Diving - The adventure continues!

Indonesia April 2016 - Bunaken

April 2016 saw my biggest diving adventure so far, although trips to Scotland have been up there.

A year or more after booking, the club was off to dive in Indonesia. North Sulewesi, to be precise, with a week in Bunaken (wall diving), followed by a week in Lembeh ('muck diving').

After a couple of dives in Vobster in March, just to blow out the cobwebs, we all arrived at Heathrow early one Friday ready for the 13 hour flight to Singapore, from where we would take another flight to the Indonesian city of Manado and then a short boat ride out to Bunaken Island, the centre of a marine nature reserve, featuring epic walls and colourful reefs.

The flight, on a Singapore Airlines A380 was comfortable, but long and we had a few hours hanging around Changi airport before boarding a Silk Air plane to Manado. This flight was 3.5 hours, but seemed like no time at all after the 13 hours on the A380.

Our drive from Manado airport to port was pretty eye opening. The driving was chaotic, but mostly tolerant and effective - The 'right' side of the road and lanes seemed a bit of a loose concept, but there was little horn blowing from anyone.

We arrived in the port and all our dive gear and luggage was loaded aboard a narrow wooden boat and we took the short crossing to Bunaken.

As we approached, we saw very little except mangrove, but then, through a gap we spied the corrugated iron roofed wooden buildings that would be our home for a week.

We were greeted by the local team from Two Fish Divers, who assigned us our chalets and made sure our luggage was delivered - It wasn't going to be a holiday where we had to do much for ourselves.

The resort is very much a diver's resort, with little else on offer except a (very warm) pool and a couple of villages 20 minutes and an hour's walk away, which didn't seem to offer anything worth the walk, except a view of how the locals live. Bunaken was originally a fishing economy, but most people now work for or on one of the dive resorts as fishing is restricted in the park.

We ate dinner, had a few Bintangs (which was to become a regular event, much to the amusement of staff in both resorts - We didn't drink a LOT, but I guess 12 people drinking two or three beers each night was not the norm and we were told that their supplier even asked why they were suddenly ordering 'so much'!) and then mainly had early nights after 26 hours of travelling and being God only knows where in terms of timezone offset (I'm reliably informed it was 7 hours ahead of the UK, but had it been 3 weeks, I'd have believed it!).

The next day were up for breakfast at 7 - Whilst we didn't need to do much for ourselves, the luxury of a lie-in was going to be reserved for our return to the UK!

We setup our gear for the first dive, to make sure it had all arrived and was correctly working, which, with the exception of a zip disintegrating on one of my boots, it seemed to be. Remarkably, no-one discovered they'd forgotten fins, BCDs, wetsuits or even masks or torches!

We boarded a very similar boat to that we'd travelled from Manado on to take on our first dive at 8AM.

This first dive was to a wall, given the name "Alung Banua".

I rolled back in off the side of the boat and immediately felt that the shorty wetsuit I bought along was going to be fine. The vis was excellent, too, with 30+M of clear blue water.

We dropped down to about 25M (hitting a max of 29) and then continued along the wall, which was smothered in corals, fish and lots of other life.

Our guide pointed out a Ghost Pipefish, but that was soon forgotten when we saw a TURTLE! Wow, what a brilliant first dive, I thought.

...until the next one, at Muka 2. It was another wall, and we didn't descend quite as deep, but really, it didn't matter too much as we saw plenty - I counted 6 turtles on this dive alone, so many, in fact, that it was only when I checked my photos that I remembered seeing a couple of Eagle Rays too!

We did encounter some up currents on this dive (initially I thought I was underweighted) and we were all having to get used to the way the wall sucked you in if you got close to it, but those were smal problems.

The third dive of the day, after lunch back at the resort, was at Muka Kampung (or Carry on Camping as we christened it). As well as another 7 (or 8) turtles, we saw Nudibranchs (A Hairy Squat Lobster was one I recall), Triggerfish, Jacks and some Pygmy Seahorses that were near invisible to the naked eye.

Back at the resort, most of us hopped into the very warm pool to relax and then, after a beer, had dinner and discussed our first day's diving and no-one had any quibbles about the day, it had been everything we hoped for.

After chatting to the guides and some other staff (Yvonne Pelz is their Tech Instructor and helped a lot), we arranged to dive the WW2 wreck on the morning of day 2.

This sit quite deep for recreational diving, with the propellor down at about 35M. Some of us only had insurance to 30M (me included), but with great vis, and being a decent sized ship, it was easy enough to explore the deck and stay higher whilst checking the prop from above and behind. After a while on the wreck we made our way up a sandy slope, with coral 'islands' of life - In itself this was great diving and you could easily have done the wreck and this as two dives as we saw Crocodile Fish, Razor Fish, tiny crabs and all types of smaller reef fish (Clown Fish, etc).

The second dive of the day proved to be a real highlight for me, my first shark!

No sooner had we dropped in (This might have been one of the dives I did a forward roll in on, as we were getting a bit bored with just rolling, so an impromptu competition for the most dramatic entry soon developed) than our guide pointed to a small cave on the wall and held his hand to forehead, fingers up, thumb against his face - The universal sign for "SHARK".

I was right with him, so peered in and sure enough, resting on the floor of the cave, was a 5 or 6 feet long White Tip Reef Shark! It wasn't doing anything or seemingly going anywhere, but heh, it was my first shark sighting!

I backed off to let others look and rounded a slight corner in the wall. Heading straight at me was a Green Turtle, it swam around and passed me (I had to move out of its way) and headed straight for the cave with the shark in! I wondered what would happen, expecting the Turtle to cede ground to the Shark, but it just manouevered in and settled down in the cave with the shark.

We could see Tuna hunting in shoals of fish off the wall and saw a Green Frogfish amongst the profusion of fish swimming up and down the wall. As on most dives in Bunaken, it was heaving with fish and at times I'd just hang and watch the thousands of fish swarm around me. Some in large shoals, others just one or two of a particular type, swimming around.

Celah Celah, the last dive of the second day was a little murky compared with the other dives (and this happened a couple of other afternoons, so whether it was the time or day or location, I'm not sure). Once again, though, it was a wall dive with the water teeming with fish and turtles - By now we were almost getting blase about them!

The following morning at Sachiko was an 'interesting' dive.

We dropped in and Adam and I moved off along the wall as the guide indicated, but without noticing immediately, we were caught in a down current and by the time I realised I'd hit 38M! Adam and I swam up and out of the down current before going any deeper, but had moved some way ahead of the guide as a result. It later turned out that they had turned around and gone the other way as a result of the current.

Being pretty independent as BSAC divers, Adam and I just moved on along the wall, expecting the others to catch us in time, pausing now and then to see if they did.

In the end, as we started to get to our air limit, Adam popped up his DSMB and we explored a shallow reef for a little while. By the time we surfaced the boat was right alongside us, having realised we were far from the others.

They picked us up and then travelled back about a mile to collect everyone else - No harm, no foul, although the 30M limit on my insurance was well and truly broken, but fortunately I had no cause to try and make a claim on it.

The second dive was, by contrast, quite uneventful (almost forgetable by Bunaken standards according to my logbook), but again lots of fish and apparently quite a few turtles.

After lunch, we rattled down a dirt road on a motor-tricycle truck thing(!) to the local village as the tide was too far out for the boat to pick us up in the resort.

The first 30 minutes or so of the dive (at Lekuan 2) were murky, like the previous afternoon, but it picked up after that and we spotted Eagle and Blue Spotted Sting rays as well as a number of turtles, both swimming and resting on the wall, one with a Remora attached to his shell.

My logbook says
"Good dive after quiet start".

Most evenings fell into a routine of a quick unwind in the pool, a beer and then a leisurely dinner before another beer or two, chatting over the day, planning for the next or reviewing photos and video.

A few of us decided to rise early the next day and re-visit Sachiko as an extra dive. Supposedly we'd see more hunting and bigger predators at that time of day and those of us up at 5:30 for a 5:45 start were not to be disappointed.

We descended to about 30M and drifted along the wall, gradually working our way up. It slopes here rather than being vertical and we saw an Eagle Ray some way below us, before a couple of White Tip Sharks passed 5M or so below us. We also saw hunting Barracuda, Tuna and couple of large turtles, a huge Napoleon Wrasse and a shoal of Batfish, as well as the usual cast of thousands of reef fish.

After annoying those who didn't come with our tales of a great dive over breakfast, it was back out for the first scheduled dive of the day.

Today we started at Fukui, a mostly shallowish coral reef, with abundant life. Almost immediately our guide spotted a White Tip hiding under a table coral and throughout the dive it was hard to know where to look or point your camera. There were Tuna, Clownfish, Wrasse, Conger, Batfish and many, many other varieties.

This was a great dive and I could have happily dived there all day!

Of course, though, there were other places to dive and dive 2 was at Tanjung. This was another wall and a little murky, although hardly poorly vis.

We saw (more or less, most people could only really see detail when the photos were shown around in the bar before dinner!) more Pygmy Seahorses, a large Pufferfish and more turtles amongst the usual colourful profusion of fish. The murkiness, though, meant it was hard to see out into the blue, so nothing big was spotted.

After lunch Paul and I had what I felt was the worst dive in Bunaken. We dived as a 4 with Louise (an Ocean Diver with limited experience) and a guide, but the guide suggested Paul and I make our own way as Louise struggled with her ears a little. Somehow we managed to end up away from the coral making up this dive at Alung Bamua Muka and after a fair start, there didn't seem to be much to see, so Paul put up his DSMB and we surfaced after only 45 minutes. Others had more luck, most of them seeing 3 Eagle rays up close.

A number of people did the "Mandarin Dive" as twilight fell, where they sat on the seabed as Mandarin Fish did their courtship. I didn't, as I'd done an early morning dive, and to be honest, although some seemed quite impressed, I didn't think it looked that exciting, so I decided to skip the one I had planned later in the week and with some others booked another early morning dive the next day.

We did, however, enjoy a stunning sunset as we waited for the Mandarin Divers to return to the boat.

The second early morning dive wasn't a match for the first, although we did saw, at some distance, a White Tip Shark, a number of Turtles and a huge variety of other fish.

I wouldn't say it was a disappointment, though, and I rather enjoyed having another pre-breakfast dive under my belt!

The dives that day were at Pangalingan (nice wall, a bit of current), Mandolin (LOTS of current at the end of the dive which was quite enjoyable and exciting as we flew along the edge of the wall) and finally, Tanjung Pariji, which was our final Bunaken dive.

My logbook for here says
"Started on slope, looking at fish and Nudibranchs along wall. Big Pufferfish and loads of little worms, crabs, slugs and other critters. Ended on shallow reef"
"Nice end to Bunaken and very typical of the diving here".

Personally, I was sad to be leaving Bunaken. The week's diving had been wonderful, I'd seen more Turtle than I could imagine, a number of sharks and all sorts of gloriously wonderful fish.

The team at Bunaken had been friendly, helpful and adaptive to our requirements and I'd recommend a stay at Two Fish Bunaken to anyone looking experience the wonderful wall diving here.

Of course, Bunaken was just the first part of our trip...

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