April 6, 2024

Charlie Rogers

Travel, Travel Blog, Blog

Travel Blog: Bohol, Philippines- Part Two: It's A Shark, It May Have The Word 'Whale' In Its Name, But It Is A Shark!

April 6, 2024

Charlie Rogers

Travel, Travel Blog, Blog

BOHOL, PHILIPPINES

Welcome back, welcome back! How’re we feeling today? Ready to embark on another adventure into the deep blue? I sure hope so! If you are coming into this post & seeing that big ole ‘part two’ across the title & scratching your head, fear not, I’ll link Part One of this here trilogy below this here paragraph. If you’re coming from the previous post, welcome to it! Glad you stuck around! Sorry we didn’t get into any diving with that one, I promise this one will be different in that regard. Now, if we don’t have any more points of business to get out of the way, I’d be happy to continue this ongoing story. Strap on your BCD, bite down on your reg, & let’s dive on in!

Part One

PART TWO:

Day Three

One of the only times that you will catch me being a morning person is on the days in which there is diving or some sort of other adventure involved. I tend to be more of a late morning riser & a night owl than an early bird but when you dive, a lot of times your dives will start sometime around or before 8 AM. That was no different here.

We awoke around 6:15/6:30 AM. Having made our way to the resort in the dark I wanted to a brief bit of exploring. I revisited the path I’d gone down the night prior; a pair of jet black honey bees were zipping around, pollenating a papaya tree that had cropped up near the trail. Continuing along it I sat & watched the newly minted day from the overlook above the rocks, listening to the waves dash against them.

Breakfast at Magic Oceans begins around that time & is custom, made to order, from the menu provided at the table. Along with your freshly made breakfast options you also have the ability to order coffee, tea, water, or an assortment of fresh juices such as apple, mango, orange, & pineapple. I tend to lean something a little more carb leaning, less greasy or dense, for days I plan to dive, especially if we’re going out on a boat. It was a tip that Elaine taught me back in Fiji that helps mitigate the potential of “feeding the fish” should the boat ride out, or the currents under the waves, prove to be rocky. With that in mind I ordered the Pancake with Fresh Fruit.

The plate sized pancake was less your traditional southern/midwestern American dense dark golden brown disk & more akin to a thick crepe or a dutch baby. Whatever it was, it was delicious. It came covered in fresh pineapple, some of the best mango I've ever had, & bananas. It felt sacrilegious of me to put syrup on it, so instead I asked for honey, which I drizzled gingerly atop.

With breakfast also came the remainder of our briefing from the night before that had been cut short by the exhaustion we all shared. Evelyn filled us in on the remainder of the resort proceedings while Jamie, the Dive Master, began briefing us on what our days of dive would consist of. We were to be at the ‘dive shop’ each morning at 8 AM for check-in & briefing where we’d pack up & depart for two morning dives before returning back for lunch, refueling, & going out for our afternoon dive.

As we all began finishing our respective breakfasts & departing for our rooms to gather our belonging for our dives we were once again greeted by the dining staff who were taking out lunch orders.

With lunch you had the option for whatever you wanted from the even broader lunch menu. However, each day the kitchen staff would pick two items from the menu that they would then offer to guests as a way of making the load on the kitchen for lunch easier. If neither of those two options suited you then you were more than welcome to order from the menu.

Once we’d all retreated & reconvened down at the dive shop we set about setting up out tanks for the week. Each of us was given a polished wood station with room to hang your BCD (buoyancy control device), your wetsuit, & a milk crate in which to put things whenever you needed them. As I was getting situated, JR, who would be my guide for the week, came over & metered the nitrox from my tank for me. You meter with each tank so that you know what percentage O2 your tank has which then is inputted into your dive computer which uses the exact measurements to calculate a dive requiring no decompression time. We finish measuring my tank, attached it to the BCD, & screwed on my regulator, then it was Evan’s turn.

This is where I think we ran into the trouble of the week, the trouble that we probably won’t include in this part of the blog, but will probably occupy the majority of part three. We got Evan’s tank measurements, signed off on them on the sheet saying we’d measured & crosschecked the tank, & went to assemble his dive kit. We screw the BCD in place & I go to attend to something in my milk crate. The next thing I know there’s a loud pop from my left & a whooshing. Those of us who are experience divers have already called it; it was a popped o-ring. An o-ring, for anyone not familiar with plumbing or any type of activity involving the sealing of two connecting points, is a little rubber ring that sits in the connection fro the tank to the regulator. It prevents air from leaking out the connection. Evan’s had just blown. Totally normal occurrence, nothing to be frightened by or upset about. They pull his reg off the tank & inspect the issue. I immediately see the problem, there’s not one, but two o-rings in the slot. I call that out & turn my head back to my kit or whatever I was fidgeting with on my kit. Another pop right next to my left ear. The blown o’ring had been discarded & another one had replaced it, which then also blew.

I want to be very clear that I’m not tacking blame on this for anyone, especially since I was basically the only one who could see the second o-ring from where I was positioned & the way the tank was facing. I understand having taken the regulator off, seeing the o-ring attached to said regulator connection, & replacing it there assuming that it was the only one present. I also speak at a pitch that tends to blend in to the background noise of the world around you, so I may not have been heard. I made sure to point the mistake out before the same thing happened a second time though.

With gear finally assembled & loaded on board the boat, we gathered around for our briefing & to be divided into our dive groups.

At this point I suppose it’s worth noting the following. Anytime I write stories or blogs I do my best to not include the names of persons under the age of 18, unless I am personally related to them. I am not their parents/guardians, the extent in which their personage being spread across the world wide web is not my choice to make. There will be several mentions of underage party members throughout this blog series, but I shan’t be naming them. They will simply be referred to as in relation, i.e. so & so’s daughter, such & such’s friend, you get it? If you’re one of the aforementioned reading this, I promise I know your names & don’t mean to diminish you to who you are to someone else! Continuing on…

Evan & I naturally got placed together, along with Deb (whom I adore & dove with previously in Fiji & Indonesia), & Darin & Cari’s Daughter (whom I also adore & dove with in Fiji), as she was rooming with Deb. Cari departed from her assigned group & joined ours under JR as the group she was assigned to with Darin, their son, & his friend, would be busy certifying their son’s friend as a diver. So we became a group of six, JR included, & they became a group of four.

Our boat held three groups, which meant that our last group from our party would be on another boat for the week, but they didn’t seem to mind! At least as far as none of them voiced.

Our first dive of the trip was a site called Birhen Sanctuary. A lot of the diving that we did around the peninsula that Anda sits on were wall dives as the shore went out a ways before dropping off drastically at a depth of around fifteen to twenty feet to around eighty to one hundred. Birhen was no exception. With our max depth for the site set around eighty-five feet we all suited up & into the water we went. I was eager as always to resubmerge & was actually planning on trying out a new bit of tech that I’d acquired, the Oceanic+ Dive Housing which uses the already solid camera output from my iPhone 15 Pro Max as its camera!

The Philippines did not come to play. In terms of an “introductory dive” for the location, it put all of the cards on the table. We got down to depth, immediately a massive field of Garden Eels (if you follow me on any of my socials you know how much love I have for garden eels.) Slight turn back towards the wall, boom, Sea Krait. This was all within the first minute or two of the dive. We saw Regal Angelfish, Ornate Ghost Pipefish, Scorpionfish, Frogfish, & even some Pygmy Seahorses (only about the size of a fingernail) camouflaged & tucked into a Gorgonian Coral. The site was splendid! If offered Greyfaced Moray Eels, harems of Anthias galore, & tons & tons of different varietals of Nudibranchs.

At the top of the wall sat an additional reef where we ran into a Peacock Grouper, a school of Durgon Triggerfish, & a Powder Brown Tang in addition to all the Anemones with Clownfish & a plethora of Long-Spined Sea Urchins.

Returning to the boat we were met with coffee, tea, bananas, & a container full of fresh cut mango. The crew was put in charge of changing out our empty tanks for the next dive & we set about burning through our hour long surface interval.

Any time I do these blogs, specifically the ones involving large amounts of diving, I never know exactly how much or how little you, as the reader, know about the activity of diving. Typically, I feel like most people sit in the realm of knowing very little about dive other than what they’re seen in tv or movies, often which promote very unsafe practices in their frames. BUT with the feeling that most people don’t know much about Scuba & its practices, I tend to overshare about the items or activities in which I am referencing. *See entire paragraph about ‘o-rings’ above.

Surface intervals, for those that don’t know, is the time designated for you as a diver to sit in our natural environment, the surface, & breathe out some of the nitrogen that has accumulated in your system at depth. The deeper you go, the longer you stay, the more pressure forces nitrogen into your body, the longer your surface interval needs to be. One of the goals of recreational diving is to stay within the threshold of what we call “no-deco time” or no decompression time, meaning you don’t require decompression to get back to normal above water stasis. All of these are fun things you learn if you ever take a dive course. During the surface interval is also typically the time in which you move from one dive site to the next, as we did.

Our next dive site was called Seahorse Point, another wall with a bit more sandy & sloped of a bottom. We still had a bit of time left before we could go diving so we sat & watched an outrigger pull up a fish trap full of fish. I swung around the back of the boat to use the bathroom & found Lee Ann, one of the other dive guides, eat something that I’m still not sure of its name with rice. I asked her what it was, which she gave me the name of, which I swiftly forgot, & then she offered me some. I took a pinch of it & it was exquisite! To describe it, it was a savory, salty reddish mush that I could not for the life of me tell you what was in it or what it was called. All I know was that it was very good & I am grateful she allowed me to try her lunch!

It was once again time to suit up & get in the water. The six of us jumped in, descended as a group, & started to make our way over the wall. The current at Seahorse Point was a little stronger than that of the previous dive, but was still manageable. We started this dive headed East, away from our boat. On our first pass, near the base of the wall we found lots more Nudibranchs, Feather Duster & Christmas Tree Worms, & an anemone full of Sarasvati Anemone Shrimp. We’d just made it to the halfway point of our dive & gotten the ‘turn around’ signal from JR when I spotted it. Nestled in the wall, doing its utmost to hide from us, was a rather large Common Octopus. I would have missed it entirely if I hadn’t been waiting for the rest of the group to start their return back the way we came. I only noticed it because of the white flash of its respiratory siphon.

We all gathered around the octopus as it did its best to blend into the reef wall & the cavity that it had claimed to hide in. It’s always an exciting find when you stumble across an octopus or any other type of cephalopod as their alien like appearance never ceases to amaze.

Going back the way we came we stumbled upon another fun find, an Electric Flame Scallop, tucked back in a slight cave, flashing its mantle to attract plankton which it filter feeds out. The scallop isn’t really electric, but it gives the appearance of such as it tucks & untucks the white edge of tissue around the edge of the opening of its mantle. Additionally we ran into more scorpionfish, more frogfish, & even more schools of anthias.

With the morning dives completed, it was time to head back to the resort for lunch.

For lunch Evan & I had chosen the burger option. It was definitely an interesting take on one, a far departure from the American style, but it was still very good. The patty came with your usual lettuce, onion, tomato, mayo, but additionally had fresh cucumbers on it, I’m assuming in place of the pickle. It made for a much “fresher” take on the classic dish.

After lunch it was back to the boat for our afternoon wall dive at Snapper’s Cove.

Snapper’s Cove is aptly name. There is a cove, in the wall, that typically is host to a school of Snapper. Imagine that. Evan skipped out on the afternoon dive & opted to relax by the pool, as did Deb, so our group of six was down to four.

In my experience afternoon dives can be hit or miss. A lot of the stuff that is active in the morning has started to hide away for the approaching night & a lot of the things that are active at night haven’t started to come out to hunt in the darkness yet. This one turned out to be a solid one!

The wall was chockablock with different kinds of nudibranchs as well as soft corals such as Pulsing Xenia & Waving Hand Anthelia. Additionally we didn’t find any snapper, but we did find a whole school of large Cardinalfish. I tried & failed to fulfill my endless pursuit of getting two Yellow Capped Cleaner Wrasse to clean my mouth & we found a massive white Giant Frogfish perched on some sponges awaiting whatever unlucky fish swims too close to it. We stumbled upon a school of juvenile Engineer Gobies, a duo of Zanzibar Whip Coral Shrimp, & some Orangutan Crab nestled in a Bubble Coral.

On top of the reef we ran into another Sea Krait, a few rather large hermit crabs, tons of Leather Corals, another frogfish, & our first Sea Turtle! Evan really missed out.

Back on land Evan & I made our way to the bar. I typically edit & post dive videos while on my trips & it usually takes me the entirety of the evening to do so, but I found myself having technical difficulties. You see, I am used to shooting on my GoPro, which has phenomenal stabilizers but can’t do macro (anything closer than a foot) to save its life. My iPhone, on the other hand, can shoot macro & wide but lacks the stabilizers. So I spend the good part of an hour or so editing footage, trying to figure out how to stabilize it on my iPad, which simply wasn't' happening. I decided that I’d wait til I returned stateside to compile my videos this time around since the stabilizing tech on my computer is absolutely astounding at times! I resigned myself to enjoying my time & not putting the pressure of content creation on myself this trip.

Here we meet more key players for the week; Ester & Ian, both of whom run the bar at the resort. Ester is by far who Evan & I spent the majority of our week conversing with & I would say we left the week decent enough friends! Ester was also in charge of the daily specials, her ‘cocktails of the day’ were always innovative & fun & we all sat at the bar most nights talking about life, movies, & joking around. This was to be the first of those evenings.

Dinner was called at almost exactly 7 PM & was served family style, just as it was the night prior. We were sat with water & a lovely sweet fruit tea along with an appetizer, a soup, or a salad. We ate dinner at a leisurely pace & once we were done it seems we’d all been taken by sleep, as every one in our party immediately went off to bed for the night.

End Of Day Three

Day Four

I woke up Tuesday with the biggest pep in my step, not that I don’t normally when it comes to diving, but today was the day that we were crossing off one of my bucket list dives. We were going to be diving with Whale Sharks!!!

Along with Manta Rays, Whale Sharks have always been a big “I wanna” for my dive bucket list & with over 60 dives under my belt, I had yet to have gotten a chance run in with either of the gentle giants. That was due to change!

Also, quick interjection here. THE ARE SHARKS, NOT WHALES! They may have ‘whale’ in the name, but it is used here as an adjective, like Goliath, it is meant to denote their size. They are not mammals, they are fish. They do not lactate, grow hair, have lungs, or have warm blood. I don’t know how many people I’ve talk to about this who have said something along the lines of “omg, I’m so jealous, I’d love to swim with whales” or “weren’t you afraid to be that close to whales.” They’re not whales. At all.

END OF SOAP BOX RANT.

Breakfast was served a little earlier than normal as we needed to be on the road headed to the dive site around 7:30. I had my usual pancakes with fruit & before I knew it, we were off on the one & a half hour ride to the site.

The staff had asked that we gather & group our dive gear the night prior so that they could load it into the truck that would go ahead & meet us there with everything already previously prepared so that when we arrived & it was our turn to go, we could just find & collect our things from our milk crate, dress, & get right into the water.

We arrived at Taug Whaleshark Watching just before 9:30. Upon arrival we were ushered through a series of vendor stalls before being sat under a covered patio where we received our safety briefing about the sharks & filled our or consent forms & waivers. One of the main rules that was being hammered in was that of distance & touch. Naturally they asked that you not touch the sharks & that doing so would accrue a 15,000 NFP fine. Additionally they asked that you not get within 10 meters of the sharks or 12 meters from their tail as it has a rather large swing radius. They also explained that this morning, when the crews got to work, there were about eight whale sharks out off the shore & now there were three as they show up each morning to be fed by the organization.

I want to pause here to talk a little about the morality of this, of feeding wild animals essentially as a tourist attraction & where I fall on this spectrum as I know certain other members of the dive community at large fall on very opposite ends of what they believe to be right.

I, in the past, have done very similar experiences where the animals are incentivized by the prospect of food to show up & be spectacle for divers or other tourists, that’s essentially what happens in Beja during their shark dive as well. (Read about it here.) Each time that I participate in such a program I always end up with the same grey area feeling around it but, I think that Jamie, the dive master at Magic Oceans, actually had very good insight into the practice, especially in Bohol.

One night at the bar Darin asked Jamie his feelings on the feeding of the whale sharks. His response came in the form of a story. Jamie said that it used to be that whale sharks were free game. Free game for fishermen, for butchers, etc. There were no protection for the sharks & they would often be caught, butchered, & sold at markets for their meat. Then something shifted. Someone along the way picked up on the fact that a very large percentage of the world would love nothing more than to see a live whale shark up close, so they started a business & began feeding the sharks planktonic organisms in the same spot each day. This naturally got the sharks accustomed to being fed & not having to search the oceans for their rapidly dwindling food source. Then they started hiring staff, then they started allowing vendors around their business, & quickly the other locals picked up on the fact that people would pay for the experience which then would enrich their chances of also getting a slice of the pie. Turn back to the local markets, people started to get run out for selling the shark because it became an active representation of the destruction of the livelihood of those in the community & almost all at once the fishing & sale of whale shark meat diminished & disappeared.

I’m not here to say it’s objectively right or wrong, what I will say will err on the side of the former though. Whale sharks are an endangered species, climate change is decimating their populations as their food source continues to lessen & lessen in availability. We take in rhinos for protection, we take in big cats in the hopes of rehabilitating & reintroducing them at later dates, what’s the harm in doing so with massive sharks while still keeping them in their natural habitat? Do we not sell safaris in nature preserves to pay to protect the animals there within?

After sitting, waiting our turn for around 30 minutes to an hour we were called to dress.

The dive was a shore dive with a max depth around 45 feet. We were asked to suit up quickly & get into the water to finish off our kit so that the boats coming in with those who had gone out to feed & observe from the surface could get in & start unloading/loading their groups. All in all there were probably just short of a hundred people mingling about either beginning or ending their trip with the sharks. We were apparently the last dive group of the day, so we weren't given a time limit for our excursion.

Long Spined Sea Urchins w/ Threadfin Cardinalfish

Once we were all in & kitted, we began the kick out to the site. The shoreline was rather rocky & full of urchins so they had us submerge as soon as we could in part so we weren’t stepping on anyone of their homes but also so that we could get lower in the water, giving the sharks ample space to swim above us just below the surface.

We were at about 35 feet when I saw my first wild whale shark. I was just kicking along, out into the Bohol Sea when I heard the clicks of JR’s carabiner. I found him in the water & he pointed up & there, about twenty feet above me, swam three whale sharks.

The group of three featured two sharks that were about 15-20 feet in length, the third was massive probably anywhere from 30-40 feet in length with a tail around 9 feet in height. They were easily the largest animals I had ever seen much less been in close proximity to. I was beaming!

Over the next hour we floated, suspended almost entirely in the middle of the bottom & the surface staring in awe & amazement as the sharks crossed back & forth collecting the food that had been thrown out for them. The largest shark, however, seemed to have the whole “feeding game” figured out & was situated at the surface the entirely of the time at around a 45º angle between the two boats that were throwing out the food. It didn’t move from its spot as its tail swooshed back & forth behind it, keeping its head elevated to the surface where it funneled in a constant flow of water & food.

At one point we all got a little sick of being reserved to the bottom/middle of the water column as we watched the groups of snorkelers go right up next to the shark & we decided to raise ourself up to a depth of about 15 feet instead. As soon as we did this I almost got bulled over by one of the smaller sharks who swam in from behind me. Luckily I saw it coming & was able to drop back down underneath it, which ultimately resulted is an amazing shot!

After we got out we dried off & dressed. There were refreshments waiting for us & our ride back. We repacked all of our gear into our milk crates & boarded the vans back to Magic Oceans.

Since the dive site was a ways away it ate the time slot for both of the morning dives, meaning that following lunch there would only be the afternoon dive to round out the day.

Our afternoon dive was a wall dive called Coco North. A sloping wall dive, this one featured deep fissures where schools of fish would gather & take refuge. During out time here I actually encountered another nautical first for me, which is a swimming Feather Starfish!

Feather stars get their name from the frilled appearance of their appendages of which there are anywhere from 10-200, though they always appear in groups of five. They dust these super sticky limbs through the water collecting food but also use them to maneuver through the water appearing almost like a dancing spider as they do. To see them stationary is fairly common place, but occasionally you’ll manage to see one fluttering about, which is a rather surreal experience!

In addition to the starfish we also stumbled upon a multitude of clams, some Yellow Boxfish, a few Orange-lined Triggerfish ( I prefer the aquarists term of “Undulate Triggerfish), & even happened upon a Fimbriated Moray Eel! The eel was tucked behind a crusting coral & didn’t want to say hi, despite our best efforts to get the beautiful creature to come out of its lair for a few photos.

In addition to all that the wall hosted a number of clownfish with anemones, Banded Coral Shrimp, Nudibranchs aplenty, Cleaner Wrasse, & more.

When we rounded the top of the wall there was a large school of Sergeant Majors waiting to greet us in addition to all of the soft corals & even a Banana Wrasse.

Post dives we made our nightly trip to the bar to await dinner & chat with Ester whom we got into a lovely heartfelt conversation about the differences in life between The US & The Philippines. As per usual, we also talked about movies & TV shows & which she was watching in the evenings when work was slow or when she got home after getting off. We made our recommendations & she made hers.

Dinner was served in the usual way & after some much need sustenance we once again retired for the night. Though before my head hit the pillow & drifted my off to dreamland I snuck down to the end of the dock for a bit of star gazing.

One of my favorite parts about being in a more remote part of the world with not as much light pollution, especially around the water, is the ability to see the stars. They’re the only times that I’ve managed to catch glimpses of The Milky Way.

All in all, it was one for the books, a day I will remember forever!

End Of Day Four

Day Five

Another morning, another Filipino Pancake with Fruit.

Our morning dive was a site called Island View. Yes, it did contain a view of an island, that island being Bohol. So I guess technically all of the dives we had should’ve been called “Island View.” It was also a wall dive.

While diving the view we encounter a multitude of lovely fish & other oceanic critters. There were a few types of Puffers: Porcupine, Dogfaced, & Valnetin’s Sharpnose, an Ornate Ghost Pipefish, loads of Anemones with Clowns, more Garibaldi Shrimp, Marbled Tile Starfish, a Crown-Of-Thorns Starfish, the clusterf- of Nudies we’ve come to expect, Frogfish, & even a little Snowflake Eel.

The morning dive was followed by a second at a site called “Coral Garden.”

Coral Garden was aptly named as the top reef was a vibrant myriad of corals & fish swimming about. Most of the top side crew were Damsels in variety: Sergeant Majors, Black Damsels, Staghorns, & Yellowtail Blue Damsels. Once we descended over the side of the wall, down the drop off, the reef traffic definitely got a bit quieter, & a lot less territorial.

You know, now that I think about it, this may be the first & only dive trip in which I wasn’t attacked by some sort of Damsel while diving…huh.

Off the wall we found Big Eye Soldierfish, a few Dwarf Hawkfish perched in the Barrel Sponges, more schools of Juvenile Engineer Gobies, Rabbitfish, a Soft Coral Crab, some spaghetti looking Nudibranchs, a school of Drummerfish, another two Sea Turtles, & a colony of Coral Catfish! It also ended up including one of my favorite dive happenings; diving in the rain!

Cari asked me when I explained that I love diving in the rain if I’d even noticed that it was until we’d hit the surface & while I don’t think I outright knew it was raining from depth, I definitely could hear & feel it around 20 feet. It also does something interesting to the animals below water where I feel it makes them a touch more active, though that could just be a wildly skewed observation that has no actual scientific merit to it in any regard. Either way, I love coming up out of the water into the rain, there’s something otherworldly about it.

When we got back to the resort it was lunch time. I can’t entirely recall what the option was for the day but I’m pretty sure it was like a chicken sandwich or something. As we were sat waiting I noticed JR & some of the other dive guides going up to the kitchen with a bowl & a plate & leaving with something entirely different than the options that we had been presented. I called over one of the kitchen staff & asked her about it, she told me it was the staff lunch, a Filipino stew of some sort. Naturally, I ask her if I could try it. She disappeared back to the kitchen for a second & returned to ask me if I was sure & when I said that I was she asked if I wanted it with rice. I told her to bring it however they would eat it, but only if there was still plenty for the staff. She brought me back a massive bowl of the stew & a side of rice.

I’m not entirely sure what was in the stew other than a varietal of Bok Choy & maybe some Pork with Potatoes. Looking through Filipino stews online I’m not sure it wasn’t Nilaga/Nilagang, either way it was salty & savory & really hit the spot on what had turned out to be a rainy afternoon.

I can’t recall if I skipped out on the afternoon dive or if there wasn’t one because of the events planned for the evening. I think it was the former as at this point I think my ear was being a bit wonky…we’ll get to that in part three… At any rate I think I may have napped & then gone & sat at the bar for a bit before our scheduled evening activities.

The Duffins are rather huge fans of a sunset cruise. They like to book the dive boat out with drinks & snacks & go out on the waves for a bit & just spend a little bit of time socializing & relaxing in the sea air & I’m not mad at that. We did one in Indonesia (you can read about it here) & I think attempted one in Fiji as well, but the tides wouldn’t allow for it. So as the sun began to sank we all filed onto one of the cleaned off dive boats & away we went.

The staff had thought ahead & taken our two drink order days prior to the expedition. They prepared plates of chips & other snacky bits & also had a partial service bar set up to bring us our preordered beverages. Evan & I both ordered Rum & Cokes because they’re an easy staple, especially in the tropics, & we sat atop the cabin sipping them & talking with Deb & some of the other members of our party.

At a certain point someone spotted a pod of, what we thought were dolphins. The boat maneuvered in the direction it looked like they were headed & when we got closer we found, what I believe to have been, a pod of Melon-Headed Whales. They were breaching the waves, skimming along the surface & every time a new one would crop up we’d head in their direction. Previously Ester had mentioned that right after the pandemic their had been a Sperm Whale sighting off the coast of the resort & that when they had shared about it to their socials they’d had a person later come looking for it. Some guest had flown halfway across the world to the resort & requested to be taken to the whale…a migratory species that swims up & down the globe.

After about an hour cruising around on the waves we headed back to the resort for dinner. A lot of us we a little toasty from the drink both before & during the sunset cruise so dinner was a bit of a ruckus. After dinner the staff brought out a congratulatory cake for Evan & the Duffin’s Son’s Friend who had completely a Nitrox Class & an Open Water Certification respectively. The cake was adorable, it featured who little fondant divers over a reef with their names inscribed in icing.

We all enjoyed a slice of the cake & with the alcohol starting to leave our bloodstreams & the exhaustion setting in, went off to sleep.

End Of Day Five

End Of Part Two

March 23, 2024

Charlie Rogers

Travel, Travel Blog, Blog

Travel Blog: Bohol, Philippines- Part One: I Flew To The Other Side Of The World To Go Diving & All You're Getting Is One Singular Mention Of The Ocean In This First Blog

March 23, 2024

Charlie Rogers

Travel, Travel Blog, Blog

BOHOL, PHILIPPINES

Prologue

Hello Fellow Travelers,

Welcome back to one of my absolute favorite blog series that I do here at my beloved site; travel blogs! I know, for a large handful of you all, this is also your favorite series of mine & I think for good reason. This is often the blog that I get to share major passion of mine, travel, as well as a few subsequent others such as food, beverage, dive, & storytelling. Fortunately for all of us, this series will contain all of these aspects & more! So, if you’re along for the ride, buckle in, as the full scope of this trip & its embedded tales will take up a good three weeks worth of space on this blog! With all of that being said & everything else out of the way, let’s dive on in shall we?!

PART ONE:

Day One

Los Angeles, California

Evan & I landed in Los Angeles around 10 AM on March 7th. Our direct flight options for our arrival with Southwest Airlines were either the flight we chose or one that got in around 9:15 PM, which would have cut us far too close to our 10:35 PM departure with EVA Air for Taipei. This naturally left us with around 9 hours worth of time to burn before we had to check-in for the aforementioned flight. Initially our plan was to have our friend Jenna pick us up from LAX & drop us back later but upon looking into the amount of time it would force her into in commutes on our behalf we opted to rent a car for the day instead. Popping on over to Avis we snagged the rental I had booked the evening prior, a Tesla Model 3, of which Avis has an exclusive deal for the rental of. The really nice part about it was that we weren’t responsible for charging it upon its return which really helps save you a bit of cash, especially with LA gas prices being around $5 a gallon.

Jenna had planned to head over to Pasadena to catch our other friend Rory’s Barry’s Ass & Abs class. She’d suggested dropping our luggage with her in North Hollywood, then carpooling around together, but unfortunately the time it would have taken for such a measure would have forced us to miss Rory’s class. So we opted just to meet there instead. We made it to Pas with about ten minutes to spare & loaded our luggage into the locked trunk & loathsomely named “frunk” (front trunk) of the Tesla.

I think Evan has cursed us, either that or it’s all to do with the timing of when we travel seeing as he is off Wednesdays & Thursdays so we usually end up flying those days. Either way we seem to always do a “leg day” the day prior to large amounts of travel, I guess this time would be no different.

Barry’s has a lower focus class on Tuesdays & an ass & abs class on Thursdays, that usually ends up being the cause of his post-leg day flight woes. Even if we don’t end up at Barry’s we typically end up adhering to their schedule so that we don’t get thrown into a wonky “I’m too sore for this” situation should we decide to hit another of their classes during the week.

After class we were all desperately craving a coffee. Evan & I had wanted to venture into The Burlington Arcade in Pasadena for a while & the Pas Barry’s location just happened to be right within the same block or two, so that’s where our search began & ultimately ended.

The Mandarin Coffee Stand is nestled right in the middle of The Arcade. It is a teeny, tiny coffee shop that has a customer occupancy limit of four guests at a time. The are a local, Asian women owned & operated shop that specializes in Chinese style coffee. I got a latte known as the “Toasty” which consists of Rooibos, Cinnamon, Espresso, Brown Sugar, & Oat Milk. Not typically a fan of the milk of the oat, I tried it anyway at the recommendation of the barista & it was nothing short of bangin’! As we stood around the strip sipping our respective coffees we all decided the next necessary & logical step would be to find food.

If you were to dig into the notes app on either Evan or my phone you’d discover a shared note simply titled “Travel Visits.” In said note you will find lists upon lists of mostly restaurants & bars that we’ve written down over the years to try should we ever find ourselves in any of the locations listed therein. Despite our many years in LA the list for it seems to continue to grow & grow & so we both began to pilfer through in search of what would inevitably be that day’s lunch.

Many of the locations that we found were either evening only, too far from Pasadena, North Hollywood, or LAX, weren’t open that day, or weren’t a type of food we were all feeling, but at the end of our extensive filtering we ended up deciding on a deli in Westlake called Langer’s.

Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant was founded in 1947 & has been in the Langer family ever since. They are a member of the LA Times 101 Hall of Fame & have been a staple on the Michelin guide for many years. They are famous for their #19 Pastrami Sandwich which has been voted amongst the world’s best which is exactly what Evan & both ordered. The sandwich was excellent, sporting Pastrami on Rye with Coleslaw, Swiss Cheese & Russian Dressing. Jenna ordered a simple sliced Salami on a Hoagie it Provolone which was simple & delightful in its own way. After lunch we ended LA’s early afternoon traffic & made our way towards Jenna’s place in North Hollywood. Once we’d gotten to North Hollywood we pulled off into the CVS to grab a few provisions.

Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles
Photo Credit: Evan Michael

Anytime I fly overseas or on a flight that is longer than 4-5 hours I bring the cabin crew a sack of goodies just to say “thank you” & help ease their time on the job in even the slightest of ways. I typically pick up some family sized packs of chocolates, candies, & snacky things to give out. In addition to our care package we also picked up some Zzzquil for the flight, since it was an over nighter. After acquiring our items we continued onto Jenna’s to recharge for a bit; both for ourselves & our devices which had already made it through a morning of travel & a day of light exploration.

With our time in LA coming to an end & our need to head off to the airport approaching, we popped into a quick shower, refreshed deodorants & the like, & swapped over into our travel clothes before packing everything back up, bidding Jenna a fond farewell, & beginning the hour+ commute to the airport.

Once we’d dropped the car back at Avis we headed into LAX to check-in for our EVA Air flight to Taipei with continued service to Manilla. Once we got to Manilla we’d have to go through immigration & customs before rechecking our bags & continuing on. We met the rest of our group from Midwest Aquatics that were headed to Bohol at the check-in gate & after greetings & hugs we all headed through security.

The process was lighter than usual so we found ourselves incredibly early for our flight, so much so that the British Airways flight occupying our gate hadn’t even received their plane. We wandered around the international terminal before settling in on something to eat. After some truly mid fish tacos, I found a secluded corner in which to write two weeks ago’s blog & awaited the boarding process.

We boarded right on time & once we’d taken off, & eaten our in-flight meal, we took the Zzzquils & attempted to get some sleep.

End Of Day One

Day Two

Taipei, Taiwan

We arrived in Taipei around 5:15 AM, local time. I managed to sleep for about a half or so of the duration of the fourteen & a half hour flight, Evan managed about two thirds. That was when he wasn’t attempting to shut off our sleeping neighbor’s over head light.

We had booked ahead online & gotten ourselves the exit row. I’m a rather tall gent at 6’4” & definitely need the extra leg room that the exit row or premium economy provide, especially on airlines based out of parts of the world where people tend to be on the shorter side. I had the “window” (there was no window) & Evan had the middle. At the time of our booking the aisle seat was already occupied, we actually assumed that it was Deb, a member of our group. It wasn’t, it was a gentlemen we had no relation to. When you’re in the exit row all of the buttons for your seat are located on the arm rest to your left about thigh high. Strangely enough, in EVA Air Economy Class, the reading light for the aisle seat illuminates the middle seat. No joke. Like each of the other buttons illuminate each of their respective seats, except for the aisle which basically doubles up on the middle. Additionally, the man on the end’s button for his over head light seemed to be a little on the sensitive side & every time he shifted in his seat it lit up the light over Evan’s head. I legitimately thought it was his own light until I noticed him slyly reaching over, across the man’s lap, trying to tap his light button. In his words “I had no issue with the light itself, it was the heat that it generated that was keeping me awake.” When he finally got around to turning off the light the man shifted in his seat thirty seconds later, immediately reigniting Evan’s personal warming bulb. Later when he got up to use the restroom, Evan positioned the man’s blanked so as to block any accidental bumping of the button from occurring.

We had about a three-ish hour layover in Taipei & we’d arrived before any of the shops & restaurants had opened. So, we as a group, decided to stretch out collective legs & walk the length of the terminal. By the time we’d made it all the way down shops had begun to open. Several members of our group took special interest in the Sanrio shop but I had my eyes set on a bakery that was beginning their prep as we initially walked by. The bakery in question is called Mazu Village, it’s half wheel pies & half boba stand. The boba & wheels pies are presented in a combo format so Evan & I opted for the one that would let us each have one of each of the two flavors; Salted Custard & Salted Custard with Peanut Butter, & also gave us each a Taro Boba Tea. The rest of the group ended up with something similar & while the two of us had decided that we favored just the custard pie over the one with peanut butter, as we found it too rich, the others disagreed.

After our saccharine breakfast we sat around making calls for a bit. Evan called his family & I called my sister, whose birthday it still was in the states. At this point we’d crossed the international date line & were a half a day ahead of everyone back home. We waited around a bit longer before I went to a booth to buy some Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup which Evan & I split. I actually think one of the best parts of the soup was the Sauced Cabbage that came with it & the hyper sweet Cold Assam Tea. We wandered around the airport for a bit after we finished our food, flitting in & out of the assorted duty free shops before we descended to our gate to wait to board.

In the Taoyuan International Airport all of the gates are situated a level below the main parts of the concourse so you have to ascend a flight of stairs/take an elevator up when you arrive & descend the stairs/elevator when you plan to depart. It’s nice because it keeps the waiting areas separate from the hustle & bustle of the main terminal. The EVA Air Gods saw fit to grace us with the Sanrio plane for our trip from Taipei to Manila. I was actually surprised to see how many of us in the group were excited about that, but the plane was cute! Even once we’d boarded the plane was full of little Sanrio easter eggs such as the Hello Kitty air freshener holder in the lavatories.

We departed Taipei at around 9:10 AM local time & began our two hours & thirty minute flight across the Luzon Strait to the Philippines & Manila.

Manila

Our flight landed in Manila at 11:45 & we were immediately ushered off the plane to immigration. Evan somehow made it through the passport check without filling out the online application for a visa, the rest of us weren’t so lucky. We were all handed a QR code to scan & fill out a digital form before we could get our stamp. Pretty standard procedure, just thought it was odd Evan got through without it, he must just have one of those faces.

He did fill out his visa application retroactively as we sat waiting for our baggage to come through. Figured it was better to have it done & entered in, especially if it ended up being needed upon our departure. Once we all had our luggage collected we headed out to the transfer area where we booked the transfer shuttle to the local departures terminal & exchange USD for Filipino Peso.

The man running the shuttle kiosk at the international terminal told us that it would be about a forty-five minute wait before we would have a transfer & it wasn’t guaranteed that we would all fit, in which case they would have us wait an additional 30-45 minutes for the next shuttle. I’m not really sure how or why the transfer times on the shuttles are so long, especially since the walk time between the two terminals was only about 5-10 minutes. We all opted for that.

The walk was a bit of a system shock. Most of us changed into lighter clothing before hand, but coming from LA & then Taipei where the weather was sitting in the mid to upper 50s, the shift into the 80s felt like much more drastic a change. By the end of our walk to the other terminal we were all sweating. Each of us reapplied deodorant & proceeded to the Philippine Airlines ticketing counter where we were met with one of the more common annoyances when it comes to checking baggage internationally across different carriers; entirely different baggage rules. We made it work & got everything figured out without the need for any extra dollars being exchanged.

By the time we made it through security we only had about an hour to an hour & a half left over in what was our four hour layover. We camped the bags & we went out exploring in waves to see what the airport terminal had to offer. Two party members came back with some rather tantalizing looking Boba Tea & Evan & me, & two others set out to find & claim our own.

Once the teas were acquired we returned to our gate & waited to board. Around 3 PM we all started lining up to board & before long we were off on our way to the island of Bohol.

Bohol

Bohol-Panglao International Airport is a bit on the smaller size, boasting around five or six gates in total. We arrived after our brief hour & a half flight just before 5 PM where we descended the escalator to the single baggage carousel, collected our belongings, & were greeted by the Magic Oceans transfer crew with water bottled & some bomb ass banana chips. We all climbed into the two vans they’d provided, with out luggage occupying a third vehicle, & off we went towards Anda.

The drive to the dive resort was a long one, not going to lie. We’re talking like two & a half to three hours long. After being in planes for a total of 22 hours off & on & laying over, I think all of us were ready to be done & there. The benefit of these far out locations & trips is that once you’re there, you’re there for a while! They also certainly drive different in the Philippines than we do here in the states. For starters there’s no speed limits, at least not in Bohol, unless designated by a work or school zone. They also don’t necessarily abide by the lanes. Evan & I got sat on the front bench of the van & I think we both regretted it as there were many times that each of us was slamming down our foot on the imaginary brake that we each wish we had. At the end of the day though the driver DID deliver us safely to Magic Oceans, even though I though we were going to hit dogs or those going out on the then Saturday evening who were walking along the side of the road.

I did manage to sleep the last hour & some change in the car, mostly because I had to pee & it seemed the only solution to avoiding that issue. We arrived in the darkness to Magic Ocean where we were all guided to the dining area for dinner, which was in full swing. Dinner at Magic Oceans is served family style with an exquisite chef preparing an appetizer course, a main course with around five dishes, & a dessert. I made it about halfway through the trip before I realized that I’d forgotten to write down the nightly menus so unfortunately they will be absent from this series despite their amazing quality in nature & the chef who prepared them’s lovely singing voice (we’ll get to that in later installments).

Once we were all situated with food, Evelyn, the resort manager gave us a quick briefing regarding our rooms & the plan for the morning in which we planned to start our diving. Once she had finished we were each escorted privately to our rooms where our luggage awaited us & promptly showered & went to bed so as to be ready & refreshed for the adventures that awaited us the following day!…but not before I went out the door of our room to the sandy overlook where I sat listening to the rush of the ocean for a few minutes.

…see, I mentioned it, once…& yes, that did happen, seriously. There were Dwarf Zebra Hermit Crabs in the sand fighting over a scrap of food. Evan even took a picture of me headed there! (See Below)

Path Outside Our Room At Magic Oceans
Photo Credit: Evan Michael

End Of Day Two

END OF PART ONE

Part Two

December 3, 2022

Charlie Rogers

Travel Blog, Travel, Blog

Travel Blog: Indonesia: Part Three- Another Day, Another Nat Geo Experience

December 3, 2022

Charlie Rogers

Travel Blog, Travel, Blog

Welcome back world travelers! We’ve made it, this is the final entry in my Indonesia series revolving around the Lembeh Strait! I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey thus far & are ready to dive (see what I did there) into our final segment today! If you’re not all caught up on my escapades, no worries, I’ll link the other two installments right below this introductory paragraph! Enough of the pretext, shall we continue?

PART ONE

PART TWO

INDONESIA

PART THREE:

Day Five

Woke to another lovely day on Lembeh. The rain that rolled in over night had cooled the morning leisurely to somewhere in the low 80s. My breakfast consisted of my same morning staples; Jasmine Tea, Raspberry, Nutella Toast, Eggs, Bacon or Sausage, Fruit, & Fresh Juice. I think this is the morning I subbed one of the aforementioned items out for Granola topped in Yogurt, Honey, & Chopped Fruit, but that’s neither here nor there. No interesting creatures came out to play either while dinning or while making our way down the dock, however, that’s not to say the day wasn’t interesting. Far from it!

Remember in the last blog when I mentioned that I lost track of our dive sites at a certain point. Well folks, we’ve reached the pinnacle of it as, in my dive log, the next two days are full of sites that were already programed into the SSI app so I didn’t have to deal with the grueling entry process for each site. There are a few, especially the last couple days that I have written down, so we shall return to form when we get there!

Dive #1 of the day was a muck dive & deep one at that. Set at off the shore from Makawide, I remember descending the slope with Sam & Puri (if you don’t know who these people are at this point, you haven’t been paying attention) & feeling like we were fairly deep. The thing about muck diving is that most of the critters typically are fairly muted in their color pallet & if they aren’t, you’re usually using a flashlight to spot them anyway which restores their full color. This is much more noticeable on reefs where the many colored corals seem to all fade to shades of blues & blacks. All of that being a round about way of saying that I didn’t notice we’d dropped down to almost 107ft until I looked at my dive computer & was immediately aghast at what I saw. I even got Sam’s attention to show her & she gave me a “shocked eye” stare back at my readings. Was the depth worth it? Absolutely.

I’m going to sidebar again, sorry you’re dealing with an ADHD riddled writer here, but when I was in Fiji I got my deep water certification & remember telling my father later that I didn’t really have much of a desire to dive that deep again. It drastically cuts your dive time &, in Fiji at least, there wasn’t much to see & all the coloration was gone. Muck diving is truly a different animal I guess!

So what did we find at that depth? We found one of the rarer Lembeh creatures. Not only that, but we sat & watched it hunt.

At a depth of around 90 feet we found the highly sought after Rhinoceros Scorpionfish. The Rhinoceros is a marvelous creature that is uncharacteristically colorful compared to the rest of the Scorpion/Stonefish family. Having evolved to look like a dead leaf, they sway back & forth on modified pectoral fins as they inch across the substrate mimicking the movement of a leaf caught in the sway of the tides. Our Rhinoceros was bright orange & was in the process of hunting a cardinal fish. So, of course we had to sit & watch!

We sat, anchored to the bottom for around ten minutes just watching this fish play coy as it gained footing on its prey inchmeal. We gingerly made our way along with it, being sure to keep it in frame & in light so that we would catch the end of its successful hunt on camera, & that’s exactly what we did! Finally after coming within two inches of the cardinal the scorpion struck. It did so at a rate that my camera, running 120 frames per second, only managed to snag one or two frames of its extended jaws.

Funny enough, while we were pursuing the scorpionfish another ambush predator decided to wriggle its way between Sam & I. A massive Lionfish decided it had had enough of us scaring off any further perspective prey & made its complaints known as it grumpily swam between us.

This dive was a gold mine, in addition to the Scorpionfish we saw another Gurnard skidding across the bottom & two massive Titan Triggerfish, which we were sure to steer well clear of. They bite. Hard.

The most exciting find of the dive, especially for Puri, was the gigantic Sea Turtle we came across resting on the bottom around 40 feet. This turtle was one of the largest I’d seen in the wild & Puri was overjoyed as apparently they hadn’t seen any turtles in a good long while. We tried not to disturb it but it took off as soon as we got within 10-15 feet of it.

Farther up the slope, towards the beginning was a reef that sat just under the water line. Here we found the typical Anemones & Clowns, Damsels, Tangs, etc., but we also found another Sea Crete & several large Yellow Trumpetfish.

For the next dive we headed back towards the resort to a small archipelago of islands. Apparently their name in Indonesian roughly translated to something along the lines of “The Broken Islands” because they used to be a part of one singular mass of land, instead of their own separate entities. We loaded up on our typical rest food & drink items (tea, coffee, water, milo, cake, & fruit) & were just about to get back in the water when I was handed a guitar.

Apparently someone let it slip that I am a singer & the crew had brought a guitar to get me to perform for them. I reluctantly agreed & sat tuning the instrument for a minute before I played them one of my originals which they absolutely adored. I felt so honored & handed back the guitar before I got all of my gear on & was once again down in the blue.

Dive #2 was part reef & part rubble which meant high possibilities for octopus which we did in fact end up finding in the aptly named site, Critter Hunt! What’s our octopus count at this point? Three? Well, this was number four if that’s the case! It was also another unique species from the other three & another highly sought after Lembeh animal. We had stumbled upon a Wonderpus.

Yes, that’s its real name, the Wonderpus which happened to also be the name of our boat for the week. What makes the wonderpus so wonderful you ask? For that I want to divert to a short anecdote that Kim, the resort manager, told us. Kim is a Danish gent who has lived in the Lembeh area for well over 15-20 years. He said that the first time he saw a wonderpus he didn’t think anything of it, in fact, he thought it was a lion fish. How does one confuse an octopus with a lion fish? Well the wonderpus, similar to the mimic, another Lembeh favorite, can do exactly that. It can mimic. Only the wonderpus has the keen ability to alter the texture of its skin along with the length, shape, etc. of its arms & body. Our wonderpus presented to us as white & black striped with big arching brows.

I was, unfortunately, once again pulled away from my Garden Eels to come look at the octopus, but I think it was an acceptable replacement. They did let me sit & watch the garden eels afterwards for a few minutes, so I truly can’t be mad.

Additionally we came across some lovely clusters of Frogspawn Coral, some Snowflake Eels, Coral Gobies, Cowfish, Fingered Dragonettes, Panther Grouper, & I once again attempted to get a Cleaner Wrasse to clean my mouth. It didn’t work, sadly. One of these day, one of these days.

Back to shore we went where I grabbed another Pocari Sweat & sat editing til it was time for lunch & then until it was time to hit dive #3.

Dive #3 at Pintu Colada started at a sparse reef with some monumental mounds of coral. However, that’s not where we spent the majority of this dive. We spent the majority of this dive pestering Male Ribbon Eels.

For whatever reason Ribbon Eels seem to be very curious creatures. I noticed, as I was filming one of the electric blue males that he was very interested in my pointer that I had buried in the ground. I unmoored myself & passed the baton closer to the eel so that it could investigate. The eel would come pretty far out of its den to ‘smell’ the titanium stick I was using, I would get it close & then slowly inch it backwards to see just how far out they were wiling to chase the blue rod & the answer seemed pretty damn far!

Additionally this site had many Chocolate Chip Starfish, several rather aggressive Maroon Clownfish in their Bubbletip Anemones, & some type of buried Moray that I have scoured the internet for but come up blank on its identification.

Our afternoon, post dive, was fairly uneventful. I most likely spent the entirety of it, you guessed it, editing but that’s not to say the interesting parts of the day were over. Oh how wrong that assumption would be because folks, this was a four dive day. We still have the black water dive to talk about.

Now a black water dive comes in a variety of forms. Some where you’re out in the middle of the water attached to a line, letting the little critters come up to you, some where you are sat on the bottom around a light referred to as a “bonfire,” ours was a version of the latter. You see, typically the crew would go out before hand & plant the “bonfire” around 20-30 minutes in advance so that it has time to draw everything in. The problem with this is that it has the high tendency to lead to boredom. We hybridized our black water with just your standard night dive, deciding to plant & ignite the bonfire, the let it set for a while while we went around exploring & poking around in the dark.

We found ourselves some Fuzzy Dwarf Lionfish, a Gorilla Crab or two, large quantities of Pipefish, a Blue Spotted Ray, an Orange Blotch Rabbitfish, some Porcupine Puffers, Banded Coral Shrimp, & a baby Barramundi (Sweet Lips). The real prize of the dive, however, were the squid.

We were back out at Aer Prang where we’d dove a few times before & done our previous night dive. Just off the clusters of Trumpet Coral Puri spotted them, two Squid suspended in the water. As we got closer their colors began to shift & change & each of the pigment cells along their body began to light up. One of the squid decided it best to try & gfto & inked, though it didn’t then attempt to flee. We swam around filming these two squid for a good 10-15 minutes before we decided it was best to leave them be & return to the bonfire. However, on the way we encountered a hand made fish trap teeming with captured fish. We all had the same thought in wanting to set the fish go, especially since the trap didn’t seem to have a line or anything attached to it, but we felt it best to leave it incase it was a local’s meal.

I mentioned briefly in the previous blog about night diving the tiny little plankton & organisms that you find while night diving. At one point, after returning to the bonfire, I held my flashlight straight upright & just watched the different varieties of life dancing in & out of the beam. We came across several free swimming crustaceans & Puri found some kind of mostly translucent organism that looked not dissimilar to the double helix of DNA.

We returned to the resort after another bulging day of diving, showered, scarfed down an incredible dinner, & were out before our heads hit the pillows.

End Of Day Five

Day Six

It was time to start winding down, after a full week of diving at this point our dives were starting to become a little more sparse on these our last two days. If you’re unaware, when diving, you need an 18-24 hour period between the time of your last dive & the time of your flight. This is to help prevent the bends. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I assume you know the drill at this point? Wake up, breakfast of eggs, fruit, bacon or sausage, toast, fresh juice, etc. I suppose I forgot to mention that earlier in the week the kitchen staff had found me a fresh Jackfruit, of which they continued to serve at any meal they knew I’d be at because I was one of the only few dining upon it. Most meals would end with a bowl full of jackfruit, covered in Calamansi Juice. After breakie & gathering the dive gear & camera I took with me off of the boat, it was once again time to dive. Today’s dock creature was a Spadefish, bobbing along the surface in-between the dock & the Wonderpus, our boat.

Our first dive of the day was a rubbly coral spot called Nudi Retread. It was home to many Blue-Spotted Stingrays, some beautiful Maze Corals, many Giant Clams, & even a few big ole Leopard Sea Cucumbers. It’s here where we found a pair of Tozeuma Shrimp but, you guessed it, my camera said “Tozeuma Shrimp who? I’m more interested in this plain old background behind them.”

The site also, of course, had its fair share of Bubble Coral, Anemones con Clowns, Sea Fans, & even a Miniatus Grouper with its bright blue spotted red body.

After we surfaced we headed off to dive #2, set off the island chain in the middle of Lembeh.

Dive two was a reef dive, Sarena Patah. Amongst the reef I once again tried my hand at getting Cleaner Wrasse to excavate my mouth to no avail, found many Tiger Jawfish popping their heads out of the sand, a mating pair of Singapore Angelfish, a school of Pajama Cardinal fish, some Moorish Idols & a Mosaic Pufferfish. After our time below the surface it was time to head back to NAD Lembeh for lunch & my daily ritual of editing over a Pocari Sweat.

Our third dive was at Tanjung Kusu-Kusu or Cape Kusu-Kusu as it would be in Ingles. It was another muck dive location with sparse reef near the two. Immediately upon our decent we discovered a pair of Spiny Tiger Shrimp hiding in a cup sponge. Puri was very excited at the find & wrote on his tablet “Tiger Shrimp” followed by “a very special shrimp.” The shrimp were about an inch in length & were covered in white spikes. The white body of the shrimp had orange spots on it surrounded by smaller black spots & while the resemblance to a tiger is iffy, I can understand why it was so named to a degree.

The dive was also full of many Lionfish & Scorpionfish though the coolest thing we discovered PSTS (Post Spiny Tiger Shrimp) was a rock covered in a microcosm of predator & prey.

All along this little portion of reef, about the size of a Fiat, were schools & schools of Cardinalfish. I’m talking hundreds if not thousands of them, all tucked in the rock & poking out just a tad. Below the school, patiently waiting was a Stonefish blending perfectly into the rock work where it perched, just waiting for one of the cardinals to dip a little bit too close. Just around the rock, under where the stonefish sat was a White Mouth Moray Eel, farther around on the other side of the rocks there was a Ribbon Eel, & amongst the rock there were assorted Dwarf Lionfish & Scorpions.

Though we didn’t end up doing a dive in the evening, that doesn’t mean I was done with aquatic life for the day. In fact, I got a glimpse of some aquatic wildlife on the shore during our leave. No, that’s not a typo, ‘on’ is the correct use here.

Along the beach of our little bay I started to notice little pricks of movement. My initial thought was that it was crabs or some other burrowing crustacean but I was wrong & was so excited to find what it actually was. All along the shore line, on the beach, were about ten Mudskippers. Mudskippers are a type of goby that has evolved to move, in a limited capacity, on land. They come out of the water to feed on the insects that congregate near the shoreline & can be out of water for around two days! Funny enough the Indonesian name for the mudskipper is ‘Ikan Tambio’ which means “prostitute fish” though I can’t for the life of me figure out why they are so named.

Darin, our trip guide & owner of Midwest Aquatics, the dive shop I went through for my certification, Fiji, & Indonesia, had asked previously if we could do a village excursion or something of the like on land. He & Simon came to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t for the best of the group & instead decided on a sunset cruise for the lot of us! The Wonderpus had been stripped of our gear, wiped down, dried out, & instead was packed with coolers with drinks & bowls of snacks

We went all the way up the strait to a village where the locals were farming pearls, the children rushed out into the water yelling any english phrases they could think of to get our attention & we affectionately waved back & yelled “hello” to them on the shore. Once we passed the lighthouse into the mouth of the strait it was revealed that it was Darin’s birthday & his lovely wife & incredibly talented photographer, Cari had requested a cake from the kitchen to bring aboard. We all sang “Happy Birthday” & slices of the cake were passed around before we turned back & headed towards the south end of the strait.

Along the way I was once again passed the guitar but I opted for soft covers & what I call “call to prayer” guitar just to fill the space with something atmospheric & not make it the “Charlie Rogers Show” on someone else’s day.

As we neared Bitung we began to hear & see the music festival that had been going on throughout the week. Spotlights scraped the clouds & music ricocheted across the water with thunderous bass that was soon replaced by actual thunder as a storm rolled in. We all ducked for shelter as if we hadn’t just spent the last week completely drenched & the boat made its way back to shore where showers, dinner, & beds awaited us all.

End Of Day Six

Day Seven

Well, we’re here, the last day of dives for this trip. Have we had fun? Have we enjoyed the ride? I promise you it’s not over yet! Like I said, we still have one more day of diving!

The morning started unceremoniously with the typical wake & break…fast, followed by the morning pack up, & walk down to the dock. There weren’t any dock critters of interest this morning, but we’ll get back to that in the afternoon! Our first dive was Hairy Larry, so named, apparently, because of the hairy diver guide that “discovered” & named it. One thing is for sure, Mr. Larry had found himself a gorgeous reef & wall dive.

The afternoon prior we’d been asked by the guides what we wanted our last day of diving to look like, the general consensus was something a little more reef forward but still balanced with muck & rubble, so that’s what the guides delivered!

We were dropped into the site at the top of the reef. Immediately we were greeted by Honeycomb Grouper, tons of Clowns & Anemones with Benggai Cardinalfish hovering near by, Squirrelfish, Bicolored Angelfish, & even another Day Octopus!

The wall portion of the dive was at around 60-70 feet. It was stacked corals overlooking a sandy forever with a multitude of fish, nudibranchs, & other invertebrates ducking in & out of their high rise hovels. The wall was home to hundreds of varieties of Torch Corals, a Blue Spiny Lobster, & large Granulated Seastars.

As we made our way from the wall, through the rubble downslope from the reef, Puri started picking through the dead coral in search of a very specific score. Puri was searching for Mosaic Boxer/Pompom Crabs. A boxer crab is a wee crustacean about the size of your thumb nail. Their name is derived from the itty bitty anemones they carry in their claws & use to sweep the water for microscopic food, which they then pilfer from the anemones. As Puri was scouting the rock a very interested, very large Sunset Wrasse came over to see if we kicked up anything edible for him. He didn’t seem at all afraid of us divers & in fact was very keen to hang out & remained very close to us the entirety of our search.

Puri eventually did find a boxer crab which he brought over to a large rock on the branch of deceased coral it had been occupying. We three gathered around the rock & Deb & her guide even joined us. We all sat watching the pompom swipe the water & feed. As we were watching it another of the guides cut through us & placed a second pompom crab on the rock with the one we were observing.

I’m still beyond amazed at the eyes on these Indonesian guides. All week they were able to find the smallest of creatures in often the dimmest of lighting. Each of them would point out things that it would often take my eyes thirty seconds to a minute to focus on. The crabs are a great example of this.

After we left the crustaceans to their filter feeding I ran into a Foxface, a few massive schools of Green Chromis, a Naso Tang, many more Bubbletip Anemones.

Once we were back on the reef we immediately noticed the innumerable Giant Clams that dotted the coralscape. Blues, browns, greens, any color, variety, & size you can think of, they were there. I found a Common Egg Cowry feeding on some Leather Coral, which if you remember from my Fiji blog was one of my favorite finds simply because of the striking nature of its deep, black pigment.

The reef was mostly stoney corals & leathers; Birds Nest, Antler Coral, Trumpet Coral, Maze Coral, etc. Amongst these I found a Scopas Tang, two big ole Lobsters, a brown Trumpetfish, Hawkfish, & a Triangle Butterflyfish. I had a really had time returning to the surface because I felt everywhere I turned there were new things to see.

Dive #2 took us back near the site of the previous to a site called Makawidey Pier. The other dive boat, the Mimic, joined us at the site where we sat side by side enjoying the surface interval. About halfway through it I was once again handed the guitar. This time the crew was asking that I perform a mini set for them of anywhere from 3-5 songs. It’s always funny to me how when you’re put on the spot your mind completely blanks on what songs you have available in your catalog, but I did manage to pull out a few more songs for the crew that had worked so hard on our behalf throughout the week.

Makawidey was half reef & half muck. Once we were down we immediately began to find incredible creatures!

We almost landed right on top of a Blue-Spotted Stingray when we entered. It hightailed it out of our vicinity, literally. We headed down father & found three separate Seahorses all within 100 ft of each other; one white & one a light grey, & one with red stripes. Additionally I spend a little more time pestering Ribbon Eels.

The muck eventually gave way to reef where we found a pair of Scissortail Gobies, a Golden Rabbitfish, Benggai Cardinals with babies in their mouthes, a White Mouth Moray Eel, a gigantic field of Pulsing Xenia, & Hammer Coral as far as the eye can see.

I mean that last bit literally, the hammer coral must have covered the length of a football field, it took my breath away. I kept thinking back to the aquarium hobbyists who would kill for just a single head of it. Typically a small head of hammer coral starts are $50 & that’s for something the size of a nickel.

After our second dive we were off to the resort for, what would be the rest of the time for a lot of people. There was no afternoon dive on this day but that didn’t stop me from feeding my saltwater soul a few more times before we left.

In lieu of a dive I took myself snorkeling/freediving. NAD Lembeh Resort has a lovely little house reef that I felt I needed to explore before we departed. I’d spent my week peering into the water & remarking at the wildlife from the dock so I decided to get a closer look.

I didn’t find much on the south end of the reef, but when I got closer to the dock my luck started to change. The dock itself was covered in Long Spine Sea Urchins. As I was (cautiously) passing through the legs of the pier I saw a Triggerfish that I still have yet to identify. The reef on the north end of the resort was flourishing; Clams, schools of Pipefish, Trumpetfish, & Anthias all dotted the rock work. When I got back towards the dock I found an Angelfish upside down picking at the floatation devices, a school of Batfish, & even a few little Boxfish. All just from hopping in the water 100 feet from where I’d been sleeping the last week. Around 4:30 we loaded up the dive boat one last time & headed out.

Yes, I said there was no afternoon dive BUT there was an early evening one! This was a dive I’d been looking forward to all week long. We were going on a Mandarin Goby dive!

Mandarin Gobies, Seahorses, Garden Eels, Cleaner Wrasse, all my obsession. I hadn’t seen a single mandarin the entirety of our trip & it was really starting to bum me out because they’re one of my all time favorite fish & there we were about to do a whole dive dedicated to them.

The mandarin dive takes place in a bay called Bianca, it’s named after the boat, The Bianca, that has been anchored there for a few decades now. The dive is a stationary dive, meaning that you sit on the bottom & wait for the things to come to you. So sit & wait we did.

The dive takes place at twilight, right when the sun has sunk below the horizon. We were all kneeling around a cluster of broken coral waiting. You aren’t allowed to use the full brightness of your torch & red light is mandatory.

So there we sat, waiting on mandarin gobies. Then, almost all at once, they started to pop out of the coral debris, they seemed to come from everywhere. The larger females would come out, flare up a little bit, & the smaller males would come pouring out in an attempt to gain her affections. Once she’d found one she liked they’d do a courtship dance where they rose up in the water, hooked together side by side. Then on cue they’d both release (& release) & depart from one another. The largest female in the area did this with around six different males.

As the light faded more & more fish began to emerge from the rubble including an assortment of Clown Gobies. They perched on the rock watching us watch the mandarins. There were green ones & black ones & one very large Citron one. I went to point them out to the people to my right but their guide had motioned for them to leave & they ended up decimating the rubble bed in their wake sending the clown gobies scattering in all directions.

Upon our return we were greeted by a barbecue, the staff had taken the tables & chairs from the dinning hall & arranged them in a line between the entrance & the bar. In the middle of the table were several plates of sashimi fresh caught that day & at the end were an arrangement of grills & griddles all boasting different assortments of meats & vegetables.

We enjoyed the food in mixed company, mingling with a group of snorkelers out of England who had come to the resort on a snorkel tour, something I was unaware was a thing. We all dined & exchanged stories, us at the end of our week, them just a few days into theirs. After we supped a cake was passed around the table.

With bursting bellies & smiling faces we adjourned to bed where we drifted off to sleep before the next day’s conquest home began.

End Of Day Seven

Day Eight

I debated on whether or not I wanted to include “day eight” as if was a travel day. Then upon reflection I found myself remembering many interesting things about the day. The odd part about writing this is that it will butt up into my Singapore Blog which I actually decided to publish in advance before going back to do the dive blogs. You can find a link to it at the very end of this blog.

We slept in a little on this day. Not having to beat the clock to get breakfast in before our dive time, we enjoyed a leisurely morning. After we had our fill of breakfast we all went back to our separate abodes to pack & make sure our electronics were charged for the return trip back. I was the only member of my group separating from the rest of them & the anxiety of 20+ hours of travel was palpable amongst my compatriots.

We left the resort begrudgingly, just short of noon. The tide was out at the time of our ferry across the strait so when we reached the cement dock on the other side we had to all climb onto the roof of The Wonderpus to get back on land. We all were escorted down the dock where locals came out in droves to observe the foreigners. The children yelled “hi” over & over at us & it was explained that it was probably the only english words they knew. We returned each “hi” in kind, accompanied by a smile of appreciation.

Our convoy to the Manado Airport was a series of minivans driven rambunctiously down the roads. We passed the festival grounds, several markets, & many curious locals who waved or peered into the windows at us. My car was the first to reach the terminal by a long shot & we sat for around 15-20 minutes waiting for the others to arrive with out gear so we could tip our driver.

The waiting game then began as our ticketing agents had not yet shown up. I went out in search of food, finding a Starbucks & a convenience store to satiate me. It was well over an hour & a half before someone showed up to check us in & we were all starting to get nervous that we were going to miss our flight.

Though I was the first in, I was the last out. I had to pay an extra baggage fee for my gear which took a while to process & I ended up being the last member of our group through security which didn’t end up mattering because our flight was delayed.

Ever the curious pallet I wandered into another convenience store while waiting to board & was met by many different Durian products. For the unaware, durian is a type of custardy fruit whose aroma is so pungent it’s often outlawed from Southeast Asian public transport. I was curious, as I always am, & opted for the durian ice cream with fresh durian in it. Y’all. No shame, truly. I regretted it. I kid you not, to my westernized pallet durian tasted like a mix between smelly feet (just assuming that flavor) & gasoline (that one too) with just the slightest banana & mango taste thrown in. The worst part of it was that it then spent the next several hours fighting me & I could not, for whatever reason, clear the taste of it out of my mouth.

Our flight finally departed & we were given a sealed cup of water & a literal entire package of cookies upon boarding.

When we got to Jakarta night had fallen & we all gathered our things before boarding the shuttle that had been arranged to take us to our hotel.

The hotel was around 15 minutes away from the airport & the journey there brought up a rather large discrepancy in the life of the people of Jakarta. From the terminal we were taken on highways, beautiful highways before turning into what I can only describe as shanty towns. We maneuvered around these shanty towns until we came to what had to be a seven or eight foot wall. We traced the wall, dotted with shacks, around to a gate where armed guards let us through two separate gates where the surroundings intently went from impoverished to glistening in excess. If I’m being honest it made me feel icky. We had arranged to stay at the FM7 Resort Hotel for the evening.

The resort was stunning. Modern artwork, pristine flora, exquisite lighting & cleanliness. It was a very sharp contrast to the world just outside of its massive walls. The resort was also a complex, an entire network of buildings & roads spread over a large number of acres. We all checked in & were given our room keys where we all went our separate ways to sleep for only a few hours before our flight from Jakarta departed to Singapore.

End Of Day Eight

END OF PART THREE

END OF BLOG

Singapore Blog

November 4, 2022

Charlie Rogers

Travel, Travel Blog, Blog

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

November 4, 2022

Charlie Rogers

Travel, Travel Blog, Blog

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

PART TWO

August 5, 2022

Charlie Rogers

Travel Blog, Travel, Blog

Travel Blog: Fiji: Part Two- Sharks, Kava, & A Leisurely Float Down A River

August 5, 2022

Charlie Rogers

Travel Blog, Travel, Blog

Bula! Welcome back!

If you’re reading the above line & saying to yourself “welcome back?! To what?!” & if the giant “Part Two” in the title wasn’t clue enough there is a previous installment to this, my Fiji travel blog. If you haven’t given “Part One” a read I highly recommend you do so. I’ll attach the link to it below! Give that a read & swing back over here when you’re finished! Enjoy!

PART ONE

FIJI

PART TWO:

Day Five

Are we ready for it?! I know a lot of you who have been following this saga of travel were excited to get to today because today we’re talking about the SHARK DIVE!!!!!!

I did end up waking up at 6 AM to finish my vlogs as I mentioned I planned to do at the end of part one & I worked right up until 7 AM when it was time to once again descend the hill & eat breakfast. I chose to go back to Muesli that morning favoring something with a bit more variety to once again cross into the Beqa Passage seeing as my stomach had been fine the day prior. Not sure why I thought maybe it wouldn’t I’ve never been one who was prone to sea sickness. Our call time for the boat was fairly early as the dive site sat around forty-five minutes to an hour away from Waidorka.

A little background info on the shark dive site, Shark Reef Marine Reserve. Back before the site was declared a Marine Reserve by the government of Fiji it used to just be an ordinary strip of the Beqa Passage that fishermen would sure to drive from Suva or Pacific Harbor out to sea & fish. The fishermen, wanting to cut time from their required work load, would get to work gutting & cleaning their catch on the way back home for the night. During this time spent navigating the Beqa Passage the fishermen would dump the undesirable bits of fish of the boat into the water below. This naturally attracted sharks, which, over time, began to inhabit the Passage & congregate there because of the guaranteed meal. The Fijian government took notice of this & in an effort to increase tourism as well as lend a hand in shark conservation named a point in the passage as Shark Reef Marine Reserve. They sank several old boats there in an attempt to supplement the reef & give smaller, more reclusive species of sharks, spots to hide away, in addition to cutting some of the strong current so that divers wouldn’t simply be blown away while visiting. They also built what they deemed “The Arena.”

“The Arena” is a somewhat circular, sunken part of the reef. On the western edge of the arena the Fijian government has built a wall out of reef rock that sits about 2-3 feet high & goes the entire circumference of the western edge, beginning & ending on either end of the natural reef. In the middle of “The Arena” is a mooring site, however, this mooring site is not intended for boats, its intended use is to chain up a bin full of chum that will then be dumped into the arena once the day’s divers are in place, triggering a shark feeding frenzy. Some people have mixed feelings about “The Arena” & feel that it hinders the natural flow of the eco system causing the sharks to be dependent upon humans for food & allowing the fish populations to grow unchecked because the sharks don’t have to put out the energy to hunt them.

On the way out to the site Jodi informed us that unfortunately the reserve was only able to get a single bin of chum for the day. Typically they bring in two, one for each dive & you get to experience the madness twice but apparently the fishing boats came in light the night before & only had enough to fill one bin. The new plan was to dive the wrecks around the reef, then the reserve worker would bring in the one bin of food they had & essentially parade it around “The Arena” teasing the sharks into believing they’re about to get fed. Then things would go as previously planned for the second dive.

You know you’ve arrived at Shark Reef Marine Reserve because, ironically enough, the land adjacent to it looks like a shark fin jetting out of the island. We got to the site earlier than the boat from Pacific Harbor & earlier than the crew from the reserve so we had to sit around & wait a bit for them all while completely suited up because, as Jodi said, once the reserve crew roll up, it’s go time, they don’t wait on you at all.

While we were waiting the water began to become more & more active, more & more figures started to show up just below the surface. Nurse sharks. Completely harmless to humans, the nurse sharks at the reserve have begun swimming up to the surface when the dive boats moor under the impression that they’ll get fed for doing so, they never do. Dee, our captain, spotted the reserve boat coming on the horizon & it was time to get into the literal shark infested waters.

I’d be lying if I said I weren’t a bit nervous. I’d never done a shark dive before, nor had I ever been that up close & personal with such large predatory animals before. Let me be clear here, I’m not afraid of sharks, I think they’re severely demonized & misunderstood creatures, but I do hold a great deal of respect for them & understand the damage they’re capable of inflicting. All of that being said…I was the first in the water. The absolute first. I knew that the longer I waited the more the anxiety of anticipation would build so I just bit the bullet & took the plunge.

Immediately after I got into the water & grabbed ahold of the towline & looked down. The Passage was murky, probably visibility of around 40-50 feet but at the edge of that range I was a massive bull shark circling below, which much to my surprise, made me immediately excited.

Once we were all on in the water & on the line we began our decent. At around 25 feet we hit the top of the reef, sliding a little farther down the side we began to circumnavigate the outcroppings of rock & coral filled with fish. I was so preoccupied with the aquatic life to my right that I didn’t noticed the Bull Shark had returned & was passing a mere five feet to my right before carrying on around the reef.

We circled the reef ending up at the first sunken vessel in the passage. Turned upside down the hull was littered with little clusters of corals holding tight to the eroding metal. Around the side of the ship I found a massive pair of Green Filefish before turning to once again find the Bull Shark passing by. I wish I had pictures of both the Filefish & the Bull Shark passing to present to you all but I guess my camera had been off since the time of my decent til we got to the edge of “The Arena.”

We were all lined up against the wall of “The Arena,” knees planted on the sea bed. Elaine & I took up the far right end with Sam, our Fijian Dive guide behind us, & the rest of the group filled in along the row. Once we were all in place the diver from the reserve brought in the chum bin.

The chum bin was a massive yellow trash can with clips on the lid & a ten foot chain connecting it to the diver above. He carried it through the water like a marionette, rattling the chains & his dive rattle along the way to draw the fish in. He initially just hooked it to the mooring & chilled above it ringing his rattles but then went & unhooked it to carry it around the arena.

The Nurse Sharks were especially interested in the bin, diving over one another to get closest to the lid, while the Black Reef Sharks, Bull Sharks, Lemon Sharks, Black & Silver Tipped Reef Sharks, & remainder of the fish merely circled around the ring.

After being in aw of the sharks for around twenty minutes as the reserve diver maneuvered the trash can around, we began our ascend back to the boat. Elaine noticed that Sam had stopped to have an interaction with a Moray that I clearly missed because I was too entranced in a school of Spade Fish gathered by the boat mooring.

We surfaced, sat & ate through our surface interval & awaited instruction from the reserve workers on when it was feeding time.

During our surface time Elaine asked Sam about the Eel. He explained, much like the reserve does for the sharks, he feels the Eel in hopes of it sticking around & becoming less reclusive. He explained that over the span of several months he went from having the Eel hide from him to being able to hold it & feed it by hand. The Eel also comes out of the rock work exclusively for him when he comes to dive the site. He then asked if we wanted to pet it to which we both gave an exuberant “yes!”

Our second dive began with less meandering. We were in the water & guided straight down to the rock wall where we lined up in basically the same fashion, except that I got nudged further down the right side so that I was between the wall & the reef with literally about a foot of space total wiggle room. Once we were all lined up against the wall the diver from the reserve returned & began working to unlock the bin. He worked diligently at each of the clamps until at last all were free & be began to tug the chain that would overturn the garbage bin.

No sooner than he had gone to over turn the bin did a large rush of current sweep in to snatch the receptacle. The surge first carried the yellow can south before the chain went taught & began swinging it west towards us. It stopped about 20-30 feet directly in front of my & dumped the entirety of its contents. The sharks immediately went into a frenzy darting in & out of the mess of fish heads & scales. I couldn’t help but shrink a little. Here, less than thirty feet away from me were hundreds of sharks of all varying sizes, species, & temperaments fighting for food that was all blowing in my direction.

At one point a large Bull Shark got stuck in the bin & writhed around in it until it sprang free, several fish heads in its mouth. Another Bull rushed in, grabbed a collection of three large fish heads & began swimming directly at Elaine, Sam, & I closely followed by another Bull who was fighting to get one or two of the heads out of the other shark’s mouth. The picture here is the best I got of the kerfuffle, please note that my GoPro was tucked in at hip height so while it looks like they’re well above me, they were within a distance where I probably could have reached out & grabbed a fish head of my own. Sam had to bump the sharks away with a large metal hook & Elaine & I exchanged a “WTF was that” look before returning our attention to the Sharknado before us.

The feeding frenzy lasted around twenty minutes even calling in a reclusive White Tipped Reef Shark or two. There used to actually be a resident Tiger Shark as well named Princess, but she hasn’t been seen at the site since COVID kept the feeding crews away.

Once the sharks began to dissipate we were prompted to head back to our mooring for our safety stop. Sam stopped Elaine & I & prompted us to follow. He then took is to a little outcropping of the reef where a Green Moray came wiggling out of the rocks & proceeded to receive scratches from Sam. He then prompted Elaine to come over & give it a pat & a scratch before the attention was passed to me. I anchored on the rock & came in slowly being sure to stretch well over the apparent biting range of the Eel & gave it a few scratches at the back of its head.

The Eel felt completely different than I expected it to. You know how often times you think to yourself “yeah, I’m pretty sure my brain can piece together what that’ll feel like based on the things I’ve touched in my life?” Well the idea my brain had of what a Moray Eel feels like was completely off. First off it’s very mucus-y. The slimy part I’m sure a lot of you had pegged, but its skin almost has no tension to it, almost like poking the top of a jellyfish or feeling a thick plastic bag underwater except its covered in slime.

We departed from the Eel & made our way back to the mooring site, saying “hello” once again to the school Spadefish who hadn’t left their post since the last time we came through. After climbing back into the boat we headed back to the resort.

Lunch that day was a Pan-Fried Fish Salad. We planned another dive though the tide was quickly slipping out, so we chose something chill & local, “The Pond” again.

Returning to “The Pond” I had the same damn mask problems that plagued me at “Turtle Head" the day before. I made the best of it & cruised around “The Pond” with my dive buddies taking in the site.

I felt so bad because Elaine at one point motioned to me something that I thought was “Pillow Starfish.” Sleepy hands by her head & an explosion with her hands. She meant sleeping Pufferfish. So here I came, barreling over the reef, completely oblivious to the need to be sneaky & I scared it away. Thankfully we encountered another sleeping Pufferfish later on in the dive that I was wiser to not awaken.

It was Curry Night when we returned, something I & a few others in the group were beyond psyched for. Despite many grumbles from the group at large everyone seemed to at the very least remain fairly respectful & at least ate a large portion of the provided food. No one, to my knowledge, turned away the dish or asked for something else. The curry was wonderful too! Chicken Tikka Masala, Fijian Roti, Yellow Lentil Daal, & a Salted Caramel Pavlova for dessert!

I spent the rest of the evening combing through my shark dive footage, of which there was a lot, & compiling it into my vlog. It was another midnight with a 6 AM wake up call for me just to get it finished.

End Of Day Five

Day Six

Another late night of editing, another early morning to finish, Thursday we did actually get to sleep in a tad so what had become my normal 6 AM wake up & edit session was now able to be delayed an hour. After editing I went down for breakfast where I had Yaloka Niviti waiting for me. Yaloka Niviti is a Fijian breakfast dish consisting of eggs, black beans, feta, avocado, & chili sauce all wrapped in Roti, sort of like a breakfast quesadilla I suppose.

Our dive call was a little later than normal partially because of the tides for the day, partially because the sites we were hitting were all local. The first of which was “The Aquarium,” a dive the other boat did at the beginning of the week & raved about.

I understand why the other group raved about “The Aquarium” it is teeming with life both of the coral & animal variety. The site sits on the outer reef wall of Beqa Lagoon & is in the shape of a more front heavy curve. The corals there fluoresce with bold neon oranges, acid greens, highlighter yellows, & bright turquoise blues. The reef is covered in several intriguing mollusk species; Black & White Spotted Nudibranchs & even a Common Egg Cowry munching away on a leather coral.

I saw my first wild Clown Tang here as well, though I only caught a glimpse of it from the corner of my eye before it ducked under a rock. I did my best to idol by where it hid in hopes that it would come out but it only popped its head out once & the Tomato Clownfish who I’d taken up station by were getting pissed that I was so close to their beloved anemone, which was an impressive one at that.

Before I’d gotten distracted by pursuing the Clown Tang I found a little Gray Moray Eel, far less boisterous than Sam’s the day before. I had shared it with the group at that point & moved on. Farther along the curve of the reef that jutted a bit more into open water we discovered a male & female Great Pacific Octopus. I actually didn’t see the female until I was looking at video later, even though she was pointed out to me over & over again. Camouflage is dope!

Our second dive of the day was equally as spectacular, “Mata Point.” Despite going over the dive plan & agreeing that we would all start the dive going west with the reef wall on our right side we all got in the water & immediately headed east. After about ten minutes of confusion we all got straightened out & headed in the right direction which unfortunately ate into our dive time making it so we never made it all the way to “Mata Point” as originally intended. The dive was still gorgeous though!

The reef wall basically goes in a straight line until it curves into the point (I assume). The coral species here displayed the same vibrance as their “Aquarium” counterparts & there were an abundance of Halloween Flatworms! At one point Jodi found a quant little Saddlebacked Pufferfish tucked into the reef & I found a rather large Anemone Crab attached to the underside of a large anemone.

At one point during the dive a group of around five or six of us began hearing the aggressive rattle of someone’s dive rattle. We hadn’t noticed the rest of the groups disappearance but we were with Sam & each of us had our own dive buddies, so we were all a tad confused. We took it as a recall signal & all made our way back along the wall amongst the sea fans & anemones.

We found the boat with Jodi waiting next to it underwater banging her tank with her pointing rod. Some of the group had been running out of air & she was trying to locate the remainder of us, who were with Sam, to pull the dive.

While we were in our safety stop above the reef I found my second Clown Tang & this time I got quite a deal more time with it! It basically circled me over & over, both curious & cautious. It would duck into crevices, hide, the jut out & swim to the next spot. But back into the boat & back to the resort we all went.

Lunch was a “Hangover Burger” served poolside which was topped with Onion Jam, Tomato, Bacon, Lettuce, Cheese, & a Fijian BBQ Sauce made at the resort. I enjoyed it there while catching a few rays & sipping my ritualistic post dive cup of tea.

Our afternoon dive was to be the last dive of the trip. We headed back out to do an exploratory dive, that simply means the dive is uncharted & the guides don’t know it's ins & outs. We knew at some point that the current would come in so we anticipated the drift. We were dropped at one end of the reef wall & Captain Dee was meant to meet us down the line. So was the plan…

The dive was outstanding, the corals especially. I stumbled upon a bed of deep blue anemones that played host to a whole colony of assorted Clownfish, a large cluster of Alveopora (flower coral), & mountains of leathers & maze corals.

It was then that we hit the wall. Not a literal wall, but a current wall. It came in hard & fast & halted any & all progress we were making down the reef. The decision was made to turn around & head back to where we had begun our dive in hopes that Dee would see the signs & the current shift & anticipate the new plan.

On our way back I was so mesmerized by the corals that I was almost completely run over by a large Hawksbill Sea Turtle. I ducked out of its way as well as I could in the water & waves & watched it go along its merry way on the top of the reef.

When it was time to surface I got put in charge of deploying our SMB or Safety Sausage from the depth of what would be our safety stop. We swam out to see til neither the reef nor the bottom were visible & I deployed to sausage up to the surface to signal Dee of where we all were.

DISCLAIMER: IF YOU ARE MY MOTHER OR FATHER PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH OR THREE!

We waited well past the three minutes prescribed for our safety stop all the while never hearing the ringing hum of the boat motor as it got closer, so we all cautiously surfaced. Dee hadn’t seen the bright yellow SMB, nor had he anticipated the change of plans. He still sat very far away at the other end of the reef facing the opposite direction. Our dive time was meant to be around forty-five minutes but the site ended up being deeper than we’d anticipate & we’d only been under for around thirty-five minutes or so. Naturally Dee hadn’t begun looking for us yet.

The winds & waves had picked up with the current though which easily drowned out the several whistles being blown. At around five minutes into our surface time we had all inflated SMBs & were waving them in the air in a futile effort to get his attention. Given different circumstances we honestly probably would have looked & sounded like a rave; different colored neon flashing in the air with whistles, rattles, & shouting.

It wasn’t until our allotted dive time was up that Dee began looking for us, which, after he turned around he quickly found us. By the time Dee picked us up we had drifted well away from our initial ascent spot & it had been about ten to fifteen minutes spent trying to make as much noise as we could.

Was it terrifying? Surprisingly no. We actually were having a pretty good time all things considered. I can’t speak to Jodi or Sam but I know the rest of us were rather enjoying the float. When we got on board of the dive boat again Jodi explained that a few months ago she had been the private dive guide to an elderly couple & the three of them had gotten swept out to sea. It took them around thirty to forty minutes to be found at which point Jodi had said she was starting to panic. All the while the elderly couple was laughing, taking pictures, having a blast. It must be the plight of the dive guide to fear for your clients.

I really wish I could remember the major highlights of the rest of the evening but I can’t seem to. I know we spent the time after we returned from the dive fresh water washing our gear & packing it all up from the storage spots we’d had all week, I know I sat & edited in the cabana by the pool, but I can’t for the life of me recall what was for dinner or what the rest of the evening looked like so I guess that’s all I have for you on day six. Kind of an anti-climactic ending I know.

End Of Day Six

Day Seven

With no more diving to do it was time to retrieve our gear. Well, that which we hadn’t already snagged the night before. This mostly consisted of BCDs, Regulators, & Wetsuits which had all been hung to dry over night in the dive shop. I packed up majority of my scuba gear but allowed my BCD & wetsuits more time to hang dry in the shower of my room.

Breakfast was the Full Fijian, a tropical twist on the Full British that I’m sure was a remnant of the colonizers. Yes it consisted of baked beans, cooked tomatoes, bacon, toast, eggs, etc but also came with the Fijian touch of fresh tropical fruits.

For those of you that were unaware, you aren’t supposed to dive less than 24 hours before a flight, that doesn’t mean we spent the day twiddling our thumbs or even dry for that matter.

Many of us had booked a day of River Tubing & Cultural Exploration.

Our van picked us up around 9 AM & we headed East through Pacific Harbor towards Suva. We stopped in Navua where we boarded long boats that took us up stream. Each long boat held around five people, captain & guide included & there were several times in which we had to vacate the longboat to trek along the shore because the water was too low to accommodate the weight of all of us.

About an hour up river we were escorted into a small village called Sabata. A village with around nine buildings, Sabata had joined up with the tubing company in a mutually beneficial partnership to show people how a lot of Fijians still lived. Our guide took us first to a home atop the hill where cassava was being cooked & palm was being stripped to make grass mats. He showed us the outdoor Fijian kitchen & then took us into the one room home.

The owner of the house graciously offered us some of his food, boiled cassava & then took a picture with us, showing us around his house. We then met the chief & the mayor of the town before being shown through their cassava & taro fields back to the longboat.

We ventured down the river in the long boat for about ten minutes before we pulled over & were escorted up a path, along a stream to a beautiful waterfall! The falls poured water into a dark pool below & it honestly reminded me a lot of the waterfall that Evan & I swam in back near Hona in Maui. I got into the water without hesitation, the rest of the group, not so much, even despite my reminding them “when is the next time you’re going to have a chance to swim in a beautiful waterfall in the middle of the rainforest in Fiji?”

After our guides cliff jumped into the waterfall it was time for lunch which was served in the Guava Grove back along the shore where we’d excited the river. Lunch was traditional Fijian. Kokodo (a Fijian Ceviche, Stewed Fern, Pineapple, Grilled Chicken Drumsticks, Salad, & a very spice heavy Sausage with White Bread were all on the plate.

I bothered one of the guides into picking us some fresh Guava which we joyously shared amongst the group.

After lunch it was time to tube. We got our safety briefing from Rosie, the owner, & we all clambered into our respective tubes before setting off down the river.

The guides had requested that we all try to link up, that way no one ran the risk of getting lost or left behind, & we were less likely to tip going through rapids.

Most of the river was a pleasure cruise, leisurely & calm. We hit rapids two or three times, the last of which was by far the largest. As someone who has whitewater rafter many a time in my life, I’ve got to say that going down some minor class rapids in an inner tube is a tad intimidating.

After we were through with all of the rapids the staff began singing to us. They sang traditional Fijian songs, Fijian church songs, & songs of farewell. We then climbed back into the long boats & headed back down to Navua where we got out, changed, & climbed back into the van to be taken back to Waidroka Bay.

Along the way we were all feeling snack-y, especially for ice cream, so we asked our driver to stop at a gas station or something comparable to get some treats. He took us to a newly opened Korean Supermarket. We were like kids in a damn candy store.

I have a massive sweet tooth, & candy is my weakness which, at that point, I hadn’t indulged in over a week. Poor me, I know. So I went HAM on the snack section of the grocery store. I got Sour Stripes, Gummy Colas, a Cadbury Fruit & Nut Bar, a Magnum Ice Cream Bar, a pre-mixed Bounty Rum & Cola, & a bag of Calbee Honey Butter Chips (a Korean fad food that I’d actually squeezed into a song a week or so prior)! All of this amounted to a grand total of around $12 USD. I guess it’s true, sugar is cheap.

When we returned I went back up to my room to begin packing & take a little bitty nap, being on the river all day in the sun really saps you.

Around sunset I made my evening cup of tea & went down to sit on the dock & watch the Fijian sunset one last time over the shallows. I was then brought up to the cabana by the pool for a Kava ceremony, complete with more Fijian Music!

Kava is a member of the pepper family. It is traditionally used socially as a drink to be shared. Kava actually has many beneficial medical properties & has been found to drastically reduce anxiety & stress. The Fijians say alcohol winds you up, Kava settles you down. In Fijian culture Kava is a social beverage brewed by hand in a large bowl called a Tanoa. The dried, ground Kava root is placed in a sack where it is kneaded into water before being dished out. Traditionally when handed a cup of Kava you are to say “Bula,” clap your hands once, shoot the contents of the cup, finishing it in one go, & then clap three more times.

I would describe the taste of Kava as reedy. If you ever played a woodwind instrument & had to suck on a reed before playing, it’s almost exactly that taste only a bit more peppery. The effects of Kava are interesting as well.

A lot of people in the western world equate Kava to Peyote or Ayahuasca but Kava is neither a stimulant nor is it psychoactive. It does kind of leave the roof of your mouth buzzing but it truly puts you in a state of deep calm & serene happiness. I drank four full cups of Kava that evening & probably would have loved more! It was a wonderful experience!

After the Kava ceremony & dancing around the cabana like fools we retreated for dinner. Much like lunch, dinner was also traditional Fijian, seeing as it was our last night in Fiji. Served buffet style we had Pan Seared Marlin, Taro, Cassava, Sweet Potato, Coconut Creamed Spinach, Kokodo, Topoi coated in Sweet Coconut Cream, Chicken, & Pork. After dinner the Resort staff came & sang to us before sending us off to bed.

Almost as soon as I got up the hill the power went out. We would later find out it was because a tree had fallen on a power line, but the whole bay was a deep black darkness, the moon being hidden behind clouds. The Fijians, who had never stopped singing even after we left, didn’t seem to mind the darkness & continued their deeply harmonized chorus into the winter night.

I noticed a pocket of stars poking through the clouds & sought to take advantage of probably the darkest place I’ll be in my lifetime. I turned my phone to high exposure & snapped pictures of the sky capturing stunning glimpses of the cosmos simply from an iPhone.

Power was partially restored as we switched to a generator & I drifted off to sleep not long after.

End Of Day Seven