Fancy Scuba? Safari Edition.
Trip Start
Jun 20, 2008
1
4
8
Trip End
Aug 03, 2008
Where I stayed
Legian,
Bali,
Indonesia
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Here we are in an internet cafe all salty and fresh from the sea like two little mermaids hitting land. Well, grumpy mermaids as there is a delay in checking in our hotel and it has brought out the hostile side of us city-girls.
We have had an amazing three days on the scuba safari. We went up and down Bali, which was incredible because there are so many different climates on this little island. LAst time I updated the blog, we were deep in the jungle. When we got to Sanur, it was a sunny beach resort town and we spent Thursday diving nearby in Padangbai. The diving was good, not too remarkable other than the DRAMATIC difference in water temperature. One second you would be in 24C water and one flip later and it would be 21C water (I know that doesn't seem dramatic when you read it, but trust me, it was dramatic to us in our light wetsuits!)
Feeding the monkeys
.We then drove up to Tulamben Thursday afternoon - Tulamben is very close to the volcano that exploded here in 1963 and the climate was much different - it was far from teh verdant green we have seen so far and dry, almost desert-y. Here we did an amazing night dive at the USS Liberty wreck and saw lots of huge bumpheaded parrot fish and other critters. As always, our favorite part of the night davies is when you turn off your torch and wave your hands around to see all the purple-y glowing plankton. Truly magical.
The next day we dove at Tulamben 3 more times - twice at the Liberty and once at a drop off. I have to say, the Liberty was m,y absolute favorite dive to date. IT was so cool doing a wreck dive and I loved all the ocean flora and fauna growing on this rusty old battleship. Kim's favorite dive came today at Nusa Penida. We first did a dive at manta point, which we equated to being in a washing machine because the swell was so strong. We saw HUGE 6 - 7 foot rays. SO COOL! Then we did some drift dives. This is super fun because you just float along. During the third dive of the day, the current was so strong that if you tried to swim against it, it was like being in one of those stationary lap pools (do you know what I am talking about?!)
Mobile Update
.Now we are in Legian and have changed the itenerary once again. Rather than go to the Gilis on Monday, we have decided to stay here and truly refine our surfing skills (the truth is that we are sort of tired of switching hotels and just want to stay in one place that is clean/bug-free).
Finally, I have to give a shout out to Ajita if she is reading this. I finally have a deep understanding of her fear of dogs. There are dogs roaming EVERYWHERE here and the last thing I want to do is be near a mangy canine and become a disease carrier monkey to Stella. I get why you hate dogs.
Miss everyone and hope all is well!!
xoxo
