I enjoyed the muck diving at Seraya on my last trip, so much so that I started planning for a return trip as soon as I got back to Singapore in August. This time round, with my dear Aili and daddy Chris. Unfortunately, Chris called me up a day before departure that he can't join us for the trip having assigned some new work commitments. What a bummer!!
On Friday evening on 20-Oct, we flew by Qantas via a 2 hours 45 minutes journey, skipped our usual nap, having to go through the nitrox textbooks and trying to absorb as much of the nitrox knowledge as possible. Arriving in Bali after dark, we were picked up by Prass and Aris from Air Academy Diving and met Chris from Australia who is working in Jakarta. After a 2.5 hours van ride later, we arrived at our hotel, Minpi Resort in Tulamben. Feeling so sleepy, we promptly checked in and went to snooze, totally "ignoring" Prass's comments that Ian (our friend from Scotland, now residing & working in Singapore) was waiting for us at the restaurant. Sorry, dude!!
Diving commenced the next morning at Tulamben drop-off. Before the dive, Prass gave us a briefing on nitrox and taught us how to analyze the mix (EAN32) on our own tanks. The entry was made by wandering up the pebble-strewn beach from the shore, a rather tricky maneuver, especially with our camera setup on one hand and fins on the other. As soon as we descended, we were greeted by a school of resident jacks. The dive site showed wonderful delights like lots of cleaner shrimps, few species of nudibranchs, a harlequin ghost pipefish, and a really tiny <1cm harlequin shrimp that was eaten by a wrasse before I could take a snap of it.
During surface interval, we met Ian and Yoshimi who didn't join us for the first dive. We watched a video for the nitrox course before our second dive at the Tulamben Liberty wreck. We dove with EAN36 and swam along the sandy bottom before reaching the wreck, we spotted few cluster of anemone beckons, where cute anemone shrimps were out to play, a spider crab, a hermit crab and many sand gobies with their accompanying soldier shrimps. After about 10 minutes, we reached the wreck, which was encrusted with hard and soft corals, sponges and fans surrounded by lots of fish life. On our way back to shore, Prass found a juvenile red frogfish.
After lunch, we made our third dive at the Paradise house-reef. It was a fantastic dive with sightings of crinoid’s shrimps on feather stars, nudibranchs and sea slugs, moray eels, cleaner shrimps and many more but "****ty" exit. My regulator free flows so I surfaced before the rest. The exit proved to be a little challenging with the waves getting bigger by the minute so I waited for them at the surface. Huge waves came crashing on me and I lost my mask. Eventually, the rest surfaced and Prass helped me to shore. Damn, I hate shore dives.
The next day was the much-anticipated dives at Seraya. We were joined by Dave and made 3 dives. Shore entry was much easier on the black sandy slopes dropping gently to 15 meters or so before heading into deeper waters. As we combed the sandy bottom, we came crossed small patches of corals, sea pens, and sponges, amidst them were fabulous critters life, from harlequin shrimps to ghost pipefish, frogfish to Pegasus sea moth, unusual decorator and spider crabs, anemone and commensal shrimps, nudibranchs, crinoid’s lobsters and shrimps and many more. Diving highlights for this trip were the oatesii crabs on the "broccoli" corals and many fire urchins carrying with them the rare Coleman’s shrimps, which were usually seen during night dives. We did two more dives at Seraya & one dive at Tulamben drop-off on the third day, which didn't disappoint.
On the fourth day, we packed and left for Amed for our last two dives. The dives involved taking a small local outrigger boat ~30 minutes to the dive sites. The first dive was at the Underwater Island, Ian and Dave's favorite site. Once we descended, there was a sandy spot covered with a large colony of garden eels poking their heads out of the sand checking us out. The shallower reefs suffered some coral damage but still have a rich and varied population of reef fish and other marine life. At the deeper end, the fish life was prolific, with a variety of sea fans and huge barrel sponges. We saw school of banner fishes, colorful cardinal fishes, many blue spotted stingrays, and a white tip shark. We took and passed our nitrox examinations during the surface interval. The second dive was at Bunutan Reef; we came to a small patch of reef where we found six harlequin ghost pipefishes and many cleaner shrimps. As we went deeper, the currents became stronger and we drifted with the currents. I lost the group after struggling to photograph a pair of pink hairy squat lobsters. The visibility was not good and I wanted to take out my pointer to bang on my tank to alert the rest but saw four giant barracudas swimming passed and checking me out. Freaky!! Finally, after drifting for ~ 5mins, I saw Prass and Aili. What a sign of relief!!
Bali is beautiful, the people are warm and welcoming and the diving is wonderful and not to be missed, and we've had a great vacation!
How soon can we come back??
Below is the link my gallery:
http://sg.homeunix.com/jovin/Bali-20-Oct-to-25-Oct-2006
useful links:
http://www.balidiving.com/index.htm
http://balihotelsbargain.com/hotels/mimpi_tulamben/index.html
Happy Bubbles,
Jovin-
On Friday evening on 20-Oct, we flew by Qantas via a 2 hours 45 minutes journey, skipped our usual nap, having to go through the nitrox textbooks and trying to absorb as much of the nitrox knowledge as possible. Arriving in Bali after dark, we were picked up by Prass and Aris from Air Academy Diving and met Chris from Australia who is working in Jakarta. After a 2.5 hours van ride later, we arrived at our hotel, Minpi Resort in Tulamben. Feeling so sleepy, we promptly checked in and went to snooze, totally "ignoring" Prass's comments that Ian (our friend from Scotland, now residing & working in Singapore) was waiting for us at the restaurant. Sorry, dude!!
Diving commenced the next morning at Tulamben drop-off. Before the dive, Prass gave us a briefing on nitrox and taught us how to analyze the mix (EAN32) on our own tanks. The entry was made by wandering up the pebble-strewn beach from the shore, a rather tricky maneuver, especially with our camera setup on one hand and fins on the other. As soon as we descended, we were greeted by a school of resident jacks. The dive site showed wonderful delights like lots of cleaner shrimps, few species of nudibranchs, a harlequin ghost pipefish, and a really tiny <1cm harlequin shrimp that was eaten by a wrasse before I could take a snap of it.
During surface interval, we met Ian and Yoshimi who didn't join us for the first dive. We watched a video for the nitrox course before our second dive at the Tulamben Liberty wreck. We dove with EAN36 and swam along the sandy bottom before reaching the wreck, we spotted few cluster of anemone beckons, where cute anemone shrimps were out to play, a spider crab, a hermit crab and many sand gobies with their accompanying soldier shrimps. After about 10 minutes, we reached the wreck, which was encrusted with hard and soft corals, sponges and fans surrounded by lots of fish life. On our way back to shore, Prass found a juvenile red frogfish.
After lunch, we made our third dive at the Paradise house-reef. It was a fantastic dive with sightings of crinoid’s shrimps on feather stars, nudibranchs and sea slugs, moray eels, cleaner shrimps and many more but "****ty" exit. My regulator free flows so I surfaced before the rest. The exit proved to be a little challenging with the waves getting bigger by the minute so I waited for them at the surface. Huge waves came crashing on me and I lost my mask. Eventually, the rest surfaced and Prass helped me to shore. Damn, I hate shore dives.
The next day was the much-anticipated dives at Seraya. We were joined by Dave and made 3 dives. Shore entry was much easier on the black sandy slopes dropping gently to 15 meters or so before heading into deeper waters. As we combed the sandy bottom, we came crossed small patches of corals, sea pens, and sponges, amidst them were fabulous critters life, from harlequin shrimps to ghost pipefish, frogfish to Pegasus sea moth, unusual decorator and spider crabs, anemone and commensal shrimps, nudibranchs, crinoid’s lobsters and shrimps and many more. Diving highlights for this trip were the oatesii crabs on the "broccoli" corals and many fire urchins carrying with them the rare Coleman’s shrimps, which were usually seen during night dives. We did two more dives at Seraya & one dive at Tulamben drop-off on the third day, which didn't disappoint.
On the fourth day, we packed and left for Amed for our last two dives. The dives involved taking a small local outrigger boat ~30 minutes to the dive sites. The first dive was at the Underwater Island, Ian and Dave's favorite site. Once we descended, there was a sandy spot covered with a large colony of garden eels poking their heads out of the sand checking us out. The shallower reefs suffered some coral damage but still have a rich and varied population of reef fish and other marine life. At the deeper end, the fish life was prolific, with a variety of sea fans and huge barrel sponges. We saw school of banner fishes, colorful cardinal fishes, many blue spotted stingrays, and a white tip shark. We took and passed our nitrox examinations during the surface interval. The second dive was at Bunutan Reef; we came to a small patch of reef where we found six harlequin ghost pipefishes and many cleaner shrimps. As we went deeper, the currents became stronger and we drifted with the currents. I lost the group after struggling to photograph a pair of pink hairy squat lobsters. The visibility was not good and I wanted to take out my pointer to bang on my tank to alert the rest but saw four giant barracudas swimming passed and checking me out. Freaky!! Finally, after drifting for ~ 5mins, I saw Prass and Aili. What a sign of relief!!
Bali is beautiful, the people are warm and welcoming and the diving is wonderful and not to be missed, and we've had a great vacation!
How soon can we come back??
Below is the link my gallery:
http://sg.homeunix.com/jovin/Bali-20-Oct-to-25-Oct-2006
useful links:
http://www.balidiving.com/index.htm
http://balihotelsbargain.com/hotels/mimpi_tulamben/index.html
Happy Bubbles,
Jovin-
with a 60mm macro lens 
