FUN! diving with Whale Shark (and Turtles) from Khasab in Straits of Hormuz

October 4-5, 2013, Extra Divers, Khasab, Musandam, Oman

My logged dives #1245-1248

What did we get ourselves in for this weekend? Someone had a birthday ending in zero so her mates booked her a birthday on a dhow exploring the fjords out of Khasab, in one of the most beautiful parts of Oman. Many of their friends were divers so they made it a dhow trip with option for diving in the Straits of Hormuz organized by Extra Divers, Khasab.

There were certain understandings of how all this was put together that were not made clear at the outset, but once you've done the trip you can see it clearly. The booking was made for the dhow trip for a group of people and one or two kids, only some of whom were divers. These people were looking forward to a catered overnight outing on a boat in placid fjords moving around amid the beautiful mountain scenery in the vicinity of the old British telegraph station still standing ruined on an island whose surrounding coral has unfortunately been demolished by the impact of two many dhows anchoring there. The diving was booked independently of all this with Extra Divers who agreed to pick the divers up and return them to the dhow, but apart from that Extra Divers knew nothing much about the dhow except that they and the dhow would all be in the harbor at Khasab at the same time on Friday morning. But Extra Divers was sending us credit card authorization forms, giving Bobbi and I the mistaken impression that they were somehow handling logistics (the forms didn't specify what we were authorizing). These were being handled by the expat organizers of the weekend, but due to the underlying culture you acquire by actually going on one of these trips, they were not much good at communicating to novitiates how the parts meshed in the process.

Bobbi and I were curious how it worked and we like diving in the Straits of Hormuz. We thought it would be fun to accompany a bunch of expats on a relaxing weekend break, but we had real-world concerns that we couldn't get answers to prior to the trip. These involved the hard fact that at the end and beginning of our work weeks, Bobbi and I would be in Abu Dhabi, and Al Ain respectively. It turned out that our friends would be getting a late start Thursday so Bobbi would simply drive from Abu Dhabi to Al Ain where I would be waiting with car packed and ready to move at sunset, and as it worked out, by 7 pm we were on our way to Ras Al Khaimah and the Oman border. We weren't familiar with the route or exactly how long it would take. RAK is not as well developed as the roads leading into it, and the distance to the border was considerable, considering the condition of the roads. We stopped for dinner in RAK as well, so it was about midnight before we managed to cross both borders and be on our way to the appointed camp site 18.6 km into Oman.

At the appointed spot, on a great road now running alongside the sea to the north and mountains plunging almost straight up just off the road to the south, we pulled off onto the sand, a little too near the noisy road, but we didn't want to drive onto loose sand so late at night. At the border the inspector had opened our cool box but of course we had stashed our contraband elsewhere so we were able to share a beer before trying to sleep in the car. Early into October in the Middle East it was still so hot and humid we were sweating and gasping for air in the enclosed vehicle, so we turned the engine on and let it idly power the a/c and slept in cool comfort the rest of the night. It was kind of like sleeping in an air conditioned hotel, except we only had to pay for petrol.

Bobbi hadn't switched off her workday morning alarm so we were up in plenty of time to complete the trip to Khasab on a beautiful roadway winding in and out of deep fjords, that you want to do in daylight when you can enjoy the view. But when we reached Khasab we found a much better option for camping, the beautifully maintained and uncrowded Bassa Beach spreading from the foot of the rocky promontory which the Golden Tulip now commands. We used to drive onto this promontory and camp when we came to Khasab decades ago, and it was great to see that the car tracks still led to the rocky overlooks unoccupied by campers on a Friday morning, within a short walk to the new Golden Tulip and to the back gate entrance to Extra Divers, easily reached by these rough tracks. Ideas for future winter dive trips, when it would be comfy to sleep in the car, were spinning.

So at the dive center we discovered our true options. We could indeed dive just that day if we wanted, return on the Extra Divers boat to Khasab, and be home that night in Al Ain where we could sleep in on Saturday so Bobbi could get up rested at 4 a.m on Sunday morning and drive 2 hours to work in Abu Dhabi. It didn't seem our not going on the dhow was going to cause any problems, since one tripper had got stuck in Doha and another had been turned back at the border due to a discrepancy in the stamps in and out of UAE in his passport. And as that side was being organized by the Omani agent, there was no comprehensive roster for it.

But we decided as long as we were there we'd just go with the flow and join the dhow trip and dive the second day with Extra Divers. This opened another pandora's box of logistical problems for us. The dhow would be getting back to port before the dive boat and our overnight stuff would be on the dhow. No telling when the dive boat would get back (on Friday the weather was rough and currents were unpredictable causing us to abort the start of one dive because the current was stiff the wrong way, so it didn't get back until 4 pm that day). Whenever we got back on Saturday and had paid at the dive shop, we'd just then be starting the long drive back home. Sunday morning was looking to hit us hard after just 4 hours sleep, and Bobbi having to stay awake on her commute to Abu Dhabi.

Anyway we put these inconveniences aside when we booked our Saturday dives on Friday morning and decided to throw in with the dhow. The first part of the adventure was to report to the port and see that our dive gear made it on the dive boat, and that our overnight gear went on the dhow. We went with the dive gear on the dive boat to Musandam Island where we dived Barracuda Corner and No Palm Beach. The weather was warm so there was no chill to the spray that hammered us on the ride out (I was sitting farthest back in the boat, where the hammer hit hardest and wettest). As we passed the islands I was disoriented approaching the Straits from a different way from when we normally come up from Dibba in the south. We arrived at the same island we usually do from that direction but with Extra Divers the sites have names (Nomad hasn't got round to naming them yet, I don't believe).

The diving wasn't particularly good. We were guaranteed currents wherever we put in I was told. The visibility was poor, though the coral was pretty. We saw a number of turtles but not much else apart from reef fish until at the end of the second dive we saw a feather ray being chased our way by one of the other divers (Hanno, nice of him :-). The second dive was aborted at first because where we put in with plan to end up in No Palm Beach the current turned out to be running strong the wrong way and was carrying us off the dive site. So we all had to get back in the boat, and our dive guide Vicki had to go chasing after those who had submerged and were valiantly attempting the dive. In any event, all were recovered and we motored back toward the beach to begin the dive there and end in a sand flat which would be good for rays, which is where we saw the feather guy. Vicki also saw an eagle ray at the start of that dive but neither Bobbi nor I saw it.

I carry a torch on day dives for looking into dark holes. The underwater terrain in Hormuz is riddled with limestone alchoves and tunnels. I sometime find rays in them but today I found something unusual. In one hole I peeked into there was a huge turtle at least a meter long. He was facing away from the entrance but oddly didn't move when I shined my light inside. I think it had gone there to die and had succeeded. It must have been recently since his flippers were tucked normally under his shell. He must have gained his size through too many years of living, and now he was resting motionless and imperturbable in a small alcove that could hardly contain him.

One nice thing, considering the currents, was that all the divers on the boat were compatible. All the dives were 60 minutes and divers went to various depths, Bobbi and I almost 30 meters each time. The current helped us on the first dive but on the second it seemed to be a little too powerful which meant we consumed air trying to slow down and maintain direction in it. The divers seemed to all have their own agendas, but we all met up at the safety stop, everyone with air left in the tank, and most of us surfaced together as our watches ticked past 60 minutes.

The ride back to the dhow was wet and uncomfortable. Again we got hammered by spray, slapping us in the face again and again. We were drenched, and I was wondering how we'd feel on the dhow, open deck, no chance for shower. But once we got there we found lunch waiting, and drinks in our cool box, and pleasant temperatures for drying off, and nothing to dress up for anyway. Some guests played in the water, the dhow moved to its mooring location, and we enjoyed sundown off the island with the old telegraph station. Dinner appeared, catered by boat from one of the villages on shore (Saeed's, our captain's village, not far from where he had anchored). The company was pleasant, someone produced a guitar and a small amp that bespoke professionalism in hittin' the licks. Bobbi and I were so tired that we stretched out on cushions and even with the amplified guitar drifted in and our of sleep. I heard the guitarist announce an end to his set, and then some loud music came on. I remember wondering if this would go on late but it didn't. I felt drugged and eventually awoke to everything dark and quiet. I was quite comfortable, no covers, no shirt, and a breeze just cool enough to keep the heat off. All was peaceful and quiet until dawn when some of the guests started talking to one another, a little inconsiderate of the people still pretending to sleep I thought, but it was time to get up anyway. I had to charge my GoPro on the USB of the netbook computer I'd brought aboard. You know your world has changed when you bring a laptop on a dive trip just to recharge your camera (well, while charging, I started writing up my dive logs :-).

People on the dhow were waking up and diving from the deck into the water. There was a discussion of etiquette in doing number 2 in the ship's head when there were swimmers in the water below. Breakfast was brought in by boat in plastic Lulu bags (there's a huge new Lulu Hypermarket near the harbor). Eventually the boat pulled anchor and went into a cove where there are dolphins. The crew of the dhow were graciously pleasant and delighted in steering the boat at a speed which would attract the dolphins to swim alongside, much to the appreciation of those of us with GoPros. We were winding down this activity when our dive boat appeared.

We transferred our gear aboard and waved goodbye to our other packs and coolbox which we would next see in Khasab harbor. We waved goodbye to our non-diving friends as well, as we would be back in port after they had all returned there and departed. We headed off across the archipelago on calmer seas than the day before, but there still remained some white caps and some parts where the spray stung our faces. We passed some Iranian smugglers heading home in a trio of Yamaha boats pitching heedless of the oncoming waves.  They waved as they headed out to sea.

Our destination was Abu Rashid Island, a small island with strong currents bathing walls and soft coral tableaux, with a sand bottom at about 30 meters. We did two dives here, both good. Bobbi and I kept company with Vicki most of the time though she seemed to be diving mostly to enjoy herself, exactly the kind of diver you want to follow. She was responsibly keeping tabs on the others but not getting in their way, and if Bobbi and I lagged back she would go on ahead and we'd catch up with her. She had some nice diving strategies, like finding a current and staying there using a reef hook. Bobbi and I both had reef hooks so we'd do the same. At one of these spots on the first dive, on an east wall called Abu Rashid Drift, we found a school of barracuda which I swam into with my GoPro blazing.

We saw more barracuda on the second dive, which we started at “Jackfish corner”, at one of the spots where Vicki was hooked in to the reef. I took videos of common things on this dive, a pair of nudibranchs appearing to consume one another, a school of triggerfish that was chasing after smaller fish, trying to corral them between the coral, but not able to catch any in the time I was filming. All throughout the dive batfish were darting up to us, and while we were hanging out clipped to the reef in the strong current, we could see them preening at cleaning stations, again subjects of my GoPro.

Vicki had a reason for clipping in, and that reason eventually appeared to us in the hulking form of a whale shark, keeping itself mouth into the current, sucking up the plankton. I swam up to it, but whereas the whale shark was stationary, I had to fin quite hard to keep along side it. Remora hanging to it like pennants also became detached in the current and had to scramble to regain position. The whale shark didn't seem to mind my swimming up to it, as long as I didn't touch it, and I kept myself near it till my breath gave out, so I descended to the reef where Bobbi and Vicki were clipped in watching the show from the multicolored reef.

I guess there's not more to say that will top that about the diving. Just about timing, the boat was back in harbor at 3:00, we had retrieved our packs from the dhow and cleaned our dive gear and paid at the dive shop by 4 pm, and we were crossing borders by 5:00. At 6:00 we were stuck in traffic in RAK, home to the most pathetic road snarls in the UAE, pathetic because in a land of new traffic infrastructure, not much changes in RAK though the number of cars increases constantly. We were soon on the 311 though and by 6:30 we were turning off at the Um Al Quwayn exit to connect with the 611. At 7:15 we had turned off 611 into 66 for Al Ain. It's one hour from there to our house, making a 4.5 hour trip in all. It could be an hour less with better road works in RAK and more efficiency at the borders, but it didn't take as long as we feared.

And it was very much worth doing!  These nudibranchs are for Jay :-)

Certified Michele Campbell PADI Open Water and completed 4 out of 5 Advanced Open Water divers for "Andy" Anand Mantri

September 20-21, 2013, Nomad Ocean Adventure, Musandam

My logged dives #1241-1244

This weekend was productive from a PADI instructor point of view.  I certified Michele Campbell PADI Open Water (all but the swim, to be done in a pool midweek) and completed 4 out of 5 Advanced Open Water dives for "Andy" Anand Mantri.

Transport is getting complicated with Bobbi and I working in different cities, but I get off early so I drove up to Abu Dhabi to get her and we drove across the UAE Thu night to Dibba. We hit traffic in two places on the way.  I had the idea to drop by Al Boom (a.k.a. Scuba Dubai) and pick up some bcds being serviced, but was disabused of that notion after getting stuck in a half hour tailback near Dubai World Central (the new airport under construction) on what used to be known as Emirates Road (the 611 has now been renamed Emirates Road), I said to heck with it and picked up the gear 2 days later on my way home from Dibba to Al Ain.  The second tailback was another half hour further up the 611 where traffic was trying to exit the Dhaid to Sharjah road. We've never seen traffic jams on the 611 before (maybe that's why they renamed it Emirates Road). Fortunately the border crossing in Dibba was painless, and having got up for work at 4 that morning, I was at our home away from home Nomad Ocean Adventure by around 9 that night, 17 long hours later.


Once we got settled in and helped ourselves to the buffet spread, the weekend got very relaxing. After a great lie-in, we got started on the diving courses at Ras Morovi on Friday.  Michele was doing PADI o/w dive #2, the one with the set of basic skills done at the bottom of the ocean, and she did those perfectly.  We were in the easy bay so we went over to the alcove where I almost always find crayfish but there were none there (eaten??).  We went over the saddle to the cabbage coral, but no turtles there.  We visited the two caves where rays sometimes hang out, again nothing. We did find pipe fish on the bottom, there were lots of tropical fish, and it was a relaxing, nice long dive, 51 minutes at about 15 meters maximum depth. Meanwhile Andy was doing his peak buoyancy dive while buddied with Bobbi.

Our next dive was at Lima Rock South.  It was murky here and we didn't see much apart from honeycomb and grey morays, but Michele got through dive #3, and Andy accomplished his advanced boat dive (and more buoyancy work).  Michele was back on the surface after 35 minutes (we had touched 18 meters on the dive) but the boat was nearby and I was able to see her aboard and then rejoin Bobbi and Andy at the bottom to finish out Andy's tank near the west end of Lima Rock.  Despite the full moon, current was slack, as it's sometimes raging at that end of the island, so our dive had a peaceful ending.

We were hoping for a night dive but Nomad require 4 paying customers and we were only Andy and two others, so I went for a jog instead, and then relaxed with my wife and students over another of Aneil's great dinners. Next morning, after another rare sleep, we were back on the boat for a first dive at Lima Rock, north side this time.  I assigned Andy an advanced underwater naturalist dive, and began my dive with Michele in a controlled emergency swimming ascent (aka CESA) on a weighted line attached to the bow of the boat. On surfacing, we did the full range of surface skills, which Michele had been concerned about, but they turned out to be a piece of cake for her.

Our first turtle on Lima Rock, North, Sept 21, 2013

This dive that followed was relaxing as well.  The north side of Lima Rock has a shallower sandy bottom than that on the south side, and the terrain there makes for interesting swim-throughs and set tableaux of coral encrusted boulders teeming with fish.  And we found a turtle resting in a bed of green whip coral (but then everything looks green at depth under water).  At the end of the dive we caught up with Andy and Bobbi surrounded by a cloud of frolicking squids, in the video below.  At the surface, Michele removed and replaced weights and bcd, and in so doing completed all the scuba requirements for the PADI open water course, so congratulations to her!

Squiddlywinks on Lima Rock, North, Sept 21, 2013

Michele decided to sit the next dive out so Andy and I did the deep dive for the advanced o/w course off Ras Sanut.  We planned a profile of 24 meters for 20 minutes, 16 meters for 10, and at 12 meters till our tanks were exhausted, which would be about ten or 15 minutes for Andy, since it was his first deep dive (well, first officially, certainly his first with me :-).  The dive went well.  We had put in near the boulder with the cleaved flat face, near the point from where we often put in deeper in the bay, so we found 24 meters in sand quite easily and did our exercises there (compared depth gauges, calculated a minimum surface interval).  We then went up to the coral at about 17 meters but meandered back in the sand again looking for the rocks I knew were in deeper water somewhere but couldn't see due to algae clouded vis.  Finally I found one, and in its shadow one of the largest turtles I have seen in these waters, this one with a good size remora hitching a ride on its shell.

The huge turtle with the remora on his shell

We continued diving to the point, progressing up through our levels and enjoying slack current as the day before.  Sometimes the current can be pumping out to sea here, but today it was almost calm, and because of that there were no interesting fish around that we could see (current brings them to the point).  When Andy ran low on air we did our safety stop and Bobbi and I saw him to the surface, but we returned to 15 meters to carry on around the point and dive the Lima Rock side. Again there was not much of note but we continued our dive to over an hour, and found it refreshing with bracing thermoclines pleasant to the skin beneath our 3 mm wetsuits, 28 degrees at its most frigid, nice easy diving.

Whale sharks and other sea creatures enjoyed on a day trip to Daymaniyat Islands in Oman

September 14, 2013, Extra Divers at Al Sawadi Beach Resort
My logged dives #1239-1240

Bobbi and I just moved to Al Ain so I can live closer to my job. One bonus is that Al Ain is 2 hours closer to Oman than was Abu Dhabi so it's just 3.5 hours to drive to Al Sawadi Beach Resort, where we can access one of our favorite dive areas, the Daymaniyat Islands. That makes it possible to dive the Daymaniyats on a day trip from Al Ain (first time it's been that close since we lived in Oman back last century, and used to go there often). We could have driven down the night before and stayed at our favorite in-spot on the Batinah Coast, Suwaiq Motel, but since Bobbi still works in Abu Dhabi and has to get up at 4 anyway to get to work on time when she stays in Al Ain, we figured we might as well keep our routine and wake up at 4 for the drive to Al Sawadi from Al Ain on Saturday morning, the easier the transition from weekend Saturday to workaday Sunday.

So we did that, arriving at the dive center half an hour late due to our miscalculation of the time it would take us to get there (they pointed out it was actually 35 minutes; we thought it would take just 3 hours). But since we had our dive bags ready to throw on the boat, we didn't hold them up, but boarded the boat along with everyone else. Though the trip with its border crossing at dawn was wearing (we even had a petrol crisis since both Oman stations were closed in the 20 km between border posts; and we were on empty), we were hoping to see something in the ocean that would make it worth the trip down.

That's Bobbi in the thumbnail, the small creature at the top of the screen, not the big one :-)

We got off to an excellent start. They had been seeing whale sharks on the 45 min. trip out to the islands lately so our crew were expecting them, and when they were spotted, the crew cut the engines and let everyone off to snorkel with the sharks. This happened more than once on the trip out, so we got to snorkel with a couple of whale sharks very close up. The last one we saw came up to the boat, but it was by then time for diving, so the divers simply observed it from the gunwales, no one jumped off to play with it.  I've never seen a boat load of diver before decline en mass an opportunity to swim with a whale shark (in the GoPro compilation above I put that encounter first, makes a more logical storyboard :-).

We proceeded to make two dives, one on lesser Jun and the other on Sirah Island. Both were superb. The first dive on Jun had swimming pool visibility with a layer of algae at the bottom that we could easily see through if we finned overhead, and was only slightly brown if we were in it. A sharp thermocline trapped the cool water in the lower layer, so it was nice with a 5 mm suit to swim into it. But the cloud tended to remain over the sand, at 16 meters, and the water on the reef was as clear as a glass of water.

The reef was beautiful and teeming with frolicking fish meandering about the staghorn corals. There were large black, white and yellow grunts, and a Moorish idol nibbling at a jellyfish.

I found one turtle with his head stuck into the cabbage coral intently trying to get at whatever it was that so appealed to it there.

In the clear water, trigger fish, parrot fish, puffer and porcupine fish swam about the cleaning stations where wrasse serviced batfish and other customers, and scorpion fish could be found dogfaced hiding in the coral, motionless even when approached quite closely.

I kept checking out in the sand looking for sting rays and leopard sharks. I didn't see any of the latter, but we found where huge cow tail rays loitered about, only to take freight and scamper when divers approached.

I'd almost forgot how meager the between-dive snack is with Extra Divers. We hadn't had any breakfast to speak of so the biscuits and pineapple and watermellon were refreshing but hardly fortifying. But at least they had enough, didn't run out when Sultan the friendly boatman passed the platter repeatedly. Fortunately the second dive would take our mind off the gaps in our stomachs.

We motored over to the site, the small island nearest to our mainland port, and put in with a mild but steady current nudging us west, reef on our left. We soon came on a turtle. I was following it with my GoPro but Hany was clacking his tank and agitatedly making shark signals, since a whale shark was cruising just off the reef at that moment. 

The shark posed for cameras for a minute or two before going his way, but he came back a few minutes later, but this time below the brown layered thermocline, so he was not so clearly visible, but everyone in our group was crowding around him. I wasn't that enthused to chase him, but I noticed that near the reef, virtually ignored by the other divers, a mottled ray lay unobtrusively in the sand. So I went down to it and filmed him instead.

Hany had promised to take us to a place where a large seahorse often hung out, but the sea horse wasn't home. A torpedo ray was there instead.

Several divers surfaced on coming up from the 20 meter search for the seahorse, low on air after 45 minutes. But Bobbi and I continued for another 15, finding a huge moray hiding with gaping mouth in the coral,

more turtles, blue triggers decorating one part of the reef, more scorpion fishes,

and a lone cuttlefish resting on the bottom (odd, they usually travel in pairs, and usually move away when approached).

Back on shore we drove back to UAE happy indeed that we had made the drive south over the border.

Diving Nusa Penida off Bali (no mantas and no mola molas)

August 10-11, Bali Diving Academy, Nusa Lembongan

My logged dives #1235-1238

August 9

I just sent an email which began like this: "Here in Nusa Lembongan the power has been off for several hours but we appear to be at a warung with a generator and I might be able to send this."

We were having a really great vacation meeting my family in Bali and then traveling to Komodo for some dynamite diving.  Dusty had to return to Bali to sort a visa problem but Bobbi and I caught a slow boat to Lombok and met up with Dusty on Gili Air, which was so relaxed I will continue to wish I was back there for a long time to come.  The diving was not bad either, the sunsets were phenomenal, and the food was cheap and irresistable (pepes fish was always an excellent snack).  Things were great as we caught a boat from Gili Air to Padang Bai on Bali but civilization kicked back in on the mini-bus transfer to Sanur, Dusty's choice for our base on Bali, and launch to our next diving destination, Nusa Penida via the surfing / diving mecca of Nusa Lembongan, a short speed-boat ride half an hour due east from Sanur.

Dusty had dived here on his last trip to Bali, while Bobbi and I were pursuing options around Komodo.  He had caught a dive boat to Nusa Penida from Sanur but had figured out that it would be more economical to base himself in Nusa Lembongan and save the trip across the channel, which doubled the cost of diving Nusa Penida from Sanur.  Dusty had gone on a manta / mola mola dive where he was supposed to look for sunfish in Crystal Bay on his first dive.  They took him to Manta Point instead where he saw lots of mantas in shallow water with easy current, but by the time they had made it back to Crystal Bay, the morning dive boats (not coincidentally, including one from Bali Diving Academy) had seen mola mola but his group missed it.

The Lonely Planet Guide paints Nusa Lembongan, the island over from Nusa Penida, as a place where one can recapture the old bali, cheap beer, fabulous sunsets, where "time is measured by rooster crow and the fall of a coconut," which made us want to base ourselves there for a few days.  They omitted to mention the roar of the motorcycle.  And in most other respects, I'm afraid Nusa Lembongan was a disappointment, compared to other places we visited in Indonesia.

The fast boat left Sanur more or less on time and got us to Nusa Lembongan during the ideal time to find a room, when the last nighters would be checking out.  Our strategy was to set Bobbi somewhere with our bags and go looking for rooms, which would be very difficult in August.  After many cold calls, Dusty and I managed to luck into a place on the beach, just $20 a room with cold water and fan (when there was electricity). But many others not so lucky were desperate for accommodation into the afternoon, through there may have been luxury rooms for them on the hillside in the upmarket enclave around the bay there.

We chose Bali Diving Academy to help us fulfill Dusty's mola mola dream, since their divers had seen the mola mola when Dusty was denied his on his previous trip to Nusa Penida.  We had tried the place next to our hotel, Scooby Dooby, but they were fully booked for Aug 10, the first day we planned to dive. Having arranged that, we had time to kill in Nusa Lembongan   We tried one place for lunch but the one lady cooking and waiting tables was so slow to make even a watermellon juice, and then when she brought it she retreated rather than try to negotiate our order, so we moved to a warung on the waterfront for a mediocre meal.  We went home for a nap after that but when we woke up we found power was off and our devices only half charged. We took the computers out to the open air restaurant and tried to order a Bintang, but there was none, and due to no power, no internet of course.  We decided on a long walk to take in the multiple hues of the sunset on placid harbor, but eventually we found a place with nice food with an open air sea view (Bintang no problem anywhere but our hotel), and an owner who had good taste in quiet gamelon music and the good sense to anticipate the power cuts by maintaining a generator that would power his router and connect his customers to the Internet.  But there was still no power when we got back to our rooms late that evening, though it did come on at night, when we all leapt from bed and plugged in our devices and resumed sleeping with a breezy fan.

Apart from its lovely seaside restaurants, and the resorts on the hillside if you have only a little more money or don't feel upmarket, Nusa Lembongan was not a particularly stimulating place, with not much to do after glorious sunset if you're bored with Bintang and not particularly hungry, once it's too dark to surf.  

August 10

We found the diving to be a little disappointing as well (though in fairness, we met a divemaster there who had worked on Gili Air and said she preferred Lembongan to the Gilis).  We left harbor in the morning in anticipation of fulfilling Dusty's dream of seeing a sunfish or two, but arrived in Crystal Bay with a dozen other dive boats all waiting for the current to subside.  When we finally went in, the water was full of bubbles from other divers, all vying for position, clinging to (killing) the reef in the process, as far out in the current as they dared.  In any event we are told sunfish like cold water and are seen when it's 23 degrees in the water.  Today it was 26 and they didn't appear.  After half an hour hooking into rocks and fighting current at 24 meters, then retreating to higher ground, we were back in the shallows where the dive was ostensibly over. The other divers in our group had buoyancy issues and ran low on air early and we managed to get 52 minutes in by hanging out in the sand under the boats.  Still we saw a couple of sea snakes, some young barracuda in the clear bay, garden eels in the sand, and a cuttlefish, a well rounded representation of wildlife there, but not what we'd come for.

"Well, maybe there are mola mola on the north side of Nusa Penida" we were told, so we went there for our second dive, where the reef starts at 5 meters and goes down to 200.  Our dive site was the reef between SD Point and PED (whatever, they also call it informally, "endless reef"). Here, the current swept us along in a rapid drift dive.  The reef was healthy and vast with a big variety of coral, but most of the sharks have been harvested here, and there was nothing present that divers pay a lot of money to come and see.  There were big puffer fish, blue triggers, and the usual reef critters, a nice dive, a pleasant 28 degrees this time, but nothing to point my GoPro at, the first dive that's happened so far this trip in Indonesia.

We decided the next day we would opt for mantas.  We were told they were almost guaranteed off Manta Point, and they probably were, but we had hit the time of month where for these few days only the sea swells would be too high for Bali Diving Academy to take us there, so no telling what the other dive companies would be doing (Scooby Doo was not going there either, we found later), but it was looking like we'd be spending two days diving Nusa Penida and seeing neither of the big draw fishes (though of course they told us the sites we would be taking us to tomorrow, sometimes they see mola molas there ... we'll believe it when we see it).

I started writing this in my room but at 4 p.m. the power went off and now I'm working on battery, which I want to conserve in case I want to use the computer later.  Sods law, I had JUST started recharging it when that happened.  Electricity seems to be a morning phenomenon in Nusa Lembongan  as is diving, and internet, so evenings are a bit redundant here, unless you fancy a Bintang binge.  Well, sunset now, so off to see what the night holds.

August 11

We heard that the Bali Diving Academy trip that went to Crystal Bay the morning of the 11th did manage to see mola mola, but by then we were resigned to whatever the sea and our dive program managers would offer, and under their guidance we enjoyed our last two dives off Nusa Penida and Nusa Lembongan with neither sunfish nor mantas.  Our first dive off a village called Buyu and was done in the company of another half dozen boats, so there were a few dozen divers in the water heading along the reef at different levels.  This turned out to be to our advantage as the leader of the group above us was pointing agitatedly at something that turned out to be a shark, which his group drove out of rest and across our path, and then it came back and I possibly got it on my GoPro.  But apart from the beauty of the reef, there wasn't a lot here remarkable, except the turtle I saw as we were doing our safety stop.

Our last dive, off the north of Nusa Lembongan, at a site called Mangroves, was a lovely reef plateau with a freight train current that made it a bit of an amusement park ride.  Again we didn't see much apart from the large puffers and lovely coral.  It was a challenging dive, and our guide said at the end of it that she enjoyed leading a group that could handle current (for a change).  She had also said earlier on the boat that if someone was low on air at 50 bar we would come up, and she revealed she hoped it wasn't her, because we were so good on air, she said (a compliment to our family's diving skills).

It was fun because it was diving but if I had it to do over I'd choose a time when Manta Point was doable and leave time for more mola mola dives, if that were my goal (Bobbi and I have seen them before :-).  We all agreed that we enjoyed Komodo a lot more, and I thought the dives on Gili had more variety and less current, and more interesting things to see (and  were much more pleasurable to hang out in).  However, if you go to Nusa Penida chances are good that you will see mantas and / or mola molas, through I guess our experience shows there are no guarantees on anything that moves in the water.

Diving Gili Trawangan and Gili Meno, 3 days, from Gili Air

August 5-7, Blue Marlin Divers, Gili Air, Lombok

My logged dives #1230-1234

By boat to Lombok via Rinca

We got a cabin on a Perama company long distance boat from Labuan Bajo to Lombok, leaving August 2, or so we thought.  Actually we met at the Perama office at 5:30, waited for an hour, and were conducted to the boat which was in harbor. The plan was to have dinner on board and spend the night in our cabin, and the boat would leave at 5:30 in the morning for Rinca.  The price of the cabin was expensive, $200 each, but we thought it would save us $35 on the hotel price at least, but our cramped cabin, barely enough room for two bunks, was open air with slats for privacy (which we covered inside with towels) and was situated on a catwalk next to the common luggage storage. There were benches there which the deck passengers liked to sit on and talk (late at night) and of course everyone was constantly accessing storage. 

But the first night we had a different problem.  The boat crew had invited the passengers from the passage over back for a party.  The boat anchored in the middle of the harbor, the others arrived by launch, and a part ensued from dinner time to midnight.  We felt we had rented a tiny room just off a noisy bar, never our choice of accommodation.  We somehow managed to drown it out with Kindle white noise apps (modern travel :-).

The first stop on the boat's itinerary was to go see the dragon lizards on Rinca, and we went on a two hour trek where we did that. There were always some specimens sleeping near the kitchen (per Lonely Planet) and these were there splayed out like alligators in a zoo.  But we went on a guided trek of 2 hours and saw some baby dragons in streams en route, as well as monkeys.  

The most exciting part was where a large adult dragon came out in the trail and wandered down it, causing our group to yield to the side. The dragon slithered nonchalantly, forking out its tongue, and headed for the bushes on the far side of the path from where we were.  It was a dramatic encounter, memorable, as they are some meters long.

Here is the trail (Bobbi is wearing the red backpack)

And here is the dragon that came slithering down it, sticking out his forked tongue to sense the nature of the other biomass he detected nearby.  By the time this photo was taken, he was heading into the underbrush:

Hats off to John Hager who posted on Facebook some really interesting dragon closeups, from boat at the edge of the water (looks like you get what you pay for :-)

The boat continued to a snorkeling spot that afternoon, with the Komodo Divers boat coming into our anchorage and stopping behind us to do some diving on the reef we were snorkeling (seemed to be a good spot for dive courses).  The passengers fanned out on the reef.  No system was employed to keep track of the 30 people in the water, so I snorkeled and then Bobbi took a turn and I kept an eye on her while she cruised the reef some distance from the boat.  When she returned in the water I guided her to where the ladder was and when I went to that side of the boat, I saw that we had slipped anchor and the current had actually carried us onto the shallow reef.  No one seemed to have noticed, the same way that no one had noticed the dinghy had disappeared on the Wicked boat the week before.  I went to the captain and found him sleeping behind the helm. When I woke him up, comedy ensured.  He lept out of bed in one stride, in the next he was peering over the side of the boat, and the look on his face was classic.  Then he was yelling to no one in particular.  No one on the boat could do anything so they called their dinghy over from where it had been cruising the snorkelers and fortunately, that boat was able to pull us off the reef, and no damage was done (to the boat :-(( not sure about the reef )

We sailed that night.  The passage was a little rough early in the evening but smoothed out as we skirted the big island of Sambawa between Flores and Lombok.  In the morning we stopped at Moyo to take a short walk to a waterfall where locals showed us their stunts on a rope over the falls where they rode it out to its azimuth and let go, doing flips, or hanging on and propelling themselves right at the base of the falls.  It was a refreshingly friendly place with the locals holding the rope for as many tourists as wanted to have a go, as most of the 30 people on our boat did.

We continued to a reef at the west end of Sambawa for a final snorkeling stop, and then made the two hour crossing of the channel to Lombok, catching great sunsets over Rinjani volcano, which dominated horizon.  We arrived in Lombok after 2 days of boat travel and found vans waiting to take passengers to Mararam port or Singgigi. We opted for Singgigi, which turned out to have nice accommmodation for just $25 a night.  We arrived there at 11 pm and got online to arrange with Dusty where to meet him next day.

By boat (how else?) from Lombok to Gili Air

This is a quick shot of one of the horse carts that will linger in your memory after you have left Gili Air.  There is no obnoxious sound of motorcycle engines here, just bicycles and horse carts.  The street between the port and the harbor can get busy with the clomping and tinkling of horses and bells in the evening as boxes are ferried from port to retail outlet, but apart from bicycles, transport around Gili Air is on foot, 45 min. to walk completely around the island.

We were unsure where to meet exactly.  Dusty had a boat ticket to Gili Trawangan where we had all gone 30 years ago, when the reef there was intact, and it was a simple, laid back place.  Now it's become a party island so we had decided to choose between Gili Air and Gili Meno.  We were thinking to choose the less is more Gili Meno, but reading LPG at breakfast, we noted that it said booking during high season was essential so we thought Gili Air might be the best compromise. Meanwhile we were arranging at breakfast a shuttle to the port leaving at 8:45, and we were on that riding along the stunning beautiful coastline of Lombak while texting Dusty who was embarking from Bali and needed to know where he should get his ticket to exactly.  Our driver was friendly and had good English so I asked him and he said there were numerous places on Gili Air and Trawangan, so I txted Dusty to change his ticket to Air, and to make a long story short, we all arrived at the boat harbor from Lombok and Bali at almost the exact same moment, and through the wonders of modern telecommunications, were texting each other to a meeting point at the harbor.  

Everything after that was idyllic.  Gili Air is an amazingly laid back place. There are no motorcycles or dogs (with the exception of one pet we spotted, but he was well-behaved and didn't bark). Horse carts meet passengers at the harbor and for $7 fixed price will take you around until you find a place to stay. The island is surrounded by azure water and fine beaches, and rural lanes criss cross through fields with cows and horses, and rooster crowing is ambient there.

We were accosted by a man who said he had a house with two rooms for $30 and we followed him on his bike to the most ideal accommodation for a still active couple and their single son.  It was an apt with two bedrooms, each with double bed, kitchen, and bath in master bedroom.  There was a lanai out front with bamboo furniture, a leafy garden, and palms across the lane bright green under sunny skies.  It was not beachfront, but those places were $80, and we were 5 min from the beach, where we found neaby Blue Marlin Dive Center, where we were offered the best professional courtesy price of 25% discount so each of our dives would be just $25.

This led to a routine where we set an alarm for 7, had Lombok coffee in our kitchen, took our computers and gear to the dive center, stored the computers in lockers, waded onto the boats, went 20 min to Trawangan for the first dive of the day, returned to the dive center where I recharged my GoPro on my computer, and then returned to the boats for the shorter trip to a Meno dive site.  The third dive of the day was always right off Gili Air and we never went on that one, though I wondered if Trawangan divers did their first adventure dive on Air, and their last of the day close to home on Trawangan.

Once we'd finished diving we washed our gear and showered at the dive center and then wandered up the beach for lunch.  All up and down the beach, there were pavilions with cushions facing the water quite popular with beach goers, where good meals could be had for $4 for mains, and $3.50 for a large Bintang (or $1.50 for iced tea, or $2 for fruit juice). Most of these places had wifi, which was often the most disappointing part of the meal, but we tended to relax here in the shade and balmy breezes with the clomp of horse carts in the lane behind and just feel we were lucky to be in this magic spot.

Around 4 or so we'd take our dive gear back to the room and then sortie again in search of sunset happy hours.  The north end of the island had west views and again big bamboo couches where you could lay back and push any worries out of your mind while you watched the colors of the clouds and placid water go through electric orange and purple color changes. Dusk would usually find us walking on the beach, easier to walk there on the packed sand than on the loose sand trails ringing the island. We'd eventually find a place to have dinner, usually a table on the beach (getting tired of lounging in couches by then) for dinner with waves lapping, horses clomping with bells on, and stars bright overhead.

Our last night there, Aug 7 2013, was the last day of Ramadhan, with views of fireworks over Lombok and the boom of closer explosions as people set off colorful lightshows overhead of where we were dining. The celebrations and fireworks went on for hours after dusk, with sparkling burst lighting either side of our table on the beach for hours.

Diving Gili Trawangan and Gili Meno from Gili Air

Aug 5 - Sunset Reef, SW Gili Trawangan

This site took us in over sparse coral and great vis but not much to see in the moraine at depth, though the idea was to find something big down here.  Our dive guide Ari pointed out a slug and I filmed batfish flattened at a cleaning station.

Aug 5 - Soraya Reef, off Gili Meno

Soraya Reef, Gili Meno, was our favorite reef of all we dived - A black tip shark and a crocodile fish, nice reef, nice corals.  

Where is the crocodile fish?  You should be able to see him by the end of the video :-)

We saw the shark early in the dive, and the video didn't function, but I got this snap (snaps are not the GoPro's forte, and I had to zoom and crop to get this):

Aug 6 - Shark Point, NW Gili Trawangan

We found a turtle and a white tip at the start of the dive, and I swam around a bommie and found a big turtle there minding his own business.  We also found a cool nudibranch, and a scorpion fish - very nice dive

Turtle at bommie

Local dive guides worldwide usually know where to look for animals underwater, and can often spot a nudibranch or hidden scorpion fish when those not familiar with the site might miss it. Ari was pretty good at finding worms and snails in the sand and on the reef the size of a piece of thread. So it was kind of funny when we began our dive on Shark Point (of all places :-) when Ari was swimming along at the start of the dive, just starting to adjust to the slight chill, and almost swam right past a resting shark. Amusingly out of character for him, and here it is on video:

Aug 6 - second dive on Meno Wreck, Gili Meno

I tend to not like wreck dives all that much because unless the wreck is massive or historic (or the absolutely only thing to see in the area), they tend to take place in a small area which you can rapidly exhaust.  We started our Meno dive upcurrent from it and drifted onto it, along with a dozen other dive boats with the same plan, so it was crowded.  Once on the wreck, the fish were pretty.  Here's Bobbi exploring:

Aug 7 - Deep Halik, NW Gili Trawangan

Wed Aug 7 we dived Deep Halik, northwest Gili Trawangan, near Shark Point. Ari checked surface current and declared that all was well, but at 20 meters we were being swept through the channel all of us uncomfortable with it. There was nothing much to see here, or more accurately, we were moving too fast to stop and look around, though it seemed like a good place for sharks in the rubble valley and along the reef.  

We were diving with Andrea and his wife again, Andrea the rich Italian smoker who always surfaced at 40 min, and on this day, we waited till exactly 8 min for Ari to return after carrying out Andrea's safety stop and putting him back on the right dive boat. 

Before Andrea left he had held his camera in the face of a turtle, a little in the way of other photographers who were trying to get their own shots.

Andrea redeemed himself somewhat when he found a huge scorpion fish just before he had to surface, and while we were waiting for him to return an attractive moray emerged from one of the few bommies where we were.  

Ari found interesting tiny snails in the dynamited coral rubble but apart from all that, and getting some relief from the current in the last 15 min of our dive, our last dive on Gili Air was not as nice as the others.  Max depth 29.9 meters and time 62 minutes.

Time to leave

We were sad to leave our tranquil place on Gili Air, a 'homestay' cottage called Mangga, down an endearingly rural lane near Family Cafe just inland from Blue Marlin Divers. It was just $30 a night for two separate rooms, one for Dusty and one for the two of us, with kitchen with stove, a fresh water dispenser, and fridge, and a pleasant veranda out front, where on the first day of Eid celebrations we awoke to find a huge breakfast left for us there. Here we are checking out: