Are You Man Enough To Let A Woman Carry Your Tank (Safari Part Three)

15th November, Tuesday, Fifth Day
Destination : Tulamben and Seraya

It was quite a difficult night to fall asleep.
Woke up 5.20 a.m in the morning and prepared everything, I was waiting for Froggie’s morning call at 5.30, but realized that it might not happen when he hadn’t showed up five minutes from that. So, I went to the boy’s room.

Knock Knock Knock.

Silence.

Knock Knock KNOCK.

Ruffle sounds of bedsheet but silence.

BANG BANG BANG…!
“Morning Caaaalllll!”

I heard ‘Gedabruk’ ‘OUCH’ ‘Klontang-klontang’ , and then Leo’s face was peeping from the window, he gave ok sign. I asked him to wake Cynthia also as I didn’t know her room. He said ok and in a while he banged on the wall, apparently Cynthia’s room was behind theirs.
6.00 am, we gathered outside at Hotel’s lobby, we would take a short ride by car to reach Liberty.

Here’s the short history about the Liberty wreck, and so-called maybe the easiest wreck diving in the world.

The USAT Liberty Shipwreck.
Bali's most famous dive site. Built circa WWI this cargo ship was equipped with guns for WWII, torpedoed by the Japanese off Lombok; despite attempts to tow the ship to N Bali it was taking on too much water so was semi-beached at Tulamben. Over the years anything reusable was removed. In 1963, with the earth tremors from the last eruption of Mount Agung, the wreck slid further down the slope where it still lies (as close to the beach as it can be and still be underwater!).
The Liberty is 120m long, lies approximately 30m offshore almost parallel to the beach on the sand slope and is suitable for all levels of qualification and experience. The wreck lies in depths from 9-30m.

A very short trip, and we reached the rocky beach. I had a habit to collect sand from every beach I visited. In PJ I tried to collect underwater sand but it was tedious to put the sand into the slimy plastic bag and I don’t like the possibility of changing a little bit of the natural habitat, mhahahha…
So, back to the habit, Leo gave me Lays container (I thought he was joking) the huge plastic cylinder; he told me I would need it for Tulamben. In Tulamben, it is rocky beach that we met. I’d be doom if I wore full foot fins without booties, as it would be painful to walk on the rocks.

It was dawn dive; actually I imagined dawn dive to be dark and we would experience the sun coming and sweeping the darkness while we were down under. But, TEEET, I was wrong. It had been bright since five o’clock although we couldn’t see the sun. So, the point was, maybe, to wake up the fish, for underwater, it was still semi-dark.
We geared up, and walked to the shore, put the fins in, and jumped.
I thought about Liberty all the time. I thought I would see the ship from the bottom looking to the top and see the whole ship together. Again, I was wrong. It was damn long that I could only see part by part. I saw the guns, the head, the body when I levitated to get the whole picture in my mind.

We saw the tongos Napeleon Wrasse but we didn’t get excited, neahh, we saw a lot in Dayang, but then…we saw school of them. It was about maybe more than twenty, from grandpa to grandson, big and small, swimming calmly in front of us. Seeing school of huge fish was indeed a different experience. It happened at the end of the first dive, so we slowly followed them to the shallow. They weren’t distracted by us but kept their distance. Through the semi dark water, it was nice and glorious.

The beginning of the dive itself was satisfying, the wreck was totally covered by corals, anemones, gorgonian, but we could see the harden and tough shape standing right below, beside and above us. If the eyes were sharp enough, there were a lot of things to find among the shadow of every corner.
Prass showed me two big groupers who were hiding inside; Hubby also showed me one big almost white fish that we didn’t know the name. There was one magenta leaf fish who had been resident there for two years! Prass tried to find the yellow pigmy, but he couldn’t locate it. We saw a lot of fish; school of sweetlips, jacks, but most of all the highlight was the ship.
We penetrated the middle part of the ship, it was mysterious floating inside the ship, the sun shined through the openings and cracks and it felt like I was in the church, small church and showered by the light of hope. Mhehehhe…puah..puah, but it was a great experience. Before I even touched one, I always afraid of wreck. Thinking about the sad stories behind the sinking ship, or maybe scary stories made me shivered. Back then when I liked to swim at night, the dark floor pattern of the swimming pool already made me uncomfortable, let alone the wreck. What happened to the ship and the passenger, the guy with one eye or the guy with metal hook? Did somebody have been forced to walk through the plank? What was behind the disaster when it sunk? And bla..bla..
But, when I touched my first wreck in Dayang, it was fine. Completely fine. From what left behind, there were new life and new paradise. No uncomfortable feeling or scary thought had ever crossed my brain or was it had been soaked?
I read about wreck with skeleton, uhm… let’s talk about it later. Right now, I don’t want to see any of it except on my dinner plate.

After the wreck, we reached sandy area. We could find things between or below the sand. Blue spot stingrays, there are many of them. Crabs, shrimps, gobies, and usual landscape of colorful fish.
After sand was the rocky area again, the rocks were huge, it was getting shallower and shallower, it was fun to swim to the shore and suddenly felt the backside was already up on the air. So, turned around, took out fins and walk to the shore.

We were wet, the tank was very heavy that even took them off was a tedious task. But then, few lady villagers came, picked up our gears and put it on their head.
O-n t-h-e-i-r h-e-a-d!
Not one, but two sets of gear and they walked calmly to our hotel which was located uhm… (my sense of distance is almost always wrong) maybe almost 300 meters?
I read from the history of Tulamben and the sentence caught my eyes, I made it as the title. We were pretty impressed, especially when we walked back, only wcarried fins, it was already quite tiring to balance ourselves through the rocks.

We sat around in the dining area, had breakfast and hot lemon tea. Banana pancake with chocolate uhmm….salt water made everything tasted good. Leo had been hooked with the pineapple boat; he saved it for lunch.

There were two dogs patronizing the dining area.
The first one, we called it Scooby-Doo, he looked exactly like that and even had bent fore legs. He ignored us most of the time, but liked to visit Leo and Froggie’s room and sat there blocking their entrance. He didn’t move an inch so Frog and Leo had to leap through him. Frog liked to imitate Scooby-Doo laugh applied to that dog. Khikikikiki…



The second one was a female sad dog; it had such a face and look that put puppies in shame.


After breakfast, we sat, smoked for those who did and chatted. Around nine we already stood by at the same entry point, this time we walked there. We found a bonfire with delicious looking fish on the process of being barbequed, yummy.
Second dive, same point, Liberty. This time Prass was ready, he found the yellow pigmy right away. It was in twenty-three meter depth, so I gave it a glance and waited for those photographers in shallower area. The pigmy was skinny, so skinny it looked like lizard. It was a catwalk pigmy, slim and tall, and active. They had hard time trying to get good pictures, so I busied myself looking at a bunch of sea feather with shrimps in it. Leo took out the magnifying glass and signed to me happily that he could see the pigmy well.

We explored the ship once again, but I didn’t really remember that I went there, every entry was a different experience, although more or less I remembered part of the ship. It was nice to wait, made myself still, motionless and let the nature turned me up, down, left, right (with a little bit of manipulation of course) to enjoy the sight of the wreck. It seemed that I never got enough with Liberty.

When we reached the rocky area at the end of the dive, Prass found a boxer crab. It became my favorite since then. The crab was tiny; I could cover everything with my thumb easily. And the hilarious thing, boxer crab was always holding anemone in their hand for defense. It looked exactly like cheerleader’s crab; they sometimes identify it as pom-pom crab. Give me A, give me P, etc..etc…Can’t wait to show the picture..



To find it, Prass had to lift rocks; he then put it in his palm and put it down again in more sandy area, beside one or two rocks. It would stand near the rock, sometimes ran here and there circling the rock. One of the cutest things.
Leo and Hubby took pictures, Cynthia and Froggie were too far away and busy taking some other pictures. The pom-pom escaped when they finally reached us.

So, we came back, sat and chatted again, and got ready for the third dive. Leo aborted this one; he wanted to enjoy massage under the sun.
For the third dive, Seraya, was located about twenty minutes from hotel. We had to take traditional boat, called jukung. It was a narrow boat with four legs spread out on the sides. Another fun new thing in Bali.



I took the boat with Hubby and Prass, Froggie and Cynthia in other boat. It was a fun ride although the sun was burning above the head, the water sprayed from the sides and impolitely slapping my face until it wet :)

Two boats were racing, they were ahead, we went pass them, they went pass us, again and again, at the end, we won. Another experience, we had to jump with fins on to the side of the boat, held on to the leg while the boatman threw the gear to us. We wore the gear in the water and it was tedious had Prass didn’t give me a hand. After we ready, we swam away from the boat, waited for the rest and dip in.

Seraya was considered as muck diving. Unlike PJ, Seraya was rockier, and the dive was superb! We found so many things, from Gorilla hairy crab to many types of macro, frogfish, shrimps, many types of nudibranches, rare spiky shrimp and even underwater tarantula. It indeed looked very similar to tarantula, with the same size. Prass held it up, then it ran across his arm, then jumped and ran again through the corals.

Different types of lion fish, many of them. We saw a lot of eels; honeycomb, white-eye, yellow, brown, they were almost everywhere, hunting or hiding behind the rock. The honeycomb (polkadot) was the biggest I’ve ever seen. It was huge! With the mouth opened and closed. Moray eels were maybe the scariest thing I saw in the Aquarium way back. It was ugly, scary and looked threatening. Indeed, most of them are quite harmless unless disturbed. But, I didn’t dare to stay too close with the huge polkadot one, I think it could swallow me easily and spit out my tank and jacket, then used my pointer to floss its teeth, the burped my mask out.

The nudibranches we saw was not one, but four, five, six, seven, whole group of family gather along. They hated each other or some were curled up as one bunch. There were many types we couldn’t identify, which I made as homework to find out later. But, I can’t use much Internet at the office; at home I had many things to do…bla…

Again, it was a busy and very rewarding dive, and then, some misfortune happened.
Prass was trying to find boxer crab for Frog and Cynthia, who missed the first one. I showed one cute nudibrach to Frog, when he tried to take its pictures; a yellow moray eel came out from the rock and bit his camera’s strobe. Nothing happened to us, but when Prass, in process of finding boxer crab, shoved his finger to lift the rock, the hiding moray eels bit his index finger and shook it like a dog tearing a cloth. None of us saw this, he said the moray never let go until he shook it away and he saw blood kept coming out from his finger. He then finned to Hubby and Frog, and let them know he had trouble and he had to surface first, so he finned to the shore.

It was almost the end of our dive, I didn’t know he was aborting, so at first, I was following him, then I realized he left earlier and slowed down. I was alone for a while until Hubby submerged from the blue and we surfaced together. Few minutes later, Cynthia and Froggie joined us.
The wound was quite deep and wide. Hey, I though moray eels are harmless…they said this yellow was an aggressive type.

We rest for a while in the island and went back by boat. One sixth of the journey, Prass realized he left his computer on the beach, so we turned back. I was praying all the way that he would find it. Being bitten and lost his watch, we would feel very guiltyyyy…..Lucky the villagers were honest, they told him they saw it still on the beach. He found it.

Went back for lunch, it was the most productive day of all; we still had two dives to go. It was quite exhausting but I liked the short surface intervals. We had delicious lunch and had a longer break.
Then we found the third dog. This dog was handsome, cute, and guess what…he jumped down to the ocean, swam and swam through a snorkeler in the middle of the ocean. It was super cute, Cynthia took the video while we watched the handsome dog. He then took one turn and swam back to the shore. After a while, it jumped and swam again. It was quite a distance.

I enjoyed the sky and the sea. I saw big crab hanging on the rock. The hotel was high up from the sea, about three meter high. Every once in a while, a bunch of divers would appear from the blue. Cynthia took pictures of scenery and apparently, me :). I went down to collect Tulamben rock, found the smallest I could get.

Gosh…this is indeed a long story…

Forth dive, we jumped down right in front of hotel. We were carried by the current right away. It was quite strong, we drifted about few minutes and stopped near a big hard coral with army… probably hundred and hundred of shrimps on it. It was everywhere. So we clung there, took pictures and found more things behind the soft corals and rock around.
We saw four spot with one or two blue ribbon moray eels each in this dive alone.
The most memorial thing from this forth dive, Paradise Reef was the anemone garden. It was everywhere and maybe every type of anemone. Nemos, from clown to clark anemone, black and white color, porcelain crabs, anemone shrimp, there were everywhere. The garden was dancing with fish swayed in and out. We float there, finished our air until the end. It was paradise, sooooo beautiful. Too bad I couldn’t find pictures that live up to it.

We surfaced from the same point of entry, again, ginger tea, tempe goreng and waited for the dark. We were going for night dive at Liberty.

It was full moon and the sea was calm. We prepared our salem stick and attached it to the tank. I got green one.
Again, we walked and jumped down.
The wreck looked more glorious and enormous in the dark. My torch was excellent, I could see far. Frog almost hit a stonefish and since that, we were more careful and shined every part we landed.
Prass showed us flash fish. So we had to put the torch on the chest or turn it off, inside one part of the ship, we saw dancing blue and green light, flash fish, many of them. We clung on one part of the ship and watched soundlessly. It was quiet and striking wonderful. After few moments, I looked around; everyone’s eyes were still glued to the sight.

Night dive was indeed different. Things we couldn’t see on the day came out at night. Two different type of huge Spanish dancer not far from each other were found. Prass tried to make one dance, but it was so fat and lazy that it preferred to sink effortlessly.
We also found lots of shrimp at one go, on different spot, they were all bright red. We were excited and informed each other every time we found something, turned out a lot of thing to be found. Red tiny soft coral crab, various types of shrimps etc, every corner, every part, every corals. The wreck was busier at night.

At the end of the dive, Frog pulled my fins and pointed at them. I saw lots and lots of green lights dancing around. Whoaaa, underwater firefly..,green color? I noticed they flew around Hubby’s fins too. A while, apparently everyone was suspicious. How come there were soooo many flash fish around us, even when our torches were on? Then Frog and Cynthia found out that my salem stick was broken.
We enjoyed the moment. Although it was artificial, mhehhehe, it was great to swim among the numerous green fireflies. Beauuutifulll. Prass even tried to break his yellow one.

It was a great one.
We walked back, tired and happy to the hotel.

When we were in Aneka Bagus, we felt the pain every time we showered, especially if we had wounds or cuts. Frog said, half joking, that it might because we were washed by the current, the electricity grew in us. I didn’t believe that, but I was electrified when I touched the tap, I couldn’t think of other possibility. It was not an illusion as I tried and tried again, and the electric shock was not mild, but enough to make my hair stand. So, I was electric loaded? Mhehhe…

We gathered for dinner, pineapple boat for Leo. Every night, four of them would join together their pictures in Leo’s laptop. Then if we were not tired, we would look at the pictures. That night, bunch of Mat Soleh (the way Sgprean call bule) joined us and watched our pictures, although actually, most of us were almost fell asleep, finally, we finished, they were planning to go PJ early in the morning, and Prass gave them the information.

I love that day.
Still had difficulty to sleep.


16th November, Wednesday, The Sixth Day
Destination : Kubu, Tulamben and Seraya

Dawn dive. Same story. They overslept so I was the one who did the morning call again. Six o’clock we hit the road and went to Kubu. About ten minutes? We geared up and again, shore dive.

Kubu was nice, but after all the fantastic dive, it was quite standard. We saw a lot of things, although not many new things, there was school of don’t know what fish, they were funny and shaped themselves as something else.
In this trip, we saw titan and many type of triggerfish almost everywhere. Having been attacked by this aggressive ugly fish before, we were quite traumatic everytime we saw one, especially titan, we would fin away. Prass noticed that, and even he taught us how to identify whether a triggerfish going to attack or not, we still preferred to fin away when we met one. I remembered I was almost chocked when a very very huge one swam under me, closed distance in split second. Leo said he saw the titan had been hiding behind the rock. Whoaaaa, it had been ambushing me…just to frighten me, had it been attacked, I would bring back scars as souvernir.

There were many hydrolytes and sea feather in Kubu. If we felt the water pinched us like thousands of needle, it might be the hydrolytes. Sea feathers would attach to the wetsuit and it would be hard to take them away. Sometime they clang on the arms or leg and part of them were left behind on us.

Goshhhh…this may be my longest post so farrrrr………

We planned to have three dives before lunch. Second dive, we went back to Liberty, never get enough of it. Skip the rest of the talk, we had videos…

Then there was a very interesting and priceless story.

Prass found another boxer crab, and put it in more sandy area. Five of us, except Leo, who was wandering elsewhere, were circling the crab to take a good look or pictures.
There was a small parrotfish nearby, we ignored it. Cynthia had taken one two shoots but Frog was still adjusting his focus, then he pulled his camera for a while to let the parrotfish swam by and then… it swam fast and swallowed the boxer crab.
I was shouting, No no no NOOOOO and everyone was doing the same thing. The parrotfish spat out the boxer in the air and with the look of glory it swallowed it again.

I could see Frog was cursing and swearing; all the bubbles were busy, panicked looks were exchanged and become uncontrollable laughers. We were bunch of cruel divers who brought the fate to the crab, it was sad, frustrating, but sorry, the funniest thing I’ve met. Prass shook his shoulder, Cynthia looked at me, I saw her eyes became a flat lines and the regulator was almost fell from her mouth from laughing, Frog made struggle movement and looked angrily at the parrotfish who was still showed off. He was the only one without a single shoot of boxer crab.

We spent one hour surface interval laughing.

Poor crab and too many things happened for it. Prass got bitten, one deceased…

Third dive, we went back to Seraya instead of Drop off, as we liked the dive there so much. It paid, we found another boxer, safe and sound!
And the magnificent beautiful Harlequin Shrimp…There were lots of other thing, pink and yellow sea horse, school of puffer (this species hardly come in school, so it was cuteeee) and many other things I either forget (I wrote it in my logbook) or unidentified.

To cut a long story short. We washed up, had lunch and ready for next destination : Padang Bai.