Trip Report - Manado And Lembeh

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pelan-pelan

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Just got back from a trip to Sulawesi.

Started at LumbaLumba outside Manado. The dive lodge is superb. Everything works - hot water, air conditioning, refrigerator, kettle etc and the gardens and pool are made for chilling. Very clean. Food is excellent. We have been here before. The dive op is superb. Lunch on the boat, there is a toilet, crew could not be more helpful.

Diving - both Bunaken and the wonderful sand sites on the Manado side. The viz was worse than we have ever seen before (been visiting for nearly 20 years) and the temperature only 26 C. Bunaken wall is impressive and we sighted at least 10 individual turtles with at least 15 sightings in one dive (Muka Kampong site). The sand sites on the Manado side yielded all sorts of critters including octopus, crocodile fish, gurnard, Indian walker, nudis including a huge bullockii, ghost pipe fish, sea horses, large sepia, orangutan crabs, mantis shrimp, frog fish, scorpion fish, stone fish, and a stargazer (on more than one occasion). The list goes on. And a great big rhinopia, all white and frilly to match the weed (at the City Borders Motorbike site). We usually see flamboyant cuttlefish, but not this time. The guides work as a team and share sightings. Ratio is rarely more than two divers per guide unless you want to be in a larger group. Favourite sites would be Circus Critter and Pooh Pooh on the Manado side.

We moved on to Divers Lodge Lembeh who picked us up from Lembeh early enough to take in some sights such as the warung graves en route. The cottages at Lembeh are spacious, with ceiling fans and netted vents to take advantage of the breezes, hot water showers, and very clean. Again, the food is excellent but if you don't like the Indonesian spicy dishes just ask and they can do "without spice". Dive op is efficient with a toilet on the boat. Fruit and coffee between the two morning dives and then back to the lodge for lunch, or lunch on the boat before the third dive.

Diving - much has been said about the wonders of Lembeh's muck dives. The viz was poor, but the temperature was warmer than Manado at 28C. We have been to Lembeh once before so we were not put off when our first dive was right in front of the port area. What do you expect in the water in front of boat yards? Yes, garbage. It doesn't make it right, but you have to get over it. Further up the coast there was very little rubbish. What did we see? It is more like what we didn't see. Four types of mantis shrimp, the big green peacock mantis, also the smaller pink and blue and then the truly scary tiger mantis, 18 " long. It always happens on the dive you weren't on, but someone actually saw one spear a puffer fish.

Then there are the mandarin fish. Theoretically they are small, shy and only come out at dusk. In practice they forgot to tell the ones that live under the Bianca. A site where two large sailing boats are moored, so the stag's horn coral underneath is in a perpetual dusk. The mandarin fish frolic all day long and are downright large. If you see any pictures of these chaps, don't bother complimenting the photographer. The mandarins are like celebrity fashion models, posing all profiles. They will do everything to assist the photoshoot and can possibly take pictures of divers if they get hold of a camera. The Bianca site also has numbers of frog fish, orange, black, spotty white, all sizes.

The list of critters goes on. For those with only a short stay at Lembeh, favourite sites would be Bianca, TK3 and Nudi Falls. And Madidir right on the port front - the critter list overflowed the dive log.
 
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