Our team: Just Bobbi and I on a day out south of the border
My logged dives #1287-1288
We invited others to join us but in the end it was just me and Bobbi, my favorite dive buddy.
The Daymaniyat Islands are only slightly distant to us,a mere pop over the border and just three hours driving from Al Ain UAE, so it's fun to slip down there for a day trip, except we leave the day before, after a nice lie in on Friday, catch up on things we need to do at home, and cross the border after dusk. We continue on as far as a town half an hour past Sohar which we only recognize when we reach there where there is a roadside restaurant that serves a tasty and hot! (I burned my fingers on the wok, blisters!) chicken karai. Then we drive another 45 minutes to Suwaiq and the local color motel there, where beer is just a riyal a tall can, and the rooms are quiet and pleasant at 200 dirhams. We leave there at 7 a.m. which gets us to Al Sawadi by 8 a.m. having stopped for samosas and nescafe along the way.
Lately every time we arrive at Al Sawadi we've found ourselves on a boat going to Jun Island, not that there is anything wrong with that, but there are so many places to dive in the island chain. Next time we'll be more particular about our destination and which boat we are on -- we've noticed if you stay at the resort you can sign up for dives and get on the boat you want as the weekend trips are posted in advance, so we'll negotiate beforehand next time we go.
This time the boat went to Doc's Wall first dive and to "Coral Garden" the second. Doc's Wall is the extension from Jun, on the map above, that continues from the larger Jun island to its smaller neighbor to the east, where we end by rounding the smaller island to the south. It can be nice dive. Leopard sharks like to rest beneath the schools of yellow snappers and we often see rays here. Today we didn't see anything that special, but it was still a nice dive. On the second dive we dropped on the north of big Jun and rounded the channel between the two islands. This ends up in a shallow coral garden where the boats moor for the surface interval, so we had just snorkeled the area between dives and observed a turtle several meters down on the reef.
Between the two of us, Bobbi and I made a video compilation of the two dives. We saw a number of honeycomb morays with cleaner wrasse and other fish swimming safely near their articulated jaws. Behind one, Bobbi can be seen leading me to where there is a scorpion fish, and on one of the dives we found a pair of scorpion fish in the sand. We took pictures of some of the schools of fish, the yellow snappers, Bobbi in amongst the blue fusiliers, and a picturesque school of butterfly fish. I followed a coronet fish close over the raspberry reef and Bobbi got some more distant shots, including one of a pair of coronet fish kissing. At one point, I captured a free swimming green moray between lairs. Our footage includes a couple of cuttlefish, always in retreat from divers, and the artificial reef extension to the Coral Gardens where you can see the objects sunk there covered in impressive staghorn corals.
April 25, 2014 on Dibba Rock, with Freestyle Divers
Our team: Vance, Bobbi, Anand Mantri
My logged dives #1284-1286
One of our gestures toward PADI Shark Fin Awareness
Anand Mantri asked if we could finish his PADI advanced o/w course this weekend and allowed as how he would go with our plan, so I suggested a lie-in Friday and a leisurely drive up to Dibba for a 3 pm dive on Dibba Rock with our old friends at Freestyle Divers.(well, long-time friends, they're not nearly as old as we are:-). After hearing about all the sharks and even Manta Rays (yes, mantas, confirmed by Andy Moore, who'd seen them personally) that had been sighted there lately we dipped in for a pleasant but not so eventful dive on the rock. We like to go there to see how it's doing, and always happy to see that it's gradually bouncing back from its pre-double whammy heyday.
Next time we go though we'll ask for a drop on the artificial reef Andy planted east of the rock some years ago. The stories about big sharks and rays on that spot were even more enthusiastically related to us than the tall tales of Dibba Rock adventures. It will make a good excuse to revisit on another afternoon where we drive over on Friday, late afternoon dive with Freestyle, and spend the night at Nomad Ocean Adventure in prep for a day's diving further north Musandam.
April 26 in Musandam with Nomad Ocean Adventure
Which is what we had planned for this weekend. Andy had completed most of his PADI Advance o/w course already and we were piecemealing the remaining dives over our three dive weekend. We did some natural terrain navigation off Dibba Rock and then headed over the border for a boat dive and to complete the navigation on Saturday.
Octopus Rock
There was a group with us that specifically requested Octopus Rock this weekend and as we were flexible with Andy's course we were only too happy to oblige. Octopus, formerly known to BSAC divers as the Stack, is one of my favorite dives hereabouts, but it can also be challenging in a current. Plan A is to start at the south of the rock and fin around it to the north, then head west across the area replete with blue trigger-fish (red tooth, as Shannon calls them) and find the north-south ridge and follow that north and then back around to the south. It's good compass practice to keep track of where you are on that dive. The ridge tops out at about ten meters so if air is good I lead the dive east back to Octopus Rock to finish out on a 5 meter safety stop on the only place in the vicinity where you don't have to do that mid-water.
The current was a little stiff but allowed us to at least follow plan A. Plan B is to hide in the ridges to the east of the rock. They are deep but also interesting, and run generally east to west, so provide some shelter from a powerful current. If current allows, I like to do plan A as it's possible only under certain conditions, so I usually do plan B when I have to.
As can be seen from the video above, on our Plan A dive, we found crayfish, a pair of amorous nudibraches, and panoplies of fishlife including morays, triggerfish, and the ubiquitous batfish.
Ras Sanut (Wonder Wall)
Our last dive was planned as a PADI Underwater Navigation Adventure Dive. We were dropped in the back of the bay at Ras Sanut (south side) to give us shallow water while Shannon took the rest of the divers up to the point to work from deep back to shallow where we were, theoretically to cross in the middle. The depth was just right for navigation, but we were dropped onto a family of cow tail stingrays which seriously distracted our compass work. I managed to follow one who had lost his barb in an encounter with a bigger fish (hence it was safe to swim over the top of him) but I missed one buried in the sand, only cowtail protruding. I saw the tail, but it could have been a palm frond, and went over to investigate. I should have got my camera ready beforehand, because when I determined it was a ray and went for my camera, it took me for one of those bigger fish and in the blink of an eye emerged from the sand and disappeared in a burst of muscle flap, leaving me with only a cloud of sand, which I didn't bother to film. After completing the navigation we worked our way out toward the point, finding a turtle and morays, but no more rays. We complied with requests to keep our dive time to 50 min though our tanks ranged from 70 to over 100 bar. On our way to the surface we made shark fin and hammerhead signs for the camera, as requested by our dive leader, for PADI Shark Fin Awareness week (find ours in the snaps top and bottom of this page and at the end our our video). On surfacing we discovered we were almost at the point, so it would have been ideal to have had permission to do a 60 min dive ;-) Congratulations to Anand Mantri on completing his PADI Advanced Open Water certification in the course of a fun weekend.
PADI Aware Shark Fin snaps courtesy of Andy Mantri
April 18-19, 2014 on Dibba Rock, Musandam with Nomad Ocean Adventure
Our team: Vance, Bobbi, Nicki, and Chris G
My logged dives #1280-1283
It was an odd weekend, our first back home after our trip to Indonesia, and one where instinctively we might want to take time to recuperate at home Given her grandmotherly instincts, Bobbi actually wanted to
fly to Doha to help Gwenny celebrate her 5th or 6th
birthday, but I had arranged to teach an o/w course the weekend after
our return from Pulau Weh, a longstanding arrangement. But the grunge
that I had through the months of February and March, a bad bronchitis
that prevented both diving and enjoyment of life in that time, is now cropping up in
schools around the UAE. One of my students is a teacher and was
coming down with it on return from her trip to Nepal while we were in
Pulau Weh. So just days ahead of time she and her buddy had to cancel their trip.
The real inconvenience was that they
had been going to borrow a car and we had been hoping they could give
Nicki and Bobbi a lift and I could meet them at Nomad in Dibba,
driving there directly from Al Ain. Meanwhile Nicki's friend Chris
wanted to join as well, neither had cars, and as we had told Nomad to
expect a party of four, Bobbi and I decided to do what we could to
deliver on our original commitment. Plus, not having students meant
we could get in on a 3-dive trip to the “far north” Musandam,
past the Lima Rock area, to where we rarely dive. But to do this I had
to drive into Abu Dhabi from Al Ain to collect Bobbi and Nicki when
Bobbi got off work and from there go to get Chris on our way out of
town heading toward Dubai. To make a long story short, it took me a
couple of extra hours to get there and out of Abu Dhabi, but we all arrived in Dibba by
time for dinner, the only hiccup being a more assiduous than usual
inspection at the border of a bag and cool box in our car, but the rest were overlooked, we
passed muster, and arrived at Nomad without incident.
The following day we had a trio of cold
currenty dives. Actually our first dive off what Hassan the boatman
said he thought was Fanaku, we managed to pick a side of the island
that was sheltered from the current and have a nice dive where we
could see sand ledges going down well past 30 meters and a long a wall
going from about 15 meters to the sand, a pleasant dive (see the video above :-).
On the second dive (above) we cruised the
south side of Musandam Island and put in at a random place we now
call the washing machine. We had been spotting currents on the trip
out and we knew there would be no escaping them, we had been lucky on the
first dive. On this one I got in the water and found myself getting
washed in toward the island, a strange feeling since I expected to be
swept along the reef one way or the other. At the bottom we got into
a current where we had to use reef hooks to slow down but this soon
led us into a spiral some distance further on and we spent the last
part of the dive drifting in a wide spin like divers caught in a
black hole event horizon, moving around with it as we ascended.
The last dive we did at Temple Rock, a
tiny stack where it you were looking for current, that is where you
would find it. As we kitted up, the boat got pushed a bit south so
when we entered the water we had a swim to get back to the rock, and
we knew what would happen when we went down. The only way to go was
upcurrent to the north, to try and get around the rock and maybe ride
it back down the other side. It wasn't that bad, nothing dangerous,
and I had to pull myself along using my reef hook, but the worst part
was consuming air in the effort. Chris had decided to sit it out on
the boat, and Nicki and Bobbi were decidedly uncomfortable by the
time we reached the point where we could finally turn to the west to
get some relief as the current dissipated itself on the island before
splitting off on the west side to carry divers south again. At least
current brings animals. At one point I popped over a rock and found
myself in company with an eagle ray who was flashing his white
underside at me. It took me a moment to fumble out my camera and
catch him at about the time he became aware of me, so I have a good
film of an eagle ray close at hand, and then nothing but a contrail
as the powerful ray willed himself to disappear in an awsome display
of muscle.
Our best dive was the one on Lima Rock
the next morning. It was cold there, 23 degrees C, but visibility
was incredible, 15 or 20 meters perhaps. We were swimming along the
wall at 15 meters with great views out into the sand when Bobbi
higher on the reef found a scorpion fish and banged her tank. This
caused me to look around and notice a sting ray cruising the bottom,
not what she had intended to tell me about, but at the time it was
what I thought she was calling my attention to, and I went after it.
The ray didn't seem to mind my coming alongside, and the video shows
that it tolerated me nearby nicely.
We were diving the north side of Lima
because the south side was showing ripples of current swirling along
its length and heading out to sea off the eastern point, but as we
rounded that point we found calm water on the other side and that's
where we had put in. But we were now working our way back to the eastern
point and finding interesting nudibranchs and another sheltering
sting ray. We were just going into the down side of 100 bar when I
saw we were at the point. I saw that the ghost fish net was still in place there
and used it to crawl out along the rock to where I could feel the
current sweeping in from the other side. And there in that current were the
barracuda.
Last dive of the day, Ras Sanut, cold and visibility not so good, but not a waste of time, if the video is of any interest.
Bobbi took a couple of snaps of me taking these pictures :-)
April 6-9, 2014 PULAU WEH, Indonesia, with Lumba Lumba Divers
My logged dives #1273-1279
Bobbi and I had a holiday in April, and this was a good time to see hammerheads in Layang Layang, or Sparrow Island, in the Spratley's north of Borneo. It was complicated to arrange. There is just one dive resort on the tiny atoll in a dropoff in the Sulu Sea. We managed to get a booking but then we had to pay them in advance. They would only accept bank transfers, and we had no idea where we were sending the money, but at some inconvenience we managed to get our bank to transfer the money only to find from their side they still needed a payment slip. Even when they acknowledged that the money had been deposited to their bank they still needed this document to satisfy their accounting office. It defied reason but we gamely played along, sent the money in two installments, requested travel documents from their side, and meanwhile noticed that friends on Facebook were having their trips the week before ours cancelled. We figured, or hoped, it was the weather (cyclones in the area in the news saying how weather was slowing the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines jet under way at the time).
Some time later we discovered that the problem was with the missing Malaysian airliner, but not so much the weather. The search effort was taking all available military materiel including the plane that does a periodic test flight on Layang Layang runway to certify its continued use for Malaysia Air Wing jets, This plane was re-prioritized to the search and as a result the runway did not get an overdue inpection. Meanwhile Layang Layang resort was taking money from customers and then telling everyone there was a problem with the runway, but without any details what the problem was.
Our cancellation notice came a week before we were due to depart. Initial reaction was sheer disappointment, followed by what about the money, and that quickly overtaken in a scramble to find an alternative destination. By now we had purchased tickets to Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu, so we focused on two places on Borneo on short notice. Both promised to send details, neither did, though the one in Malbul eventually sent word we could still go there on the day we were set to depart (alas, way too late). These options were of interest mainly because we could have used our tickets to Kota Kinabalu, but in the end we blew off that portion and flew instead from KL to Banda Aceh on the north tip of Sumatra and then caught a boat to Pulau Wei, where friends at Nomad Ocean Adventure had worked and could not recommend the place highly enough.
I used to dive a lot around Abu Dhabi and I can tell you that there are barracuda, turtles, many kinds of sting rays, sharks, sea snakes, eels, cuttlefish, batfish, grouper, and much more living there, but on a typical dive, if you are expecting to see any of those you are likely to be disappointed. The diving is nice, and chance of interesting animals exists, but it's that way anywhere, if you work there you see everything, but when visiting a few days, you are lucky to catch a glimpse of a fraction of what is there in the water around you. Some visit in good conditions, great visibility, and hit it lucky. Some get poor vis, rough seas or debilitating currents, and see almost nothing.
We had smooth flying to Banda Aceh, got a taxi to the harbor using the dispatcher at the airport, caught the ferry, easily got a cab from there at what we found later was the standard price, and on arrival in Lumba Lumba after 24 hours of travel, found a well run and relaxing dive center. Lumba Lumba means dolphin in Bahasa (and we did see a pod or two from the boat). The owners Marjan and Ton have built up a loyal clientele over the years, and we dived with many of these satisfied customers there on return visits who told us this place was worth coming back to over and over. Our own experience, jaded divers that we are, was less sanguine, but still quite pleasant, no complaints.
We had one great dive where we saw sharks and a flotilla of devil rays overhead. On all dives we saw octopus, a treat, and off the house reef we found one just sitting in the sand trying to ignore us, but preening there for as long as we stayed and aimed my GoPro camera at him (and another one, when I scratched the sand outside his lair, twice blew a jet of water at me, in a go away gesture – second time I got the hint and left him alone).
The long octopus encounter is in the video above. That octopus was on the house reef, where the video below was taken.
more videos forthcoming
We saw the lovely panoply of usual reef fish and some large trevaly and plenty of small animals like cleaner shrimp and tiny crabs living on anenome. There were a lot of moray eels of all kinds (including one shy black and white blotchy one) lots of scorpion fish, macro life everywhere, amazing creatures down to the size of a grain of rice, nudibranchs, colorful slugs the dive guides pointed out as nudibranchs though they were not, banded shrimp, tiny pipefish, razorfish dancing upright, garden eels slipping into the sand whenever approached, blue spotted rays, titan, blue, and clown triggerfish, creatures everywhere, all to be seen in a relaxing place at a very economical price for diving (made more economical with a generous instructor discount), but in our short stay though we were consistently treated to pleasant, challenging, and interesting dives, apart perhaps from the devil rays, we saw nothing amazingly phenomenal.
Which is to say no mantas, leapord sharks, wrasse, turtles, whale sharks, or megamouth, all of which are supposed to live here (on our last dive at the Canyon Marjan's group saw a Napoleon, just as they were surfacing, but it eluded Bobbi and I, who surfaced just before).
It's not surprising that we didn't see all the creatures we wanted to, or that not every dive was a wow dive, on just a 4-day stay. There were tricky currents, a bane of this place preventing our entry into some of the best parts of the best dive sites, guides being conservative, favoring diver safety over adrenaline rushes, and maybe they were protecting us from ourselves. It's great to be on home turf, where you know the sites and know the currents and can judge if you just push through this one you'll hit nirvana on the other side. We were turned back at the door of Nirvana time after time, or maybe we were saved from death by drowning, we'll never know. We weren't there long enough to get to know the guides or for them to know us, so we dived conservatively, and saw quite a lot, but not as much as we imagined we likely would have seen if we had been able to fulfill our dream of diving Layang Layang.
Would we come back? If given the opportunity yes, but infrastructure in the area is limited, food choices are limited, there is no alcohol except Bintang available at the dive center (nor wifi except that available at the dive center, open 8 a.m. To 8 pm,but free for divers) Given the local culture, the dive center was a great oasis, and locals were tolerant to the point of overlooking cans of take-away Bintang consumed at local warungs, but for those seeking a sybaritic life between dives, Aceh might be a little Spartan or just the cure you need, all good for you of course, and I hope I've weighted the scales fairly here.
Overall we enjoyed it. Nice diving, nice people, competent dive facility, world class diving, a little remote and lacking in on-shore variety, but if you like to sleep :-)) and prefer to get to know local cultures, and support one in need after the calamity on Christmas eve 2004, you'll find a tolerant and welcoming one here. The diving is great for families and those learning to dive. It's also good for experienced divers, so I'm trying to be informative here, not at all complaining.
The dive center has accommodation It was full when we were there, but they kindly found us a house on the hillside behind the center with great ocean views on the veranda, just $15 a night, owned by a fellow names Mus whose house was ajacent to his rental unit. Mus arranged for a cab to come pick us up from the dive center our last morning of diving there. We were flying the following morning and overnighting at Freddies, a place in Sebang whose South African owner assiduously answers email, which is how we were able to arrange to stay there. So for $15 we got driven to Freddie's which is a beautifully situated and delightfully laid back place, passing for fancy in those parts, with bungaloes build into a hillside overlooking a beach. There was a bar there and decent food, and while you are enjoying what you like the staff there arrange for a car to come get you next morning bright and early, hand you your ferry ticket before bed, serve a great buffet breakfast and send you on your way for a bill for all just mentioned including accommodation of about $65. And the driver who took us to the ferry pier used his mobile to arrange a taxi from the Banda Aceh harbor to the airport at the normal published price. We texted our names and when we arrived off the boat there was man on the other side bearing a sign with our names, to take us there no problem. So it seems complicated with the boat and plane transfers, but on the ground we found the people made it easy for us and detected no attempt at ripoff.
And it was a beautiful day out as well, and when we arrived in Kuala Lumpur we got to meet with Fizzy, recently with Nomad in UAE, and one of the people who convinced us to give Pulau Weh a try.
Feb 14, 2014 on Dibba Rock, Freestyle Divers; 15th in Musandam with Nomad
My logged dives #1270-1272
We've been busy and it's been cold this winter in UAE, so our first dive of the year turned out to be a Valentine's day treat with a dive off Dibba Rock, just Bobbi and I on the boat, and long-time friend Andrew Moore giving us the lift out to the rock. Dibba Rock is showing slow signs of recovery, very slow since the double whammy of cyclone Gonu and red tide many years ago decimated the coral and wildlife there, but life is returning. We were diving at low tide so the currents left us alone to find a flounder in the sand and barracudas in the shallows around the rock, where we meandered in search of sharks, which we didn't find. We found a flat brown delta-shaped ray in the sand. We'd put Bobbi in with 130 bar and a small tank against my 200 with the same 12 liter tank, so for once she ran low on air before I did. After an hour diving there, we'd rounded the rock and were getting chilled in the 18 degree cold, a challenge for my 5 mm wetsuit with a lycra underneath. Andrew told us he'd seen a devil ray breach the water while waiting for us on the boat. Afterwards we went over the border to Nomad for our Valentine's dinner, meeting Luke Ingles there to share our table and small doses of pleasure we had managed to get across the border. We haven't been hassled there our past several trips across, but many people are leaving their alcohol at home in UAE rather than bother with the sometimes assiduous Sharjah border police, which I guess is how they wish it.
My GoPro yielded only one video from this whole weekend. I'm not sure what was wrong with it. The memory card seemed to have lots of space. It might have been not fully charged. On the positive side we did capture this cameo of a beautiful day in Musandam, just me, Antonio, Luke, and Bobbi on the boat
Next day, Bobbi, Luke, and I had the boat to ourselves and were assigned newcomer to Nomad staff Antonio from Valencia to accompany us on our dives. Since it was just us, we got to specify the dive sites and despite the full moon, suggesting possible currents, I selected Octopus Rock as our first destination. We hit it lucky, high tide and no current, and I got to show Antonio the rock under ideal conditions. We went in on the south edge and moved northeast toward the deep trenches we sometimes hide in when there is a current, but with easy conditions we crossed the north edge to the west side of the rock, where all the blue trigger fish like to hang out. VIsibility was maybe 8 or 9 meters, so we could easily see the ridge to the west and follow it along to the north, rounding it at its deep end. From there we followed it south back side from the rock and rounded back to its eastern side. We found bat fish at cleaning stations and a lot of moray eels. Luke was running low on air and that ridge is a little deep for a safety stop, meaning everyone has to come off it when one person is low on air, so I led a return to Octopus Rock on an easterly compass heading across deep sand. We picked up the south edge of the rock, where we had started the dive, just as Luke was dipping below 50 bar and so we rose to 5 meters and counted down 3 minutes. Antonio thanked me for the guided tour and in return had shown us a remarkable large nudibranch, Plocamopherus margaretae, photographed by Valles & Gosliner, 2006 and pictured here: http://www.nudipixel.net/photo/00037563/ The photo credits say copyright is with the authors and doesn't specify whether they allow reproduction of their photos online. If I get a moment I'll write and ask them for permission. For our second dive we selected Dibba Rock. Since the current was so favorable we planned to check out the eastern corner and do it from one of the faces toward the end of the rock. We approached by boat from the north but found that side almost in shadow so we opted to dive on the south side, for better light. On a morning dive the north side would be the better choice since there is much of interest all the way to the eastern edge, whereas on the south, you have to move for 5 min along a rock wall with little to see on it, a significant amount of time on your dive. In retrospect it would have been better to have put in on the north and rounded the rock in the gap and ride the current west on the south side. But the boatman predicted east current and the south is prettier in sunlight so that's what we did. I don't recall that we found much there that we hadn't seen already that day, except for a large honeycomb moray. We moved east at around 20 meters when around the edge where the long wall starts, we hit a back current, and with Luke at about 70 bar, we had no choice but to turn back. We moved into safety stop position and when it was time I conducted Luke to the surface, instructing through signals Bobbi and Antonio to carry on. At the surface, the boatman was right there so I easily found bubbles and rejoined my buddies below. But Luke need not be concerned. It was pleasant diving, chilly but effortless, and apart from the pleasure of it, we saw little more of great interest. My GoPro wasn't functioning, probably because the memory card was full. It was hard to interpret the cryptic displays mid-dive, and now that I'm home I haven't been able to locate it. I might have a video or two. When I find it I'll post them here.
The Seychelles has long been on my bucket list, since it was one of my backtracker travel options in 1974. From Mombassa I could have hitch-hiked to South Africa or headed east 3rd class or worse on a boat to Bombay that called in to the Indian Ocean isles. I ended up heading west as far as Ghana, but reflecting on this, I'm sitting on the Lanai at Belle Amie
guest house in La Digue, a place I highly recommend if you are diving Seychelles (clean and comfortable, nice family running it, can arrange your meals but near a delicious take-away, 10 min walk into town, the cheapest place I managed to find in Seychelles at 40 euros a night, and right across from the dive center). I arrived here yesterday on the
boat that costs nearly $100 from Mahe, at dusk, in the rain. I was
expecting to find few cars but there were taxis at the jetty and I got one to
Belle Amie. They lent me an umbrella at the guest house so I could go
out and get something to eat. Traffic in the cobbled streets outside
splashed through the puddles, most of it bicycles with riders
carrying umbrellas, a happy improvement over Mahe, where you really
have to watch out for incessant traffic when walking or running on the poorly lit country roads.
At my guest house, they recommended the Gala take-away with meals for $5 but, when I got there I found there were ten meals ahead of me
(someone with a big order) it came in styrofoam and was not what I
felt like having at the moment. I hadn't eaten all day because I never bothered to
stock my self-catered apt on Mahe, I'd been diving all morning my last day on Mahe, run
into town to get a boat ticket, returned to Beau Vallon and retrieved my gear from the dive shop, got
a taxi to take me home to Belle Ombre and wait while I packed, got taken to
the harbor, and ended up in La Digue with nothing in my stomach all
day apart from coffee on the dive boat. So when the rain slackened a
bit I walked toward town and ended up in a popular creole restaurant,
great octopus salad, and decent fish curry, washed down with
overpriced SeyBrew. Later I worked out that beer in supermarkets is half what you pay in restaurants, so a pleasant sundown routine was to get a couple of bottles, take them to a rock on a beach with a sunset view, open them the way the locals do, and, well, sundown, go figgah. And tasty creole-curry takeaway meals were half price as those in restaurants, as good or better, and just as filling, so rather than sit alone and wait for service and pretentious bills at the end, I preferred the option favored by many local people.
Beer at the restaurant was 50 rupees for small
33 cl bottles, a little less than $5. Here on the lanai I am
drinking from the corner shop for half that. I'd been planning all
day to go to the big hotel across the road and pay what ever it cost
me for beer in order to use free wifi, but when I got there I found
wifi no working, because of de wind! No telling what beer with wifi
costs, but this morning I had a coffee there (next to the dive shop)
and shelled out $6 for that. Somewhat outrageous. Where I'm staying
after tomorrow, beer is $5 and wifi is $5 for an hour. If beer at the
fancy hotel is less than $10 then it's the best bargain because it
comes with unlimited wifi, in theory. In practice there is no wifi.
This is Seychelles, mon.
La Digue, Ave Maria
The diving on La Digue was pretty good
compared to Mahe. Here they have animals. The dive guide Michel led
us to a place where there was an octopus only he could see. He
started scratching in the sand in front of its lair and some
tentacles emerged. Cool, and we saw another octopus later in the
dive. But before that a shark meandered across our path, white tip.
We saw a number of them. I followed one around with my GoPro for
almost a minute. At one point I saw a turtle and went for it. The
turtle was in no way fazed by divers poking GoPros at its beak. He
was more interested in things that resembled food that came within
reach. Divers seemed to be neither here nor there. I got
good videos of this one.
I wrote this in an email to my wife: from
Mahe
-------------------------------------------
I think Seychelles is a bit over-rated
from what I've seen here. It looks like a lot of places we've been
and lived (like Hawaii). I did two dives today on Mahe. The first one was
to a wreck. They forgot the GPS, but took us in the water anyway,
couldn't find the wreck, put us back on the boat, went back to
harbor, got the GPS, and then we did 12 min on the wreck before 2nd
dive deco started to kick in, two dives to 35 meters just an hour or
two apart. It was like a double size Inchcape (a deep wreck in UAE), nothing phenomenal.
The afternoon dive on a coral reef was silty, nothing there to write
home about.
One thing though, the people here are
phenomenally friendly. The place I stay, La Cachette in Belle Ombre, the owners Paul and Agnela are being really good to
me, gave me too much scotch last night (Christmas) and cooking birthday dinner
for me tonight. The way I ended up here was also through making a
booking on booking.com, for a place that was in fact full, but once you get
in the network, kekua kicks in and they figure something out for you.
\-------------------------------------------
Diving Mahe
The dive the next day off Mahe was
better, but not up to expectations, unless one's expectations had
taken the weather into consideration. We were told of a destination
the day before that sounded super! But when we got in the boat we
were told we were going to a wreck. Waves were roller coaster right
outside the harbor and the wreck turned out to be one not far from
the one we had visited the day before. This one was a little
shallower and had a mooring line on it, so they could find it without
GPS. It was also near the reef so when the Canadian couple I was
buddied with went low on air we headed there and ended up with a 40
min dive, me just south of 100 bar. It was pretty silty. We headed
into port to change tanks in calmer waters and have our coffee and
then headed out to our second dive called Grand Bazaar, just south of
the place where were told we were going originally that day. Here the
vis was better, and we had the fortune to see an eagle ray which I
got some shots of. First time it went into flight and I followed fast and
I think I was being blamed for chasing it, though these things always
power on when they become aware of divers. But we saw it again, or
at least I did, and this time I was very quiet and got some pictures
of it as is rooted under a rock. I tapped my tank twice and when it
finally decided to move, I don't think many others saw it, though the
dive guide went into spear position when it finally made a run for blue ocean.
Another day dawns in La Digue, the
rains from yesterday are supplanted by grey cloud cover, eventually
by bright sun. Sleep was interrupted by a car stopping outside with
loud bass boom box at 3 a.m but it moved on. I was getting up at 6 to
try and be at the park entry at 7:00 where the big turtles were on La
Digue, on L'Union Estate, which charged an entry of 100 rupees, or 10
euros (worth 150 rupees; or $15, i.e. three dollars more than 100 rupees).
My preferred mode of transport at that hour was jogging. I had made
a jog to the park entrance the day before, late afternoon, but was
told I would be best off to come next day, because the entry was for
a day pass and the turtles were more active in the morning. So I
turned up right when they told me the day before they opened at 7:00 but found the gate closed but for a small
pedestrian entry, and was told by the gate-man that the park didn't really open till 7:30. But he didn't prevent my entry, he told me I could go “there”
and I could pay “there”. “There” however, was not
straightforward. I jogged into the park and headed for the beaches
but there was no one about and no turtles around. I started to take
in the interesting rock formations in the park as I jogged and
eventually up a sand track found a signpost for Anse Source d'Argent
so I took that path, the only one signposted. Down a sandy
footpath lined with vendor booths (no vendors at this hour) I finally
came out on a postcard sized beach that I recognized from actual postcards
as being a popular and ridiculously crowded one during the day. I had
my GoPro so I could film the turtles I had come to see and I switched it on and took a
panorama of this archetypal Seychelles beach, with no one on it.
Back up the footpath I found a vendor
just setting up who told me the turtles were back the way I had come
so I tried all the beaches I could find, but still no turtles.
Eventually I arrived back at the gate where the man who had known
little English had been replaced by a lady who knew more but still
could hardly explain where 'there' was. I asked if she had a map.
She said I was the first person ever to come here and not see the
turtles. As we argued over my stupidity and their lack of signage, I
came to realize that the turtles were in a pen near the big rock in
the middle of the park. So they were zoo turtles, not at all on the beach, and I decided I
didn't need to pay significant money to see them and ran back to get
supermarket food before reporting for diving at 8:30.
La Digue, Marianne
That was the first thing to go wrong
that morning. The second thing was on our first dive when we were
put in a foursome where the guy with the camera and his girlfriend
totally ignored the rest of us and refused to keep up or make any
attempt to contact Lana, the divemaster, so a lot of our dive was
spent twiddling our thumbs waiting for them, and Lana at times having
to go back and see where they were. The next thing was, when sharks
started to appear, and I thought I would like to video them, it
occurred to me to wonder if I had shut the GoPro off after my beach
shot. Of course I hadn't so I had no battery to speak of. This wasn't
so bad on the first dive. I saw two sharks, one that came in front
of me but turned tail quickly, and another in amongst the jacks in
the grey blue yonder. Neither was easily video'd so I didn't feel the
loss. At some point our dive guide Lana pointed up and my buddy saw
the flight of eagle rays but I didn't, nada, niete, and again no lost
video. We saw a giant tuna pass overhead, but again, not really ripe
for a closeup.
It was on the second dive that I really missed
the GoPro. This dive was super. Both dives were in the Marianne part
of the park. The first thing we saw was a turtle, but I had turtle
video from the day before, so ma'alesh. Then we came across a meter long hulking
barracuda, ok, he was photogenic, but I didn't feel that concerned.
Next we saw in a school of unicorn fish a humphead parrotfish, still
a little murky. Then in the sand there appeared a guitar shark, or in
fact, I think it was one of those odd creatures Bobbi and I saw in
Mozambique in 2009. This time I settled alongside and pulled out my
camera and got a few blinks out of it before it switched off, just as
the animal was leaving. You'd think this was enough for one dive but
then a shark appeared and I swam up to it just in time to catch it
grazing the top of a reef. Andrea, the Azzurra dive center owner or
manager, was leading a superb dive but he was about to show us more.
He beckoned us upward and around a rock where we found a couple of
sharks swimming to and fro. Then there were was a napoleon wrasse
there as well. Then a turtle swam into view. Then sharks started
swimming about as humphead parrotfish came into the fish soup. Again
I managed to get a few beeps out of my GoPro but nothing that would
capture that moment. Slap forehead (and enjoy)!
La Digue, Three Sisters
Next day we dived at Three Sisters in poor vis, and a poor way to end the holiday, as the following day would be spent on a boat to Mahe and a New Years Eve street party there, flying next day back home to UAE (flying on Christmas and New Year's days made the flights surprisingly affordable). Here's the video from the last day:
East Jun (north side) and Sira Island (south and north) Bobbi and I with Anna and Steve Elwood
Dec 15, 2013
My logged dives #1262-1263
Seasons holidays are here and Bobbi and I stumbled home from work Thursday in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain (respectively) and slept soundly and late, then spent Friday getting our act together before going camping Friday night with good friends in the dunes near Al Khazna, Steve Elwood on guitar. When we awoke we drove home and then on to Oman Saturday and checked in at the Suwaiq Motel. Then we drove Sunday morning to Al Sawadi beach on the new coastal road to Muscat from the Millennium Hotel. At the moment, the road is only open in splotches, and most of the driving is along the coast line on roads replete with speed bumps and mobile phone numbers sprayed on beach huts that serve as shelters for fishing boats. It's very earthy and reminiscent of old Oman, but the bridges are being built marking the promise of a new super highway.
The weather was sunny and cool. Water temperatures were perfect for 5 mm wetsuits. The vis was poor, a little brown in the water, but we could still see plenty of animals. Our first dive was the north side of little Jun to the east of big Jun. This was where we saw the leopard shark last time we were here, in the far east corner. Roshan, same dive guide as we had before, gives excellent briefings. In this one he told us (among other things) if we saw snapper fish, there we should look for leopard sharks.
This prospect kept Bobbi and I down in the sand at 15 meters peering into the rubble for rays and sharks. We found several honeycomb morays, including one out in the open who impressed us with his ripple-swimming skills as he looked about for shelter (from us, whom he regarded us as neither dangerous enemies nor food). We started coming on snappers about the time Steve ran low on air, so he and Anna went to more shallow diving while Bobbi and I stayed in the sand. The snappers were running riot, till at one point, I remember orange from the swirling snappers and their color impinging on the sand, as suddenly the rocks had become sparse. I had the impression of orange tornado to heighten expectations of the leopard shark that suddenly materialized before us. Time for GoPro!
The second dive was on Sira Island, starting at the south slightly into the current, but in the aquarium area that is so beautiful in clear seas. Rounding to the north to head east with the current we saw a small ray, a crayfish, a cuttlefish, a turtle, pipefish, some yellow mouthed morays, and a nudibranch right at the end of the dive. Nice diving. Only 4 hours from Al Ain, we'll be back.
