Being Superman (Safari Part Four)

Continue from Part Three, on 16th November, Wednesday, we did three dives at Kubu, Tulamben and Seraya.
We washed up and had lunch.

There was one story I forgot that happened in Seraya. Hubby and me were following a hunting white-eyed moray eel. It swam from rock to rock trying to catch its prey. I thought moray eels only hunt at night (?), in Seraya, we saw many of them, hiding or hunting.
So, this white-eyed was apparently not a good hunter, after following it for a while, it still didn’t found its lunch.
At one time, it hid inside a rock, which was a home for a blue yellow small fish. This blue yellow fish was quite selon, it was small, petite, but had gut as big as its house. It was pissed off with the visitor, and used its backside to hit the moray eel on the face. Then it blocked the entrance (with moray hidden inside), and shook its body as if shaking its butt to make fun of the enemy. It was hilarious, but I was worried that the crazy fish would become a lunch menu.
Lucky, Mhahhahaha, seemed like the moray was chickened out after being slapped with backside again and again, so it left the rock.

After lunch, we checked out and had one hour plus journey (?) to Padang Bai. Everyone was asleep, I saw the paddy scenery again, this time we climbed the hill, it was hot in the car. Before we reached, I gave up and fell into rocky dream.

Padang Bai was the first place we saw with a little bit of civilization. Finally, we saw warung, coffee shop and restaurant, although it was only one road. Surround us was the sea and fountain. Medium ship, big ship, and bigger version of jukung was everywhere on the shore. Children were playing around and swimming freely in the sea, we saw lady villagers carried big bucket of fish on their head, they just came back from fishing.

We stopped at ADA branch, Absolute, it was the biggest dive shop I’ve seen, complete with kitchen and dining area. After filling up the form, we went out, sat at bale-bale in front of the sea, Hubby and Frog bought Ketoprak from gerobak. Hehehhe… We walked around, shopped for tidbits at warung, Cynthia was having fun taking pictures of children.



We heard the children cheering and asking for more. I found a cute and friendly dog that was standing in front of a gate to nowhere.

After chatting and walking, we decided to fresh up in the room. The rooms were beautiful, especially after we stayed at Tulamben. It was nicely designed and homy. Five of us acted like half crazy. When ADA girl showed us the room, we were so happy and norak, cheering and clapping. Frog and Leo had the biggest room, Leo had super single while Frog had double bed. The room was equipped with bathtub, hair drier (!), DVD player and collection, and balcony. We decided to bath and met up for dinner.
We had dinner in the second story open-air restaurant. The price was cheaper and the mango juice was yummy. There were mostly Mat Soleh everywhere, but we were still the loudest. After dinner, we gathered at Leo-Frog’s room, as usual, watched video from Tulamben.

From balcony, we saw the Fire Show from a pub near the beach, but we didn’t go there. We planned to watch DVD, but felt very sleepy and decided to go back to the room and slept.


17th November, Thursday, The Seventh Day
Destination : Padang Bai


Time flies.

We realized that the holiday was almost ended. Frog always whistled and sang ‘I’m leaving on the jet plane’, the soundtrack we brought back from Sipadan. Eight o’clock, we walked to the beach and took jukung, the bigger version that was spacious and could accommodate all of us with Martha.

From Menjangan to Puri Jati, Christian was helping Prass and was the sweeper for the group. Tulamben, Prass was on his own, and Martha was here to accompany us in Padang Bai. Martha is a male :), it’s a Balinese name.

First dive, Gili Biaha.

When I did my research before, I read about Toilet Flush current that would suck and pull divers in toilet flush motion. I was horrified thinking that we might experience that, but after few days, I forgot about it until that day.

I saw Prass holding a map, and around that there were point showing Toilet Flush current. He briefed us about the site. We would backroll from the boat at the same time to prevent any of us being carried away while waiting, and swim to the reef, but not too near, as the current could thrash us to the rock. Then, we would descent and enter a cave full of shark and lobster. The safety stop (for safety, we need to spend three to five minutes in the depth of 3-6m to discard the nitrogen in our body) would be done in the open sea, so we had to swim to the blue and hang out there. Prass reminded us to watch the dive computer, to avoid getting penalty and ended up stay longer in the blue or open sea, as it was not a safe area. When we entered the cave, it would be normal if we felt thumping in our heart as the pressure would be…bla..bla.. We had to avoid what and what direction as we wouldn’t want to hit the Toilet Flush.

Everyone, especially me, was quite worried to hear the serious briefing and condition, seemed like this dive was not for fun or fooling around. We had to carry torchlights as the cave was very dark. So, six of us, geared up and sat on the edge of the boat together. It was a first experience that we had to go down together, not one by one. On the count, we backrolled, swam together and descended.

And it was the first time we encountered such a cold water! We had been pampered by other warm dive sites and I had discarded my 3mm, so now, it was about Bali reputation: cold water diving. It was sooo cold that I started to shiver, lucky the hood I had been wearing since Tulamben made my head warm.
We went down and Prass led the way to the cave. It was my first encounter with serious cave, and I had a not so good feeling entering that. Although the cave was shallow, I had this deep-water feeling, like Prass said, thumping heart and I needed to equalize my ears continuously.

There were whitetip sharks everywhere in the cave, although they were quite small, I didn’t really like to interrupt them, especially that I might misplace my fin and disturbed them. From the edge, the corner and rock folding, actually everywhere, there were huge lobsters.
The water inside the cave was warm; I hung around the bottom with Martha and waited for others to take photographs. Leo knocked his head to the cave ceiling, so he went down to Martha and me. Hubby was also hanging low and took pictures around, while Cynthia, Froggie and Prass were cramped near the ceiling.
About ten minutes or more, we went out and greeted by the freezing water. A lion fish with the beautiful fins was floating calmly on the cave entrance, waiting for someone to bump into him and being stung. What a welcome.

We headed to the reef wall, and found a lot of nudibraches. When we float near to the wall, Hubby saw huge black tentacles crawling on his side and turned out to be a big octopus. It walked on the wall, when it reached my side; it hid inside the rock. We found many of that; I saw one peeping from the rock below me. They were huge and mysterious, brrr..

It was time to do safety stop, so we swam to and hung around in open sea. Leo and Martha had surfaced first, then Frog, Cynthia and Prass. When me and Hubby swam to the boat, there was a current that brought me down below six meter and my computer gave me penalty to spend another three minutes. So I just floated near the boat so the rest would know I was around, and saw one by one climbed up. It was quite lonely down there; lucky I didn’t experience any more current and other things.

On the boat, we had tea break and snack. Most of us were shivering and had blue lips. Me and Cynthia were the worst, we wore 0.5mm while the rest wore 3 and 5 mm. Second dive, we went to Shark Point.
The sea was choppy; the current brought the boat up and down, I felt a little bit sick although I had drank two pills. We stayed there for a while, observing the possibility to dive there. The sea was getting more choppy, and Prass decided to change to another dive site. It was the first time I felt lazy to dive, seeing the sea condition.

We moved to Tepekong, another dive site, and did the descending together again. It was colder than the first. For the first ten minutes, I though of aborting the dive as I was shivering. After a while, it was more bearable. We entered a narrow tunnel which cut through the whole reef one by one. It was nice and I felt better than being in the cave. We saw giant octopuses again, clown triggerfish, nudibranches and other reef fish.

Hubby surfaced with Martha earlier as he was low on air. So five of us went to another cave with a lot of whitetip sharks. I was having problem with my ears, it felt painful although I kept equalizing them. That was why I stayed shallower than the rest and watched the sharks from above. After that, we did the safety stop in the blue again and surfaced.

We went back to Absolute to have lunch. I took my 3mm suit and threw the 0.5mm in the room. Having been diving for quite long, Hubby’s and my ankles were full with cut caused by fining, so it was painful to fin and even to wear wetsuit and booties. Cynthia’s legs were full with blue-black mark caused by falling on Tulamben rock or bumping at the corals.
After lunch, we went for the third dive nearby at Blue Lagoon. It was a sandy bottom with few big corals. We found quite a lot of things there. Black Frogfish, White and Brown leaf fish. The curly pig tail soft coral with lots of pinky and beautiful shrimps. We hung out around the big rock for quite some time, then we moved to the sandy beach.

Without any warning, the current suddenly became quite strong. Because of sandy bottom, it was hard to find rocks to hold on. When I found one, usually it was not big enough to hold me. So, it was like a game. I finned to a rock, hang there for a while, person in front or behind was also holding on a rock. Then we switched, Hubby, who was in front of me, moved to another rock, I had to let go my current one, finned to grab the next. It was like underwater rock climbing. If I failed to reach the next, I might be carried away. It was bloody tiring, painful on fingertips and we wasted a lot of air from breathing heavily.

At one point, Frog, Cynthia and Martha were behind me. Prass and Leo were in front, then Hubby, then me. We had been holding for quite some time, the current was too strong to fight and we were tired. Frog said at that point he saw bubbles below him, which was puzzling as all of us were in front of him, and bubbles should be blown to the top. After a while, I saw Prass, Leo and Hubby let go of the rock and start fining to the same direction with the current. I let go mine, and for few seconds, I didn’t know what happen, a very strong blew was pushing me up. I saw everyone was up too, I held on someone nearby, apparently it was Froggy. As we already brought up to five meters, we started to do safety stop. Then Prass was banging his tank continuously, he gave us the signal, cross and safety stop. He tried to pull me up, then let go when I showed him that my computer said that I hit ceiling, I needed to stay on that depth.
So he pulled Hubby, maybe Frog and Cynthia up. Leo signaled me to buddy temporary with him, we did the safety stop. For a while, Leo was brought down again by the current to ten meters depth, I stayed with him longer and signaled him that I needed to go up too. He followed few minutes later with Martha.

We found out that we had been hit by down current. It was a dangerous situation, which the current might suck us down up to thirty-forty meter depth. So Prass was panicking and pulling us one by one, and asking to abandon the safety stop, which we didn’t really understand. Whew…. It was a crazy and exhausting dive. Lucky we were all right and didn’t really suck down as we surfaced on time.

We went back to the shop, cold and tired. The dives were good but challenging. We were supposed to have night dive in the same place, Blue Lagoon, but thinking about the water temperature, choppy sea and the down current, four of us except Cynthia aborted the dive. Chicken out…chicken..chicken… mhehehehhe.. Anyway, my ankles were getting more and more painful for the new cuts from crazy finning. Cynthia wanted to go back because she didn’t capture the Frogfish well.
So, we chatted for about half an hour, recalling our crazy experience, and then four of us resigned to the room while Cynthia and Prass were getting ready for the night dive. Prass borrowed my torch and Cynthia borrowed Frog’s. After shower, everyone was asleep except me. I watched DVD until eight o’clock and my stomach started to scream like crazy.

I found out Frog and Leo had waken up, and Cynthia just came back, she asked for ten minutes to shower before we gathered for lunch. We met downstair, she showed us her pictures. She had a great dive. Huge lobsters, snails, the same Frogfish, coral cat shark and many other things I don’t remember. We were quite envious but not enough to regret that we were sleeping in warm bed instead of dipping in cold water.
We went to the same restaurant, this time we treated Prass. He was already like old friend and he has the similar sense of humor, and he got used to us. So, we chatted, joked and laughed like mad until the restaurant closed. I think the amount of laugh when spending one week with this group defeated all the laughter I had in half a year without them. .


18th November, Friday, The Eighth Day
Destination: Nusa Penida


Huaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa….
Last diving day. Soooooo fast….
First dive, we went to Manta Point.
This time we chartered a bigger and faster boat. The boatmen wore kelasi uniform, Donald Duck style (with pants of course). It was cute, I asked them where could I buy the clothes, turned out they ordered it especially.. :”(
Manta Point was about forty five minutes ride. The sea was crazier, the boat bumped far up and down, it was as bad as taking a small speedboat, or worse. Anyway, it was end of year, entering rainy season. After being rocked up and down, we finally reached the dive site.

It was the first time I went down and waited. So we were just fooling around. The visibility was not so good. Ten minutes, suddenly I heard Frog sounded his horn; I looked back and saw Hubby was going up. Prass reached him, so I didn’t. He signaled us to wait while they came back to the boat. Frog told us that the O-ring on Hubby’s tank had burst, then it was leaking heavily.
We waited and waited, finally they came back again. They we slowly finned and we saw it. There was one, only one Manta submerged from the blue. It was quite far from us. It was my first encounter with manta ray. It was such a posh and glorious creature with the wide wingspan and beautiful shape. It swam for a while and disappeared to the blue.

I was slowly fining beside a huge rock and all of a sudden, a huge fierce looking yellow shark came from behind the rock and quickly swam toward me. It was quite surprising and made my adrenalin level jumped up, I kept calm and bang my tank to let everyone know so they could take picture. It looked too long for leopard and too fierce for nurse shark and a bit like cat shark. Confusing, but I couldn’t forget the look on its eyes. It was fierce, cold, white, almost yellow and it looked straight to ours. Eww..…
We met another group of divers and watched them, since there was no other manta around. A lady diver was sinking, struggling and banging herself to the rock although there was nothing on her way and no slight current. Later we went up, Prass told us the water was too warm for other manta to come.

We went to other dive spots for Sunfish, Mola-mola. We stopped above the dive spot (can’t remember) and had tea break. It started to rain. We took turn to feel the cold water by standing on the boat ladder (actually we were….).
The water was getting more and more choppy, then Prass decided to switch to another spot. The other spot was also very choppy, so we abandoned it and went to another point. We couldn’t visit mola-mola site as expected. Actually the last two day was like bonuses for us, as we were very satisfied with the trip and anything else we could see would be bonus.

So, in SD point (it was named after a primary school SD) on the small island nearby(), we geared up.

Prass said,” Finally, here, the current is easy and mild. The sea looks calm.”

Then he jumped down, we followed one by one. When it was my turned, I saw the guys were clinging on the rope and swept to the left and right like mad.

“Sorry guys…! I was wrong, the current is strooong!” Prass shouted, nyengir kuda.

I jumped down and held on to the rope, when Cynthia, the last, had jumped down, we descended.

IT WAS A MAD RIDE!

As soon as we went down, we were swept like crazy. It was unlike everything we had encountered before, this time we were really hopeless and carried away like superman. I was behind Leo, he was facing me, I saw him carried away to the big coral. I didn’t have a chance to warn him, but Frog, who was behind him, had. He pointed to Leo back, then Leo turned around and BANG.
At that point, I was carried through them already. Otherwise, it would be comical to see Leo banged face first to the coral. I think Frog did more damage than help. Mahahhahha…

But I didn’t have time to laugh, I made myself negative so I wouldn’t float up and carried away. On the other hand, I was a little bit too deep and had to touch rocks occasionally to bump myself up. So, it was like my jumping point while flying like superman. It was exhausting and crazy for the first few minutes as we hadn’t controlled ourselves well.
I was carried too fast once, one time Prass was waiting on my right, so I could bump to him and slowed down for a while. While I finally bumped, both of us turned to the right and saw Cynthia was flying through us, faster and deeper. After I told him I could manage, he left me and chased Cynthia.
Busy busy busy for him being a very responsible DM.

When we gained control, it was fun. Very very fun being Superman. We didn’t need to move and enjoyed the roller coaster ride. We were swept away about 800 meters or more away from the boat. When we reached calmer area, we still didn’t want to move a muscle, being pampered. There was a very nice soft coral garden. The soft corals were smooth, unlike the ones with nemos. These ones wouldn’t felt rough or stuck on the gloves. So, we played around with the beautiful landscape. Prass found a big sea snake inside corals. Oops..

It was a great and wild ride.
We couldn’t stop talking and laughing about it on the boat. We felt like we had encountered almost everything new in Bali, from great to crazy, usual and unusual.
We had lunch on the boat. The boatmen jumped to the sea and swam, topless.
We looked at them and brrrrr…they really could stand the cold maaaan…

Third dive, hiks….last dive.

For the closure, we went for another dive point, calm and good one. Soft coral garden, my favorite, for closure. We had improved, many of the dives, except these last two days, we managed to dive very long, although we went quite deep.
For Tulamben, every dive was at least seventy minutes. As usual, last dive of the trip; we would hang around until we really had to surface. We went back to Absolute, sadly looking at the sea and the gears.
Holiday was almost over…average; we did 23 out of 24 dives.

We took shower, said goodbye to friendly people in Absolute and took car ride again to ADA center in Sanur. We needed to pay them (We hadn’t pay a single cent) and spent the last two holidays in Kuta.


Civilization…!