Labuanbajo to Sayabur Dive Site - Flores, Indonesia...
We met one of our guides, Nemur, at Reefseekers who had a minibus take us down to the dock to catch the boat. We stopped at an island where we picked up the owner of Reefseekers, Ernest, and all the dive gear we would be using. The island he lived on was quite beautiful. He and his wife had bought the island and moved there about 3-years earlier. They had a quite a fight to becoming established on the island in this area due to the antics of one particular person, even though they had lived in other areas of Indonesia for 15-years. Ernest is originally from Scotland and his wife from the UK.
They are building a resort with 10-bungaloos on their island. They hope it will be finished by May 2007. If it is, I'm sure it will be quite nice and, picking up on his keen interest in quality foods, I'm sure the cuisine will be quite good.
This boat was quite a bit faster than the previous one for the 3-day, 1-night trip and it made a big a difference. We got out to the dive area much quicker than we would have and cruising you had always had a nice breeze from the boats' cruising speed.
As we rode out to the dive site, Ernest gave us an excellent briefing on what we'd be looking for. He loved small creatures, like shrimp, crustaceans, nudibranchs and the like, and wanted to educate us on the sea life that most of us miss in the quest to see sharks and turtles. He had several fish books and showed us pictures and explained some of the behavior of the creatures. He was quite educational and often quite funny in mimicing the behavior of the creatures. This was definitely the best pre-dive preparation we have had. Most of the other dive shops take you out, drop you off, lead you somewhere, pointing out a few things along the way, but depend on you to know what the creatures are and how they behave.
The first dive was at Sabyur Ketchel - Horseshoe. We dove down to the sandy bottom and rested there for a while observing some of the more shy and smaller creatures. We saw a "grove" of garden eels that rise out of the sand when they are not threatened and float vertically, tethered in the sand. We also saw gobies, cleaner shrimp, including one that Ernest let clean his mouth (taking his mouthpiece out and opening his mouth to let it enter.) We also saw large bump headed parrotfish, a juvenile sweet lips and I spied a blue spotted sting ray. (For divers, max. depth was 20-meters, bottom time 60-minutes, Ernest was the divemaster).
The second dive was at Sabyur Ketchel - The Wall. I saw my first nudibranchs, a ghost pipe fish, a moon razor fish and many lobsters. (For divers, max. depth was 21-meters, bottom time 57-minutes, Ernest was the divemaster). We had very good visibility for both dives.
That evening Hendrik, Smeeta, John and I went to the other "tourist" restaurant mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. A 3rd one mentioned was not open. I had snapper with garlic butter and it was very good! I think Kendrik and Smeeta taught us a card game called "shithead" which I thought was quite complicated, lot of rules and wildcards and things you had to remember. I had some of the local palm whiskey (60% alcohol), called Arak or Sope, and my ability to play the new game deteriorated rapidly.
We met one of our guides, Nemur, at Reefseekers who had a minibus take us down to the dock to catch the boat. We stopped at an island where we picked up the owner of Reefseekers, Ernest, and all the dive gear we would be using. The island he lived on was quite beautiful. He and his wife had bought the island and moved there about 3-years earlier. They had a quite a fight to becoming established on the island in this area due to the antics of one particular person, even though they had lived in other areas of Indonesia for 15-years. Ernest is originally from Scotland and his wife from the UK.
They are building a resort with 10-bungaloos on their island. They hope it will be finished by May 2007. If it is, I'm sure it will be quite nice and, picking up on his keen interest in quality foods, I'm sure the cuisine will be quite good.
This boat was quite a bit faster than the previous one for the 3-day, 1-night trip and it made a big a difference. We got out to the dive area much quicker than we would have and cruising you had always had a nice breeze from the boats' cruising speed.
As we rode out to the dive site, Ernest gave us an excellent briefing on what we'd be looking for. He loved small creatures, like shrimp, crustaceans, nudibranchs and the like, and wanted to educate us on the sea life that most of us miss in the quest to see sharks and turtles. He had several fish books and showed us pictures and explained some of the behavior of the creatures. He was quite educational and often quite funny in mimicing the behavior of the creatures. This was definitely the best pre-dive preparation we have had. Most of the other dive shops take you out, drop you off, lead you somewhere, pointing out a few things along the way, but depend on you to know what the creatures are and how they behave.
The first dive was at Sabyur Ketchel - Horseshoe. We dove down to the sandy bottom and rested there for a while observing some of the more shy and smaller creatures. We saw a "grove" of garden eels that rise out of the sand when they are not threatened and float vertically, tethered in the sand. We also saw gobies, cleaner shrimp, including one that Ernest let clean his mouth (taking his mouthpiece out and opening his mouth to let it enter.) We also saw large bump headed parrotfish, a juvenile sweet lips and I spied a blue spotted sting ray. (For divers, max. depth was 20-meters, bottom time 60-minutes, Ernest was the divemaster).
The second dive was at Sabyur Ketchel - The Wall. I saw my first nudibranchs, a ghost pipe fish, a moon razor fish and many lobsters. (For divers, max. depth was 21-meters, bottom time 57-minutes, Ernest was the divemaster). We had very good visibility for both dives.
That evening Hendrik, Smeeta, John and I went to the other "tourist" restaurant mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. A 3rd one mentioned was not open. I had snapper with garlic butter and it was very good! I think Kendrik and Smeeta taught us a card game called "shithead" which I thought was quite complicated, lot of rules and wildcards and things you had to remember. I had some of the local palm whiskey (60% alcohol), called Arak or Sope, and my ability to play the new game deteriorated rapidly.
posted by Chris at 10:00 PM
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