Sintesa Peninsula Hotel Manado

... us from one side of the jeep to the other. Tired and a little nauseated we arrived in Gorontalo at the middle of the night. Got a hotel, fell on our bed like stones and slept (that is, after killing a fist big spider which seemed comfortable at the end of my bed).<br><br>Today we went to a 30 meter waterfall outside the city. With only flip flops on our feet we were not really prepared for the sharp rocks that were our path, but somehow ...

... resort where we'll be treated to an in-room one our couples aromatherapy massage. Now that should be the ticket! Oops. Got that wrong. Actually, the desk got it wrong. They wrote down the wrong room number, so no massage tonight. Rescheduled for tomorrow night, which should feel just as good if not better after three more dives tomorrow. Stay tuned! Pam &amp; Andy

... known as Linow Lake. Water infused with sulfur bubbles up and has formed a lake in the crater of an old volcano. The lake was a beautiful turquoise color, but did have a pretty strong smell. That didn't seem to bother the many birds though. We also saw an area where the mud actually boils. Way too hot to touch! It was interesting to note the many churches along the way ...

... hanging around on the surface, basking in the sun. Then, along came the dolphins! Apparently a good omen for maritime folk, they kindly escorted part of the way enjoying riding the bow wave. What a sight. Dive 1 was at a site called Lekuan 2. There are three of those as well! In fact, we dove Lekuan 3 for the final dive of our day at Bunaken. We then headed back towards our island paradise ...

... of a horn. Pam kept her eyes either on our friend sitting next to her or just simply closed tight! Miraculously, we made it to the Minahasa Resort (http://minahasalagoon.com/) without incident and were greeted by Pimm and served a wonderful fresh coconut punch still in the coconut. To finally be here was quite a relief! Tomorrow we dive!

I made the trip from Lembeh Island to Bunaken Island on the Saturday. A short boat ride to the main land, a hour long journey to Manado and then a 3 hour wait for the boat to go to Bunaken. It was a long 3 hours. The resort at Bunaken was a bit bigger than Lembeh and felt slightly more luxurious, but in a budget way. The diving at Bunaken is totally different from Lembeh, were as Lembeh is black sand bottom, with ...

We took our leave of Singapore by boat and had a hectic, mad dash through Indonesia on our way to Manado in Northern Sulawesi. We started out early in the morning on May 8th and took a ferry to Batam Island in the Riau Archipelago. It's definitely not a reccomended travel destination, although we spent all of 1 hour there. It was included last minute in a free trade agreement between Singapore and the USA and ...

... ety fellow, who could be counted on to crow at precisely 5:30, but after the first night, I slept like the dead, and didn't hear him. I did, however, hear the screeching forest dwellers. Their piercing shrieks are hard to ignore. We never did see the source of the sound, the diminutive kuskus (local name), which I think may be a marsupial? The main purpose of our trip to such an isolated spot on the globe was to take in the world-class diving ...

We started our trip with a few days in Bali to get over the jet lag, acclimatise (to the weather and the idea of not working until next year ;-) ,and most importantly figure out what we were going to do with two months in Indonesia - little did we know then that the time would fly by with most of it spent traversing this giant country. Our next move was to spend just over a week on Bunaken Island in North Sulawesi - this is one of the world's great scuba diving spots. I wasn't really ...

... to stall looking at these creatures. Who in the world, in their right mind eats them?! Until I realized that I did!! Last night with the Bat Curry!! It was like watching a nasty road accident or someone's hairy armpits. You simply can't take your eyes off them as gross as it may be. If I wasn't that fascinated and that my mind wasn't that boggled, I would have felt sick on the spot. I swore ...