14th October 2006
Personally, I had a very good sleep in the cabin. Our cabins were located in the heart of the boat, less noise from the engine. The cabin consisted of two single beds, one stacked on top of another and low head as we couldn’t sit straight on the bed. It had quite a spacious attached bathroom though, each cabin was air-conditioned and had a circular window looking out to the sea, each bed had reading light.
Our everyday schedule was:
First dive - breakfast,
Second dive - lunch,
Third dive - tea break,
Night dive - dinner.
It was well organized to feed our crazy tummy after every dive. But we had to thank Cynthia for bringing one big box of tidbits, it really made our days, couldn’t imagine passing the days without.
We prepared for first dive, and this time, if I remember correctly, we dived from dingy. Dingy was the small boat tied to the big boat. It’s good to transfer us to dive point and picked us up when we surfaced.
So, first groups, the six ang-moh and Sebastian were carried by the dingy, while we geared ourselves up and waited for it to pick us up.
When we jumped, we were greeted by the excellent visibility. The corals were healthy and everything looked good and colorful. At last, I was relieved to see the diving quality.
The current was gradually stronger and soon, we were doing superman dive. It was like the drift dive we did in Bali, but this time, there were ten other divers around us. We spaced up nicely around each other, and we enjoyed the dive. We saw three huge Napoleon Wrasse cruising very close to us.
Second dive, we reached Batu Bolong or Current city. There was a weird tiny island who gives the dive site that name. Batu Bolong means rock with hole. And Current City means…eh..wait…current?
I read about this dive site before and I was eager to go down because what I read was gooood, I just hope that there wasn’t terrible current around.
Turned out, it was the first dive we saw Manta Ray. It was a huge Black Manta, we were enjoying the beautiful sign of colorful fish and coral, saw school of big fish too, Jacks/big eye trevally consisted of Giant Trevally, Black Trevally, Blue fin and common silver trevally, various type of fusiliers in school when we heard teng kleneng kleneng sound from Sebastian tank banger. We looked to the right and I couldn’t forget the sight. The wall on my left was slope down slowly to the depth on my right. Most divers were concentrated of my left but I noticed Cynthia was on my right. I saw the Manta passed by. Excited, I finned and grabbed Hubby, who didn’t realize the sight. When I got his attention and pointed to the manta direction, it disappeared. But wait, everyone was keep looking at the blue and sure enough, it went back to us. It was a glorious sight with the most posh fish in the sea. It mingled with us but maintained the distance for a while and then disappeared to the blue. We continued the dive and did our safety stop and in between other fish, I finally saw giant barracuda, my fearsome and the mysterious fish I dived with often with me didn’t realize it was around. But the hell with barracuda, manta manta mantaaaaaaa.
Other than that, we saw Napoleon Wrasse again, Marbled Grouper, Magpie Sweetlips, Yellow Sweetlips, Mackarel. There were so many big fish!
Froggie made a comment about current city with no current. Too fast speaking, we went down on the third dive and only managed to enjoy first few minutes of the dive. We found a big crocodile fish and took picture for a while and then, the current started to pick up. Upon reaching the wall, I started to feel more difficult to move forward. When I saw the rest of the divers hanging to the wall, I made fast decision and head down to approach the rock before the current carried me. Apparently the up current was sweeping us. With effort, we managed to grab the rocks, including me and Cynthia who were carried up a bit.
It was quite a hellish dive! We had to fight the current along the dive. Sometimes we found sheltered rock and rest for a while, but most of the dive we had to use the reef hooks to relieve our fingertip. Even the fish and corals around us were moving like crazy. We were exhausted. I figured out that we had to fight the current to avoid carried away because it would be dangerous, it was confirmed by Sebastian, he said that we had no other choice, if we carried, we might trapped into the washing machine current or brought down to the depth. At the end of the dive, after safety stop, nobody stayed longer or fooling around. We fought the choppy surface to climb into the dingy.
Hua. So this is the infamous current of Komodo. Looking at the bright side, we gathered additional experience. I was still in high spirit because although the sea was rough, the sight was pretty.
The good news was, two additional DM from Bali have arrived. So from that time, we were going to dive in private group starting for that very night dive.
We did the night dive in Pantai Merah, this dive sites lies very close to the Komodo ranger station and many boats come here for snorkeling. It is a slope with a sandy bottom.
Sinking down, we were greeted by barramundi cod, something we don’t often see and a white frogfish. After Lembeh, frogfish had become one of my favorite creatures because it is weird, ugly, but cute at the same time because it ignores divers and generously posing for photograph. It was a rewarding night dive, we also saw a weird big triangle coral as big as head walking around, but we had no idea what drove it around, maybe a gigantic hermit crab? We saw spiky cuttlefish and spiky super mini cuttlefish which was only the size of rice. It was floating near Hubby torch when he realized it was not just dust or worm. I found a ugly big nudibranch which is different with other type of nudi, instead of soft bodied, that one was hard. I’ve never seen it somewhere else. We also saw a lot of spiky crab, spiky shrimp. As we were heading North, the water temperature had become colder, I clocked 24 Celcius degree on this night dive with 0.5 wetsuit. Brr brr brr brrrrr kletek kletek kletek, but when I was busy taking pictures, I didn’t feel the cold, in between kletek kletek again.
Personally, I had a very good sleep in the cabin. Our cabins were located in the heart of the boat, less noise from the engine. The cabin consisted of two single beds, one stacked on top of another and low head as we couldn’t sit straight on the bed. It had quite a spacious attached bathroom though, each cabin was air-conditioned and had a circular window looking out to the sea, each bed had reading light.
Our everyday schedule was:
First dive - breakfast,
Second dive - lunch,
Third dive - tea break,
Night dive - dinner.
It was well organized to feed our crazy tummy after every dive. But we had to thank Cynthia for bringing one big box of tidbits, it really made our days, couldn’t imagine passing the days without.
We prepared for first dive, and this time, if I remember correctly, we dived from dingy. Dingy was the small boat tied to the big boat. It’s good to transfer us to dive point and picked us up when we surfaced.
So, first groups, the six ang-moh and Sebastian were carried by the dingy, while we geared ourselves up and waited for it to pick us up.
When we jumped, we were greeted by the excellent visibility. The corals were healthy and everything looked good and colorful. At last, I was relieved to see the diving quality.
The current was gradually stronger and soon, we were doing superman dive. It was like the drift dive we did in Bali, but this time, there were ten other divers around us. We spaced up nicely around each other, and we enjoyed the dive. We saw three huge Napoleon Wrasse cruising very close to us.
Second dive, we reached Batu Bolong or Current city. There was a weird tiny island who gives the dive site that name. Batu Bolong means rock with hole. And Current City means…eh..wait…current?
I read about this dive site before and I was eager to go down because what I read was gooood, I just hope that there wasn’t terrible current around.
Turned out, it was the first dive we saw Manta Ray. It was a huge Black Manta, we were enjoying the beautiful sign of colorful fish and coral, saw school of big fish too, Jacks/big eye trevally consisted of Giant Trevally, Black Trevally, Blue fin and common silver trevally, various type of fusiliers in school when we heard teng kleneng kleneng sound from Sebastian tank banger. We looked to the right and I couldn’t forget the sight. The wall on my left was slope down slowly to the depth on my right. Most divers were concentrated of my left but I noticed Cynthia was on my right. I saw the Manta passed by. Excited, I finned and grabbed Hubby, who didn’t realize the sight. When I got his attention and pointed to the manta direction, it disappeared. But wait, everyone was keep looking at the blue and sure enough, it went back to us. It was a glorious sight with the most posh fish in the sea. It mingled with us but maintained the distance for a while and then disappeared to the blue. We continued the dive and did our safety stop and in between other fish, I finally saw giant barracuda, my fearsome and the mysterious fish I dived with often with me didn’t realize it was around. But the hell with barracuda, manta manta mantaaaaaaa.
Other than that, we saw Napoleon Wrasse again, Marbled Grouper, Magpie Sweetlips, Yellow Sweetlips, Mackarel. There were so many big fish!
Froggie made a comment about current city with no current. Too fast speaking, we went down on the third dive and only managed to enjoy first few minutes of the dive. We found a big crocodile fish and took picture for a while and then, the current started to pick up. Upon reaching the wall, I started to feel more difficult to move forward. When I saw the rest of the divers hanging to the wall, I made fast decision and head down to approach the rock before the current carried me. Apparently the up current was sweeping us. With effort, we managed to grab the rocks, including me and Cynthia who were carried up a bit.
It was quite a hellish dive! We had to fight the current along the dive. Sometimes we found sheltered rock and rest for a while, but most of the dive we had to use the reef hooks to relieve our fingertip. Even the fish and corals around us were moving like crazy. We were exhausted. I figured out that we had to fight the current to avoid carried away because it would be dangerous, it was confirmed by Sebastian, he said that we had no other choice, if we carried, we might trapped into the washing machine current or brought down to the depth. At the end of the dive, after safety stop, nobody stayed longer or fooling around. We fought the choppy surface to climb into the dingy.
Hua. So this is the infamous current of Komodo. Looking at the bright side, we gathered additional experience. I was still in high spirit because although the sea was rough, the sight was pretty.
The good news was, two additional DM from Bali have arrived. So from that time, we were going to dive in private group starting for that very night dive.
We did the night dive in Pantai Merah, this dive sites lies very close to the Komodo ranger station and many boats come here for snorkeling. It is a slope with a sandy bottom.
Sinking down, we were greeted by barramundi cod, something we don’t often see and a white frogfish. After Lembeh, frogfish had become one of my favorite creatures because it is weird, ugly, but cute at the same time because it ignores divers and generously posing for photograph. It was a rewarding night dive, we also saw a weird big triangle coral as big as head walking around, but we had no idea what drove it around, maybe a gigantic hermit crab? We saw spiky cuttlefish and spiky super mini cuttlefish which was only the size of rice. It was floating near Hubby torch when he realized it was not just dust or worm. I found a ugly big nudibranch which is different with other type of nudi, instead of soft bodied, that one was hard. I’ve never seen it somewhere else. We also saw a lot of spiky crab, spiky shrimp. As we were heading North, the water temperature had become colder, I clocked 24 Celcius degree on this night dive with 0.5 wetsuit. Brr brr brr brrrrr kletek kletek kletek, but when I was busy taking pictures, I didn’t feel the cold, in between kletek kletek again.
posted by aping at 4:34 AM
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