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Diving into paradise
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We are now staying at Bastianos Dive Resort on Bunaken Island in Indonesia. This is a small island adjacent to a large marine park just off the north tip of the much larger island of Sulawesi. We are staying in a beachfront cabin with an ensuite (albeit with buckets of water to pour over the head rather than a shower) and front porch where we sit and play Scrabble in the evening. Behind our cabin is a thick tropical forest. The diving is great. We have been on six dives so far and seen beautiful coral with colourful schools of fish, several small reef sharks, a Napolean fish, and three very large turtles. Two of the turtles swam out and coasted alongside to get a closer look.
It is hard to imagine a bigger contrast with India. Where India was hectic, dirty and crowded, we have moved to an island that is quite idyllic, where we fall asleep to the sound of the ocean outside our room. The one thing this place doesn't have is internet access. This morning almost all the guests from the resort piled in to one the boats to make the trip over to Manado on Sulawesi, half the group to check out and the rest, like us, to use the internet.
August 1
Final reflections on Bunaken: It is now the end of our ten days on Bunaken. Palau Bunaken has some of the best diving in Indonesia. There are pristine coral reefs with lots of sea life all around. We each dove for 5 days and used the other 5 days to relax (mostly - there was the one day we had to make a day trip into Manado to use internet and see a travel agent). During diving days we went out at 9, returned for lunch and then went on a second dive at 2. Although we saw many sea creatures our favorite was the large turtles - something we have never seen before when diving in past. There was an interesting group of people staying at Bastianos Dive Resort. The group was quite vartied with people from many different countries, some of whom have done very extensive travel. We had some interesting conversations in the evenings. On two different occasions the staff organized a BBQ including after dinner singing and a large bonfire.
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