Diving Indonesia

Back in December 2015 I had the pleasure of taking a holiday to the Komodo Island area of Indonesia to fulfill a life-long dream to see the formidable Komodo Dragons and a fortnights diving. My Companion and I flew into Bali then on the following day took another short flight to Labuhanbajo Flores on the island of East Nusa Tenggara, where we then took an incredibly scenic boat ride to our resort destination of Palau Sebayur. On arrival we were greeted with flower necklaces and refreshment to my delight as it was a typically equatorial summer’s day in other words “bloody stinking hot and sweaty”.  We were quickly then escorted to our room to dump our belongings then rushed back to the main dining room to sit and have an amazing traditional Indonesian four course lunch. This I didn’t have a problem with as I love my food, but what I didn’t know was that it was due to the fact that the other guests and dive instructors were waiting on us to be able to head off on the boat for the next round of days diving. Diving I thought to myself how the hell am I meant to be able to go diving after all that! Anyway with gear in arm off to the boat we all headed, after a quick dive brief and equipment check here we are approaching the first of our diving spots.

So being an adventure loving junkie I’ve found myself sinking to the ocean floor thinking “no rest for the wicked” with Dive reg in mouth, weight belt fastened and an atmospheres pressure on my four courses I’m now trying my hardest to keep everything down. Then “BAM” the first thing we find after a brief sandy bottom crossing, on a lone bomby is the wondrous sight of my first ever Ornate Ghost Pipe Fish. Any hint of being sick has immediately gone from my mind as I shuffle to find position to start filming this brilliant new creature. To my amazement this was the first and now the trend for the entire 8 days we spent there with spectacles fed to us one after another. Being the ticker I am I went with a rather large usually impossible wish list of things to see whilst there, but to my awe we achieved all but one “the infamous pigmy seahorse”. The high light without question for me was my other main dream species the frogfish, which at first i thought was going to allude me, but on the seventh day I struck luck. After several days pining over it to my dive host and instructor the legendary Luca he finally managed to work into the dive schedule that we go hit the one place he knew we best stand a chance, the wondrous “Wai Nilu” a muck dive site said to be absolutely full of freaks of the sea. Not only did I finally get my first froggie but we also managed to find Blue-ringed and mimicoctopus, flamboyant and broad club cuttlefish, flying gernard, robust ghost and slender pipe fish, picturesque and ocellated dragonets and many other beauties of the ocean! As we reluctantly surfaced I found myself floating there with a tear in my eye after what had been without question the most exhilarating dive of my of life thinking how I never wanted  to leave. The following and final day at Sebayur was bitter sweet as we’d made numerous friends out of our hosts and the staff there. Although it was another mornings brilliant diving it now came to the point where we had to unfortunately say goodbye!

And not to forget to mention we travelled across to Rinca Island where we spent the day hanging out with the living dinosaurs the notorious Komodo dragons. We also happen to get a bit lucky there too as they’d recently killed a water buffalo, which had stumbled and died in a small dry creek forming a rancid gassy cesspool to which stung our eyes. The bulk of the carcass had been eaten leaving only hide and bone for the dragon that we happened to come across feeding on the left over remains. As you see from the photos below he continued to rive, twist and contort one of the rearer legs out the hip the joint. It then took it half down its throat whilst wondering towards to a low laying fallen tree in front of us to make use of it, to try and manipulate the knee joint to breaking point so as to be able to swallow the tibia and hoof. In the process it managed to flick wrank mud from my forehead to toe leaving me wondering whether or not I’ll return home with some incurable disease. Having said this at least he had the decency to not get my camera! And given how excited I was with the show he was putting on I quickly forgot my paranoid concerns. Life tick!

We then flew back to Bali and ferried over to Gili Trawangan off the coast of Lombok where we spent our final days diving the various flogged spots as it was very commercial being the hip party destination of Indo. Having said that though there were still some great experiences and laughs to be had there, but without doubt the two of us were only wishing we could be back at Sebayur. Ok so that may sound harsh but allow me to explain there was only one really good dive we managed to do there being just across the water on the edge of Lombok, a little muck dive site called seahorse bay. It was amazing and I got many treats that I still hadn’t seen like ribbon eels, sea horses, more froggies and an awesome yellow lipped sea crate snake so I was really happy. But the difference being the number of other diver you’re with, no longer being in an actual marine national park therefore over fished and damaged and worst of all being so close to an area with high human inhabitation the amount of rubbish to be found! At one point I found myself rushing over to a distant object that caught my eye only to find on arrival that some nasty little bastard had thrown their child’s nappy overboard, as you can imagine an absolute mood killer! I usually only like to mention the nice things in life but it took a lot to forget I’d just seen that. So on that note I’ll leave it by telling you how we also took a lovely little day trip across to Lombok to see the monkeys and waterfalls. I’ll allow pictures to tell a thousand words here as it was a long car journey through rush hour Lombok traffic for very brief fleeting moments of feeding some cheeky thieving monkeys the main culprit being the alpha male who very aggressively stole the whole bag of peanuts off my friend and a nice rainforest bushwalk down to a series of cascading lush green waterfalls.

Unfortunately our time had now run out so off we went back home to beautiful Oz! Ahh… Brilliant holiday but glad to be home! To say it was an awesome, fantastic, exhilarating, brilliant holiday would be massive understatement I’d without second thought return at the drop of a hat and therefore would highly recommend it to anyone for whom maybe looking to dive for exotic pleasures!

Now please enjoy some of the treasures we did and thank you Lindsay McGrath for your photo contribution. Also please find the associated videos on my Brother Nature Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/brothernatureoz/videos