The second part of our Passport to Paradise involved two dives en route to Bangka. There were three of us doing this leg, my daughter Yanni and I, as well as Joe. We had also opted to keep Oce as our guide too during the stay at Bangka as he was a good guide and we had developed a good relationship with him over the previous days.
All of our suitcases were on board and we had a fairly calm cruise to our first dive site at Darunu Point. This was a muck dive and we were now on a run of several frogfish per dive for the rest of the trip until the end of Lembeh. I have never seen so many frogfish on any previous dive trip and they are not so common where I normally dive in UAE, although they do exist.
The second dive was a near disaster at Tanjung Tarabitan, wild down currents, and we were swept over a shallow reef to begin with then down very fast hitting 23M in a matter of seconds, with what seemed like whirlpools.
We all swam towards the coral and literally crawled up the wall and called it quits after 22 minutes, by then I was down to 100 bar. Yanni was not feeling to great once we surfaced and Oce was blaming himself for allowing us to dive in such a crazy current, but hey we all survived and the experience is something that is required in order to know how to deal with it. It was certainly not a dive that I would ever take a camera on again except perhaps a GoPro.
After that dive we headed towards Murex Bangka where the waves started to get higher, with a large two meter swell (six feet for the non metrified). Docking at the Murex beach was challenging for the crew with lots of shouting and throwing of ropes while reversing back to the beach.
Accommodation basic, however I preferred it to Manado but again no hot water from the hand basin and no mirror above it to shave by, it was behind the wash hand basin??
The staff were good though, but there was nobody from the resort to really welcome you and show you to the room. Fortunately the owner Danny had now moved there with his extended family and he personally guided us to where we were staying.
We also met up with Dr. Mark Erdmann whom we also met last year in Lembeh, and Yanni had some good conversations with him regarding marine matters and conservation
The resort was buzzing in fact with probably more people than the place could handle, a bit of a shock after Manado, however there was one particular family that we were glad not to have shared a boat with, basically South Africans who were still living in the apartheid era and who treated the staff in an appalling manner. The bad news is that they followed us on to Lembeh Resort, but we still managed to avoid them.
Dining area sans diners
The rather cramped camera room, which was half of the equipment room.
The southerly wind however was against us as far as diving Bangka was concerned, and we ended up doing only one dive on Bangka itself (Tanjung Usi 1) with all other dives over on the northern end of Sulawesi, the best of which was definitely Paradise Pier, including the pier itself where I did a 22 minute 5M solo dive during my surface interval on the second day there. We were also the only three divers on our boat which made it very comfortable.
Next to Paradise Pier
Some of the non-black frogfish we found
My second ever sighting of an Emperor Shrimp riding a nudibranch, the first was in 1992
Couple of unexpected findings
Side Gilled Slug
Large Halibut
On our last night some of the staff provided the entertainment in their local language so we could not join in, but it did involve some dancing by some of us who had a Bintang too many - no photos of that part though
All of our suitcases were on board and we had a fairly calm cruise to our first dive site at Darunu Point. This was a muck dive and we were now on a run of several frogfish per dive for the rest of the trip until the end of Lembeh. I have never seen so many frogfish on any previous dive trip and they are not so common where I normally dive in UAE, although they do exist.
The second dive was a near disaster at Tanjung Tarabitan, wild down currents, and we were swept over a shallow reef to begin with then down very fast hitting 23M in a matter of seconds, with what seemed like whirlpools.
We all swam towards the coral and literally crawled up the wall and called it quits after 22 minutes, by then I was down to 100 bar. Yanni was not feeling to great once we surfaced and Oce was blaming himself for allowing us to dive in such a crazy current, but hey we all survived and the experience is something that is required in order to know how to deal with it. It was certainly not a dive that I would ever take a camera on again except perhaps a GoPro.
After that dive we headed towards Murex Bangka where the waves started to get higher, with a large two meter swell (six feet for the non metrified). Docking at the Murex beach was challenging for the crew with lots of shouting and throwing of ropes while reversing back to the beach.
Accommodation basic, however I preferred it to Manado but again no hot water from the hand basin and no mirror above it to shave by, it was behind the wash hand basin??
The staff were good though, but there was nobody from the resort to really welcome you and show you to the room. Fortunately the owner Danny had now moved there with his extended family and he personally guided us to where we were staying.
We also met up with Dr. Mark Erdmann whom we also met last year in Lembeh, and Yanni had some good conversations with him regarding marine matters and conservation
The resort was buzzing in fact with probably more people than the place could handle, a bit of a shock after Manado, however there was one particular family that we were glad not to have shared a boat with, basically South Africans who were still living in the apartheid era and who treated the staff in an appalling manner. The bad news is that they followed us on to Lembeh Resort, but we still managed to avoid them.
Dining area sans diners
The rather cramped camera room, which was half of the equipment room.
The southerly wind however was against us as far as diving Bangka was concerned, and we ended up doing only one dive on Bangka itself (Tanjung Usi 1) with all other dives over on the northern end of Sulawesi, the best of which was definitely Paradise Pier, including the pier itself where I did a 22 minute 5M solo dive during my surface interval on the second day there. We were also the only three divers on our boat which made it very comfortable.
Next to Paradise Pier
Some of the non-black frogfish we found
My second ever sighting of an Emperor Shrimp riding a nudibranch, the first was in 1992
Couple of unexpected findings
Side Gilled Slug
Large Halibut
On our last night some of the staff provided the entertainment in their local language so we could not join in, but it did involve some dancing by some of us who had a Bintang too many - no photos of that part though
