this particular little spot is actually in the top 10 for scuba diving and it did not take us long to see why - absolutely fantastic - we were kind of thinking that as far as diving goes, it just doesn't get any better! there were so many dive sites in the area and for the most part, there was no need to go much deeper than 25-30 m. an amazing assortment of sea life and in volumes that we have not seen before. snorkeling was the same, and one of the best spots was right in front of the resort (in fact this huge ray swam right past me when i was almost at shore, the water at that point couldn't have been past my knees).
we had great company in our friends, mona and jim (we run with mona) and their two children menoa (gr.1) and ushwya (JK) - was nice to be able to get together as for the most part, evenings were very quiet (no tvs, videos, in fact, the resort doesn't offer anything other than diving!) and there is nothing else on the island.
it was fun watching menoa and ushwya bond with the local children - they all for some reason deemed our terrace as the perfect place to play, which we didn't mind - that is until we caught a couple of the little local girls crawling in to our bungalow through the window whilst we were showering! we played a fair bit of beginner uno and even though there was a definite language barrier it seemed to work well.
we had a nice bungalow with a great walkout bridge (just on our bungalow) to a terrace that extended out. but we did not have air conditioning, only a fan, and there was only 12 hours of power a day (from 5:30 pm to 5:30 am) - and it was hot! hot! hot! typically high 30's. we were actually quite smart this time around and did not burn to a crisp the first day out as have done on previous trips (perhaps the "lesson" we learned in lombok from having booked a spa treatment/body scrub the day after burning so badly was still too "fresh" of a memory?). highlights from our diving would have to include seeing this HUMUNGUS turtle, several sharks, lobsters - and a special treat - we were able to see some mandarin fish coming out at night, that was very cool.
only a few pairs come out to mate each evening and they are very small and very sensitive to light. shortly after watching the mandarin fish, we had the unfortunate experience of getting caught in a current - i was the first to go and it just picked me up - at the time i had NO idea what was happening, absolutely no clue - i just knew for some reason that all of a sudden i was swirling toward the surface - then it picked up mona, then dave and then jim. the dive master grabbed me and was pulling me down at which point the others grabbed on to each other. this was such an unnerving feeling and even more so as all we could do was to hold tightly onto the coral (which you feel so guilty doing) and "wait" it out. i can certainly understand now the power behind those currents. out of the two night dives we have done, neither have been what you would call a pleasant experience. hmmmm.
in one particular dive i had come across some most interesting parasite-type fish, they were a brilliant neon green and seemed to hover exactly perpendicular to each other. i was able to signal over to dave to take a picture and as he did, the huge stone that they were on seemed to move - it had to be at least 3-4 feet across - well! it was a turtle, unbeknownst to me - here i was admiring these tiny little fish when this GI-NORMOUS turtle was right in front of my nose! perhaps my investigative skills could use a little honing?
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