all within the same dive. I will say the thing that Fiji has over Indonesia is its large aquatic life, something I found myself actually missing in Indonesia from time to time.

At the start of Aer Prang you’re dropped, plop, right into a reef. Anemones, corals, fish, & life abound, then you start to head down another slope into the muck. The benefit of this miss mash is that you get kind of the in-between where the muck & the reef are concerned. You get the fish & invertebrates that live in both or are the reef outcasts. You get things like Cuttlefish & Octopuses, you get things like Seahorses (one of which was pregnant) & Frogfish, you get things like Flasher Dragonettes, Pipefish, & Sea Kraits all while experiencing amazing coral life along the way.

After our second dive we returned to home base where it was lunch time. I grabbed a Pocari Sweat which is a Japanese Sports drink & immediately went to download my footage from the day & start editing.

Lunch was usually a tad on the lighter side since most of us still planned to go out diving a third time in the afternoon & was served alongside a massive plate of fruit; mostly papaya, watermelon, & pineapple. I asked after Jackfruit seeing as it’s one of my favorites & was informed it was the end of the season for them, but they would try to find me one.

Our third dive departed at 2:30 PM each day. In this instance I’m not entirely sure the dive site we ended up at as I got lazy in my dive log & just claimed Aer Prang again instead of creating a whole new site for the SSI app like I’d done the previous two. I can tell you that this site was mostly muck but it featured fields & fields of Goniopora & by fields & fields, I mean as far as was visible in all directions. Amongst the Goniopora we found many resting Lionfish, some Blue Spotted Stingrays, Pipefish, Filefish, Clowns, Anemones, Puffers, etc. One of the coolest things we found in the somewhat faded light was a school of Shrimpfish that when you passed light through them looked like a fire blazing above a Gorgonian.

We returned to the resort & I set about editing once again. If you were unaware on my TikTok & Instagram I post clip videos of my trips as they happens, especially my dives!

The evening rolled around & it was once again time for Tommy’s delicacies & the day’s discussion of who saw what & where! I remember calling it an early night again, having rinsed off earlier & opting to finish up the day’s video in the morning I drifted off to sleep fairly easily.

End Of Day Two


END OF PART ONE