Another Day at the Office

I have been guiding 2-3 dives nearly every day and if no guests are signed up to dive I go on a fun dive with the other DM's and DMT's.  Not a bad life. When I arrived on Gili Trawangan I had only ~80 dives under my belt and that number has increased to 190 so between Gili Trawangan and Komodo I have done about 110 dives here to date.  This is a very small number compared to most divers!  I am loving guiding and have had amazing guests to guide and amazing dives the past week since I finished my Technical Diving course.  

First, here's a photo that my instructor, Ari, took during our last Decompression dive to 45m.  You can see the twinset (two tanks connected by a manifold on my back) as well as my small stage bottle  (83% oxygen) on my right side to breath during decompression stops to accelerate decompression.

This photo shows the line that currently extends down to 176m which Will Goodman will use for his ascent in Jan or Feb for a record attempt for the deepest dive 330m.  I am at 45m deep in this photo.

In shallower waters the diving has been excellent.  Last week I saw the following awesomeness:

1) three cuttlefish which were not shy and allowed us to observe them for about 10 minutes from only about 1m away.

2) two adult Whitetip reef sharks on one dive, another adult Whitetip on another dive, an adult Blacktip reef shark on a third dive on which we also saw two baby sharks snuggled up under a small coral, and we saw a Manta ray near the surface while we did a 3 minute safety stop at 5m.

Babies!

3) on one dive we saw a school of 23 Bumphead Parrotfish and then later in the dive we saw anothe r school of around 30!  Bumpheads are huge, growing up to 1.3m (4'3") long, they are prehistoric looking fish with big bony heads used for breaking coral (for food).  

Bumphead Parrotfish.  Not sure who to credit this photo to but it came from Blue Marln's website - thanks!

Not a great photo but one I took with a turtle in the foreground and some Bumphead silhouettes in the background.

4) on a very surreal dive, myself and two divers saw an adult Blacktip reef shark so we got close to the bottom to stay still and watch him swim around.  Then three large Tuna swam overhead and it got really dark.  I thought a boat or a cloud had passed over us.  When I looked up to see what had blocked out the light I saw a huge school of tiny fish, each fish was only a few inches long but there were 100's of thousands of them.  The school formed a long tube, probably 100m long and 10m wide and took ages to pass over us.  It was one of those strange experiences that burns itself into your mind and memory.

Two moreDMT's finished their training and are now Divemasters.  Kelly and Lay are ridiciculous and hilarious.  They decided to do their naked dive, traditionally the 100th dive, on their last day and borrowed my camera to capture the moment.  So silly and well worth the pictures!  Congrats girls!

This is what mermaids really look like LOL

Sadly, my time in Indonesia is coming to a close but it is time to move on.  I have only 10 more days here before taking a boat to Bali, then flying to Singapore for 3 days of shopping and sightseeing before I fly to Cebu, in the Philippines for the next chapter in my adventure.

My Toque Climbed Rinjani

My toque, mittens, fleece jacket, down jacket, running tights, and thermal under layer shirt climbed Mount Rinjani on Lombok but I haven't made it there yet.  Yesterday, Martin and Alina, two divers who were diving with Blue Marlin returned from a three day, two night trek up the dormant volcano, Rinjani. I met Martin on the dive boat one afternoon and offered to lend him my warm clothing so that he and Alina could do the trek.  They had brought only shorts and summer clothing on vacation but the top of Rinjani is very windy and at 3000m elevation gets quite cold (0 C).  They are a very sweet couple, and when they returned they showed me their photos and brought back my clothing they gave me more than enough money to have everything laundered and to buy myself a massage (their suggestion) in return for lending them the gear.  I still hope to make the trek myself so I am glad to hear about their experience and to have experienced clothing with me ;)

More Gili Trawangan scenery

Hard to imagine hiking up from sea level to 3000m and from +30C to 0C!

Monkeys on E and Technical Diving

I went to Lombok a few days ago with Matias, one of the Blue Marlin DMT's to do some errands including; filing a police report about my stolen Visa, Bank card, and Iphone (for insurance purposes), to get photos and fingerprints done to extend my tourist Visa, to see the "city" of Mataram, to get Matias and his infected foot wounds to a proper doctor, and to get my passport back which I had been without since late July when I sent it to Mataram to apply for a visa extension.  We took the local boat ($1.30) for the 15min ride to Lombok and then hired a car and driver at a vastly inflated priceof $25 to drive us to immigration, wait for us, then take us to a clinic, then to pick us up at the mall and drive us to a police station then back to catch a local boat back to Gili Trawangan.  Matias counted 57 people on the tiny local boat and it seemed very rickety.  I'm glad the seas were calm because Matias told me that he was warned that "sometimes thelocal boats don't make it" eep!

Our driver was ridiculous.  He was pumping dance music so loud that I couldn't get into his car until Matias turned it down.  He then let Matias choose some music...he went with Bob Marley... At which point our cabbie lit up a joint and offered it around.  We drove through the monkey forest which was beautiful and loaded with monkeys who hung out on the side of the road.  Adi pulled over to let us take some photos.  He told us that someone had given E (ecstasy) to one of the monkeys and that it was "probably dead now because that's for people, not monkeys".

Crazy Adi, our driver, smoking some weed on the way to Mataram

This monkey wishes he had some E

I was pretty worried this monkey was going to jump off this sign and onto me...

Check out all these motorcycles lined up for fuel

The trip to immigration, the clinic, and the mall went relatively smoothly.  Then we went to the police station, via Adi's house so he could drop off fireworks for his son ;). The English was very limited at the police station and it took the police a looking time to fill out my police report.  At one point the asked me to type in some of the information in English onto the report.  I got behind the computer and typed up a list of what was stolen.  I should have looked closer at the form and corrected the rest of the errors and omissions that it was riddled with but I was slightly uncomfortable at this point and we had a boat to catch.  I hope that insurance understands the challenges I faced and the extraordinary lengths I went to in order to get this police report written up and they excuse the errors!

Playing Polici

The day after we returned from Lombok, Matiasand I started our Advanced Nitros and Decompression Theory course.  This is my first introduction to what they call "technical diving" as opposed to the "recreational diving" I have done up to this point.  The main advantages to taking the course as I see it are that I will be certified to dive to 45m, to dive with enriched air blends up to 100% oxygen, to learn to plan dives that require a decompression stop, and I get to try out new equipment configurations.  The equipment includes; two tanks ("twin" tanks) on my back, an inflatable wing and harness with an aluminum backplate rather than a jacket-style BCD (buoyancy compensation device) as well as a stage bottle attached by clips to my side.  It feels like driving a schoolbus underwater compared with diving with only 1 tank but I can go deeper and stay longer because I can carry more gas to breath.  There are a few calculations to do to determine how much gas we breath in a minute at different depths and how much gas we will need in total for the dive but, despite the math, I am really enjoying he challenge and the opportunity to learn all about the theory and physiology of diving.... I am hooked!

School in summertime... But nerd-tastically fun!

Twin tanks connected by a manifold.  2 sets of regulators in case of failure, harness and wing.  Intimidating at first for sure... Getting used to it is the point of the course.

Sadly, I'm in dry dock again due to an ear and throat infection.  The doctor gave me an arsenal of ear drops, decongestants, antibiotics, and anti inflamitories, and as soon as I feel better I hope to do some more diving on the twin tanks so I can complete my course.

Stupid Rookie Mistakes

Within an hour of my fastboat pulling ashore on Gili Trawangan, I was back in the water acting as a guide for 4 certified divers!  Blue Marlin Dive's shop was so busy that when I walked in the door, they needed me to guide a dive at noon and another one at 2:30pm.  It's a fast learning curve, I went from primarily following and assisting instructors who were leading dives the last time I was here to taking out divers myself, providing them with an in depth dive briefing, guiding them during the dive, navigating, identifying and solving problems that may arise underwater, locating "sea creatures" to show them and identifying the creatures with hand signals.

So far I love it...It is challenging, I'm learning TONS, it's fun, I make a bit of beer money, I feel needed, and I get to dive as much as I want (often 3 dives/day) :).  In order for you to laugh at my expense... here is a list of the stupid rookie mistakes I have made as a Divemaster to date:

* Assembled gear with a yoke 1st stage on a din tank and didn't notice until we were on the boat getting ready to dive (used the spare, crisis averted) - for you non-divers out there.  This is really silly and it's such an obvious thing that a quick glance before setting the gear up would ensure this would never happen.
* I left my SMB (Submersible Marker Buoy) on the boat after the first dive and had to borrow someone elses for dive 2.  For the non-divers, an SMB is an inflatable sausage shaped bag that you inflate underwater and tie it to a line so that boats know divers will be coming up soon so you don't get left behind a la movie "Open Water"... it is pretty much essential gear!
* I guided a shallow dive (max 18m) where one diver couldn't descend due to trouble equalizing his ears and there was a moderate current so by the time we all got down to 18m we had drifted past the main reef and what we could see was way too deep for us to go, so... we spent a LOOOONG time floating out in the blue with nothing to see but jellyfish and plankton.
* I never really know when to go into the water when there are lots of groups in the boat... first, last, in the middle?  The water entry order seems really random.

Gili Trawangan has started to feel quite homey now that I've been here nearly 2 months so I've decided to stay on here diving and guiding until September 10th when I booked a flight to go to Singapore for a little shopping (scuba gear!! camera and underwater housing??) with one of the Blue Marlin Freelance Instructors, and a good friend here on the Island, Esther.  I also hope to ship some unneeded things home in order to streamline my travel luggage and to do a visa run in the hopes that I can extract myself from Gili Trawangan and see a bit more of Indonesia after the Visa run.  I'm also entertaining an offer to join Raf (another instructor here, and all-round awesome guy) in Thailand in the end of October for a cavern and cave diving course (that would be so cool!).  Only time will tell, all plans are subject to change.

A photo from my last cavern diving experience in a cenote in Mexico's Mayan Riviera.  A cenote is a dissolved out limestone sinkhole which forms a cave system).

On an unrelated note, last night marked the return of the "Blue Marlin Monday Night Party" since Ramadan is now over.  The theme was "represent your country".  Sadly all the Maple Leaf temporary tattoos were used up at the previous Monday Night Party which happened to be on Canada Day.  Without tattoos, I decided to dress as a proud Canadian Animal.

Well, it's 11pm and the time-challenged rooster in the garden in front of my room just crowed so it must be bedtime.  Selamat tidur.

Spiders That Cause Problems In Your Eyes?!?!

After the diving trip aboard the Ikan Biru, Darryn, Bo, and I rented scooters and drove up into the "mountains"to see the Cunca Wulang waterfall.  It was quite terrifying being on an under-powered scooter going up switchbacks with big trucks and other motorcycles and scooters vying for the road but also exhilarating, cooler than staying in town, and the landscape of rice paddies, local villages, kids running along the road screaming "Hello! How are you?", and water buffalo by the road was really worth seeing.  It was about an hour and a half on the motorcycles, mostly on paved roads, but then on some gravel, dirt, and boulder-strewn trails that were challenging.  I dropped my bike once but am fine and got only a teeny scratch.  There was a short, sweaty 20 minute hike through the jungle to the top of the waterfalls once the road ran out.  The falls were beautiful and we hiked across the top of the falls to the other side where there was a rock ledge ~8m up from the water where we were able to jump in.  AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!! Was the sound I made during the fall which seemed to go on just a little bit too long.  The water was cool and refreshing so we had a swim to the base of the falls before heading back to town.

One of the more treacherous roads to the waterfall after we left the main road

Awe, baby water buffalo

Darryn and I at the top of the waterfall

Where Darryn and our guide are sitting is where we jumped in for a swim from (~8m drop)

I found this shot online to show what the jump looked like!

 At the top of the Waterfall

Chrissie decided to stay on in Labuan Bajo for a few weeks to help out as a Divemaster with the newly opened Blue Marlin Dive shop there and the lucky girl secured herself another 4 days helping out aboard the dive boat too!  I, unfortunately, had to decline the offer to use my new credentials as a Divemaster because I had to head back to Gili Trawangan to collect my Credit card and Bank card which the bank mailed to me (after they were stolen, well... I left them out - oops), and my passport which was being processed for a visa extension, and to do a Technical Diving Course I had signed up for.  after Chrissie left on the boat I had 1 day to spend on my own in Labuan Bajo.  I made the most of it with a walk up to a viewpoint, a $14, 1.5 hour massage, and a beer with the sunset as a backdrop before flying back to Bali the next morning.

A short (but sweaty) hike up to a peak led to this view

Goodbye Labuan Bajo

They say, "great diving; shitty towns, great towns; shitty diving" and Labuan Bajo was not the nicest spot I've been.  Chrissie and I stayed in a nice, basic hotel which was clean, had AC, cold shower, and breakfast ($25/night).  The first night there was a huge spider in the room, bigger than I've ever seen, it's body was about the size of a loonie (Canadian $1 coin) and with its legs the spider was teacup saucer diameter.  I kept an eye on the intruder while Chrissie ran to "get an Indonesian man to kill that thing".  She returned with a man and a woman and a broom.  The man chased the spider to the floor with the broom and the woman stepped on it BAREFOOT!  We thanked them profusely, then the woman said, in broken English, "it is good you called, that is uring spider, they like water, they make water from they body and if it get in you eyes... It cause problems with you eyes.  We must keep out of our houses too because if spider makes water in babies eyes it cause problems". WHAT?!?!  I tried to google uring spider, nothing, I'm not sure if she meant urine spider?  Anyways, whatever it was I'm glad it's dead and not making water that causes problems for anyone's eyes!

Suryana hotel in Labuan Bajo

Darryn showed us a shortcut to the hotel from Blue Marlin the first night we were there.  While we were climbing the narrow concrete steps between homes he said "you will see some rats... Oh there are some now".  Ahhhh, the tropics.

Shortcut to the hotel from Blue Marlin

I decided to spend 2 nights in Kuta, a beach and shopping, touristy area 10 min south of the airport in Denpasar, Bali.  I reconnected with a dive guide from Tioman Island, Kelsey, who I dove with just over a year ago.  We logged some beach time, did some shopping, got leg massages and a pedicure ($11), and napped by the pool at my hotel.  The boy who drew the short straw and had to deal with pedicuring my nasty feet joked that there were 2 kilo of callouses removed... gross!  Bo, from the Liveaboard was also in Kuta so the three of us had dinner and breakfast together, nice to have folks to share a meal with!  I had heard mixed reviews of Kuta but I really like it.  I had a lot of fun getting lost on the narrow winding roads, dodging cars and motorcycles, discovering tucked away temples and gardens, shopping, and people watching on the beach.  I was too lazy for a surf lesson, but there are surf-shops everywhere and every third motorcycle in town has a rack on the side to carry a board so it's on my list for the next time I'm in Kuta!

Life's a beach in Kuta Bali

So nice to see Kelsey again

My lovely room at Un's hotel - I highly recommend it if you ever stay in Kuta

 

A Pirate's Life for Me

Chrissie and I are living on a boat, sleeping outside, swimming with sharks, walking with Dragons, and watching flocks of giant bats take flight.  Blue Marlin's Live-aboard boat, the Ikan Biru (Indonesian for Blue Fish) has room for 7 divers, 4 crew, and 1 dive Instructor.  All of us divers sleep on the upper deck in the open air with an awning over us so we need to simply roll over in the morning to see the sunrise, and to roll over and open our eyes at night to see the stars and moon...just awesome.  We started the trip from the town of Labuan Bajo on the island of Flores we then cruised/sailed through Komodo National Park stopping to dive where we please.  The boat has a chef who is a great cook and the food is amazing and ever-present, the coffee table on the upper deck opens up and delicious food is passed up through it on what seems like an hourly basis... I think this is a magic boat.  There are two toilets (heads?) on the boat and both have hot showers which is a luxury compared to my accommodations on Gili Trawangan which only have a cold shower.

Chrissie and I enjoyed ourselves so much that we walked away from the "return" portion of our flight to Bali to spend another 3 days on board the Ikan Biru... we didn't want to leave!  We will now return to Gili Trawangan via Bali on August 8th rather than August 3rd.  Our extra 3 days meant that the next flight we could catch back wouldn't be until August 7th so we plan to hang out with Darryn (the Scuba Instructor/Dive Guide), maybe do some odd jobs for Blue Marlin or do some sight-seeing around Labuan Bajo.

The Ikan Biru

Map of Komodo and Rinca Islands.  Our departure point, Labuan Bajo is in the upper right of the map

Sleeping Arrangements

Some of the crew; Benz, Joss (chef), Astral (Dinghy driver)

Darryn, our fearless leader, and Bo with his giant camera right before a passing bat pooped in his eye

Prep for a dive; Rafael, Bo, Sarah, Chrissie, Darryn and Lynne in the background

Crowded onto the dinghy for transport to the dive site per-dive.  (Top) Sarah, Chrissie, Bo; (bottom) Piers, Lynne, Rafael

Airport at Labuan Bajo, Indonesia

Side trip to Rica Island to see the Komodo Dragons, I 

had to high five the dragon

Komodo Dragon on Rinca Island with scared tourists for scale

Ships in the harbour at Labuan Bajo

Tens of thousands of giant bats taking flight from a mangrove area in Komodo National Park

Here's what I've been up to and why I haven't blogged in the past weeks, also...

PIRATES DON'T HAVE INTERNET!

Day 1 (July 26): board the boat, travel to dive site 1, dive, snack, dive 2, snack, dinner, bed

Day 2: breakfast 1, dive 1, breakfast 2, nap, lunch, Rinca island to see the Komodo Dragons, dive 3, snack, shower, dinner, bed

Day 3: early dive 1 (in the water by 7:15am!), breakfast, nap, dive 2, snack, dive 3, lunch, dive 4, snack, to nearby island Lawa Luat for a short hike up the mountain to watch the sunset.

Day 4: light breakfast, dive 1, breakfast 2, dive 2, lunch, dive 3, play in the bay on some paddle boards, snack of fresh-baked donuts, night dive, dinner, bed

Day 5: light breakfast, dive 1, breakfast 2, dive 2, lunch, dive 3, reading/napping, night dive, dinner, bed

Day 6: light breakfast, dive 1, 2nd Breakfast, dive 2, lunch, into harbour to trade 3 divers who had completed their trip for for 3 new divers, go to a mangrove island to watch a huge fruit bat flight, night dive.

Day 7: light breakfast, dive 1, breakfast 2, Chrissie and I rest and study for our next dive course ( Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Theory) while the others do a trip to Komodo Island to see the dragons, dive 2

The diving is amazing, I have seen many "personal firsts" underwater; 3 Manta Rays on one dive, 5 Dolphins on another, 4 Eagle Rays, a handful of Hairy Squat Lobsters (weird little things!), an Orangutan Crab, and Spanish Dancers (amazing pink frilly slugs that grow up to 2 feet long, and who can crawl on the seafloor or swim by undulating their frilly mantles).   We have also seen Giant Trevally, Whitetip Reef Sharks, Bluefin Trevally, huge schools of Fusiliers, colorful coral gardens, the biggest Barracuda I've ever seen (7' long I'm sure!) and so much more.   I feel so lucky to be able to see these beautiful, graceful creatures underwater; particularly the Manta and Eagle Rays (they look like they are flying in slow motion) the Sharks, and the Dolphins (what a treat!).  I have also learned to rock climb underwater.  The currents in some places are so strong that after a hurried descent we have to carefully crawl over the bottom using a hand over hand method into the current.  The goal of this is to "crawl" to an area with high current, where sharks, Giant Trevally, and schooling Fusiliers like to be so that we can hang on and watch them all swim around.  The group we are diving with are all quite experienced so everyone's air consumption is similar (no one uses up their air too quickly) which means we can dive longer than usual.  Typical dives have maximum depths of 20-25m and we are able to get up to, and sometimes exceed an hour of bottom time on each dive which means we have ample time to soak up the sights.

Bear with me while I "Nerd Out" and showcase some of my dive photos of the weird and wonderfull creatures who inhabit the oceans... ARRRR THAR BE MONSTERS!

Spanish Dancer; this one was nearly 2 feet long!

Manta Rays

Hanging out with Nemo

Huge School of Fusiliers

Giant Trevally

Napoleon Wrasse (AKA Bumphead Wrasse, Maori Wrasse)

A new and wonderfull Nudibranch: "Chaberlain's Nembrotha"

"Blue Dragon" Nudibranch

Another Nudibranch; "Magnificent Chromodoris

My all-time favorite Nudibranch "Dusky Nembrotha" AKA "Kubaryana's Nembrotha"

Whitetip Reef Shark

Aptly named Garden Eels

Orangutan Crab - the hairy red guy who looks like the Muppet "Animal" - so cute!

Cowfish - WIERD!

Frogfish - very well camouflaged and hard to tell but his mouth is near the upper left his eye looks blueish, and you can see his paddle shaped feet near the bottom.

The scenery above the water in Komodo National Park is beautiful but stark with white sand beaches nestled into rocky coastlines of hilly and sometimes jaggedly rocky islands covered in scrubby grasslands with the a few shrubs and sometimes sparse palm trees and occasionally a mangrove lined bay.  The sunsets are incredible with deep orange, red, pink, purple and blue blending into the dark ocean with volcanoes, islands, and rocky outcrops creating silhouettes in the foreground.

Miss Chrissie, a not-so-swarthy Pirate

Rugged landscapes

Beautiful sunrises

...and sunsets