Lembeh Resort - Day 4

  Bitung, Sulawesi, Indonesia
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Last day of diving!  It has been an absolutely amazing time diving in the muck here in the Lembeh Straight.  The amount of creatures we've seen, ranging from cute to just plain bizarre, was unbelievable.

A pair of frogfish! Painted & clown.

What it lacked in bottom features compared to Bunaken, it more than made up for in sea life.

Doesn't seem to bother the big guy.

 

What a mug.

Cute little guy, hitching a ride!

Diving the old familiar silty bottom of Puget Sound won't be quite the same for a while, as we're likely to continue trying hard to spot frog fish, scorpion fish, stone fish, devil fish, fingered dragonettes, ribbon eels, mimic & coconut octopuses, and all of the many beautiful and colorful tropical fish that make their home among the reef.  And then there are the reefs themselves.  We could have spent hours just swimming around the shallow corals!  There was soooo much coral and in so many different varieties.

Nudibranch

Nudibranch

On some dives, we were having a great time just shooting macro pictures of the corals, or video of the reef dwellers.      

Being as how we have to fly at 1:45pm tomorrow, we could only make two dives today.  No third due to the required off-gassing time before our flight.  That was okay by us though, as we definitely felt like we got our fill.  We can honestly say we saw something new on every dive, and these last two were no different. 

Mantis shrimp!

Our guide, Abner, came through yet again with some very cool critters.

Beautiful shrimp!

   
We saw even more frog fish, this time including the Lembeh hairy frog fish.

I'm a Lembeh hairy frog fish!

We also saw some very cool color varieties of the frog fish, including a pair of black and gray ones that blended so well they were almost impossible to identify, let alone get pictures of!

Another frog fish. Cano you see me?

Is this better?

We also spotted a new jelly fish we hadn't seen before, as well as a different type of eel living in the crevices of the coral shallows.

Yellow eel

We're convinced that if we were to stay another week, we'd still be seeing something new every day.

Pam & Andy after the last dive!

 

Our only disappointment this entire time diving Lembeh, and it was a feeling shared by everyone in our group, was in seeing all of the garbage in the water.  Many dive sites had numerous plastic bags floating in the water column, as well as trash littering the bottom.  It was quite sad to see.  Most of the people here have carved out their existence and survival without knowledge of what lies beneath the waves, which is somewhat understandable.  If they could only see what lies below!  There are no landfills and no procedures for garbage pickup and removal.  It either piles up in people's back yards, or it gets tossed into the sea.  And plastic has become more and more available in the jungles.  We really shudder to think what these waters may look like in a decade without intervention.  
 
Having the afternoon off afforded us the opportunity to catch up on some sleep!  We crashed hard for about two hours and finally had a chance to enjoy just hanging out in our little hut.  Finally got around to packing so we would be ready to go in the morning, and then we were off to dinner. 

Dinner was once again excellent,

Pam & Andy

and the staff here at Lembeh was just great.

Andy, dive guide Abner & Pam

They were always so friendly and helpful, and we'll certainly have a difficult time saying goodbye.  Seems they will, too.  Whenever a larger group stays at the resort, they always make an effort to make their last evening a memorable one.  It definitely was.  Children from the local village church choir came and sang traditional songs for us, and even got all of us to dance with them.  

Church choir kids leading Pam in the dance!

It was great! 

They are very talented and have strong singing voices that can't help but put a smile on your face.  It was very beautiful and heart-warming.  

Church choir kids signing a farewell song.

After the children sang for us, it was then our wait staff's turn!  We were serenaded at our table by our three primary wait persons.  

Our wonderful wait staff.

Once again, we really felt like we were saying goodbye to family.  Despite being a bit rough around the edges, the Lembeh Resort was wonderful to us and will be the source of many great memories. 

Off to Singapore!  Tomorrow we depart the resort at 10am by boat, back to the port city of Bitung.  Come on along!  More soon from Singapore!!!

Pam & Andy