Indonesia – Part 2

 

So, I know it’s been longer than usual since my last post. We’re actually in Thailand now, and it has been a bit of a whirlwind trip.  Since Thailand is our last country, the last stop on our 8 month journey, we’ve been going pretty fast to try to cram in as much as we possibly can before heading home. Hence, the more than 1 month lag.

When I left you last time, though, I hinted that our trip to Mataram, Lombok, to renew our Visas, turned into a bit of an adventure. Let’s start there now. We left Tulamben really early in the morning… around 5AM, so we could get to Mataram before they closed the office (either at 2pm or 4; we weren’t sure, so we wanted to be safe and aim to get there before 2). It was quite the ride. We went from Tulamben to Padang Bai by car, from Padang Bai to Lembar by ferry (4 hours). From Lembar to Mataram we found a driver at the pier and negotiated a price… we finally managed to make it to the Immigration office JUST before 2pm, so we were happy! Until we read the signs. Today only… they closed early… 2 hours before we got there. It seems that this weekend was a huge Muslim holiday (something about the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca). As a result, not only were they closing early that day (Thursday), but they wouldn’t be opening Friday either. We’d have to wait until Monday to even submit our papers.

So instead of being in and out in a matter of hours, like we’d expected, we’d get to spend the whole weekend here in town, a city we had no interest in. Fortunately, there was a lovely little beach town (Senggigi) only a $4 cab ride away (20 minutes), so we spent our days there. It was there that I finally got to try the infamous Kopi Luwak (Civet coffee). I believe I’ve already told that main story, but let’s just say the coffee was good, but not magical, and yet the experience of the day was quite entertaining anyway. On Monday, we headed back down to the Immigration office, paid the expedited fee to get it done in one day, and had our papers back after lunch. And then it was off to Gili Trawangan!

On Gili T, there are no roads, and no motorized vehicles. The only way around is either walking, renting a bike, or hiring a horse-drawn cart at ridiculous fees (when you’re the only game in town, I guess you can charge whatever you want). We chose to walk. A guy at our hotel in Senggigi had recommended an old resort on the North side of the island for us, so we headed up that way. After about 40 minutes of walking with our heavy backpacks, we agreed that we’d pay for the horse cart on the way back. Suddenly, $5 for a 10 minute ride didn’t sound so bad after all (for perspective, the boat TO the island was 40 minutes and cost $1).

The place we finally reached, though, was pretty great! The place was called Nusa Tiga, and our impression of it was that it probably USED to be a very fancy resort, but was now pretty worn-down. It still had four walls, a bed, a bathroom and a roof for $10 a night, including breakfast. Even though the room was really basic, the location was PERFECT. It was right next to a BEAUTIFUL white sand beach, and the waters in front made for the best snorkeling on the island.

Our room even had a resident Tokay Gecko. I don’t remember if I mentioned these guys in my last post, but they’re the big ones, maybe up to a foot long, including the tail. They also sing to you. Or rather, they make a sound not unlike a car alarm.. but descending in frequency like the car was running out of battery. Jime likes to tell the story of the first time she discovered one of those in Thailand, before she had any idea what they were. It was living just outside the wall of her bedroom, right by her head. When it started “singing”, she just about shat herself before leaping out of the bed. They are LOUD! Also, according to a science talk we went to in Portland a while ago, they also apparently bite, if you try to touch them (which made for less than happy times with the grad students in his lab). We’d heard another one of these back in Amed, at the Good Karma bungalows, but never got the camera out to record it. This time, we got a picture.

Our favorite place to hang out was on these little platforms they had built right on the edge of the beach. These were their restaurant seating areas, and we spent many happy hours just hanging out there.

This place was the definition of slow down and relax. It may be on the opposite end of the equator from Costa Rica, but we still found our own bit of Pura Vida.

Snorkeling here was truly spectacular. The corals were pretty, and pleasantly diverse, with good fish life. We saw a few very pretty scorpion fish, including one very LARGE one (about 36cm), which taught us that not only do they have awesome camouflage, but they can apparently even change color! We had no idea, and would have never guessed, until we saw one do it! It started out as a black, which was how we spotted it, because it was on a white sandy bottom. But then it moved up to a big blue coral-covered rock, and BAM, it changed to match… perfectly. It practically vanished in front of our eyes.

(Do you see it?)

(Here, let me help…)

The main reason you come to these islands, though, is for the turtles. There are sea turtles everywhere here! When I say that, I mean that out of all the days we spent here snorkeling in this spot, we saw sea turtles about 90% of the time (at least one, but often 2 or 3). Our favorite turtle was a really big female who apparently had her favorite spots near us, because we could actually go out looking for her, and usually find her. Aside from being particularly large, she had a convenient little scratch mark on her back in the shape of a D, which made her easy to identify. She was really awesome because she had absolutely NO care at all that we were there. Other turtles would swim away when they saw us getting close. Not her. She’d just chill out and keep snacking on her coral buffet, without a care in the world.

About the only time we saw her get excited up was when another turtle tried to start a fight with her, and bit her fin. They she went nuts and got all snappy (I would have too, in her position). That other turtle was much smaller (we think it was a male, but we’re not sure), and once he realized he had angered the giant, he got away FAST.

At every other time, though, this big turtle would let us just hang out near her for literally hours, even coming up to surface every few minutes right next to us (within touching distance). We also did our part to not bother her, so that probably helped her to not mind our presence. Also, she generally hung out in fairly shallow water (only 3 or 4 meters at worst), and she also let us get right up next to her. Consequently, we were able to get some really amazing pictures and video (including one the best pictures I’ve ever personally taken, and which is now my computer screen!

One other really neat thing we discovered, once we knew where to look, was that in addition to being the home of turtles, this was also the land of the moray. There were eels everywhere! I think we saw at least 4 different kinds, including Snowflake Moray, White Eye moray, Banded Snake Eel (which was tunneling through the sand), and some other kind of cloud pattern moray that I haven’t identified yet. There was one artificial reef area that was even a sort of nursery for the Snowflake Eels. In one tiny space, we saw at least 5 different baby morays staring back out at us. Probably the most fun encounter with the eels, though, was out in deeper water. We saw one particular moray NOT hiding under a rock, but rather swimming out and about, actively hunting. Morays can be really shy, so usually you just get to see their little nose peeking out of a rock, it’s rare to see them swimming out in the water. Since we were up about 5 or 6 meters above, the eel didn’t seem to notice us at all, and happily went about its business for about a half hour… much of which, Jimena managed to get on video. Yay. :) [prepare yourselves for the endless home movies, you know they’re coming]

We did go for one dive at this island, but it turned out to be a bit of a dud. We went to a spot called Manta Point, which theoretically has the potential for some nice large fish to come by (Mantas included). It was also supposed to have zero current, from what we were told. Alas, none of those things were true when we were there. Instead, we got ourselves quite the thrill ride. We dropped down into the water and were immediately whisked away by the strongest current I’ve ever been in. It was like a ride at an amusement park.. or like … in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy gets swept away by the tornado and random and weird things just go whizzing by. That’s what it was like. We were flying, with absolutely no chance to slow down and see anything that may or may not have been in the water. Our Dive Master got separated from us and ended up about 15m (50 ft) from us. Ordinarily, in calm water, I wouldn’t have had any issue with that, but in this current, that 15m meant I couldn’t have gotten back to him if I tried. He stopped to look at something on a bit of coral, but no amount of fighting the current would budge me in his direction. The best I could do was slow down the ride a little. I’m a strong swimmer, with a lot of practice, and I had fins on. Some currents, you just don’t fight (especially when you’re working with borrowed air). So, we rode it out. Eventually, it did slow down and we got to look at a few anemones and stuff, but really it was all the same exact stuff we were seeing snorkeling every day, only not as pretty, and not as diverse.

While there is something to be said for enjoying the thrill ride aspect of it (which I did, but Jime very much did not), the dive as a whole was really disappointing, so we ended up canceling our second dive of the day. The corals and fish around this island (outside of our own little snorkeling area) were just too damaged to be worth it. Also, we had plans for our next place already, which had a reputation of being the most vibrant and lively corals one could imagine so we figured we’d save money for the next place

The other major event for us there was on a late afternoon snorkel. If I haven’t mentioned it before, we are hard core when it comes to snorkeling. We typically spend about 3 or 4 hours a day (often all at once). If you haven’t known me for a long time, this may be new information for you, but… I REALLY like being in the water. I’ll take any excuse. On it, in it, under it, it’s all good. Diving is fun for me with or without fish. With that in mind, snorkeling is an awesome way to spend time, especially when in the water are all these fish and corals! It lets you be in the water for as long as you want, with no worries about running out of air. The sea life is Jime’s main draw. Snorkeling is more of a means to an end for her (the better to see all the pretty fishies), but even so, she has every bit of the same drive I do to get in and stay in. When we’re there together, I think our favorite thing to do is just look for new fish. That’s not to say we don’t appreciate the ones we see a bit more often, but… when you see something new, or something unusual, that’s what really gets your blood flowing. In Indonesia, this is an almost endless pursuit. There’s so much cool stuff down there! I can’t tell you how many boxfish, lionfish, batfish, morays, and even turtles we saw. It never gets old.

You also remember cool interactions, even with more “common” fish. This could be anything from having a staring contest with a False Clown Anemonefish (“Nemo”), bravely guarding his anemone and looking you right in the eye… to getting a complete adrenaline spike when some gigantic Titan Trigger comes after you 6 times because you got too close to his nest.

One particularly memorable one, though, combined everything all at once. We were in our usual snorkeling spot outside our hotel at Nusa Tiga late one afternoon, and we’d found our favorite turtle. She was hanging out at a large coral tower, chomping away at some piece or another. I dove down to get closer to her a couple times, and take a couple close-ups. One of the times I came up, though, something came up from that same spot a couple seconds later. A snake! It was a Banded Sea Krait. Sea snakes are well-known for being HIGHLY venomous. Ruin your whole day kind of venomous (death will certain do that). Holy shit! It came up slowly, not coming after me or anything, but I was still glad that I had moved out of the way before it did come up. As a general rule, you don’t want to startle things that bite. I had the camera in my hand, so I quickly took a couple pictures and handed the camera to Jime, our official photographer/videographer, and she quickly switched to video mode. The snake came up, and actually went over to hang out with the turtle. More holy shit! This is some National Geographic shit right here! The turtle looked at it and went back to her snack. I tell you, this turtle is imperturbable. As we watched, and Jime filmed, the snake poked around a bit, and then even came up to the surface for a breath of air, right in front of us (we kept a safe distance). Cool! We then watched it wiggle its way over to the other side of the coral tower, and then back down to disappear under a rock. Jimena moved the camera to me, and to the turtle, who was now coming up for air right next to me. Wow! What a rush! So many things in about 80 seconds! Unfortunately, the camera caught none of it. With all that happened, the camera choked. It stopped recording after one second. Jime was inconsolable. Still, we saw what we saw, and the snake and the turtle did what they did, and you can’t take that away from us. We never thought we’d ever see a sea snake, let alone have such an up-close and personal interaction with one.

(This shot’s a bit blurry, but at least you can see them both together)

We of course looked it up later, and the sea snake, practically-speaking, is not all that dangerous to people. Yes, their venom is every bit as potent as they say, but they’re not at ALL aggressive (quite shy, actually). They’re also very conservative. If they bite you in defense, they intentionally don’t inject a lot of venom. So yes, it would ruin your day, but most likely not kill you. But lastly, they really just don’t like to bite at all. It seems that they actually come on land to breed, and there are stories of Indonesian kids just picking these things up off the ground and playing with them, and not having any problem. I mean, not that I’m recommending that for my own future kids, but… it did take away some of the fear of running into one again in the future. I will say, though, that even when it happened, despite having a high sphincter pucker factor, it was not fear, but the feelings of awe and joy of discovery that filled our hearts.

We stayed about a week and a half on Gili T, and then headed out to our next destination, Lovina, back on Bali. We had one overnight back in Padang Bai, where we got to enjoy one more awesome breakfast at the Kembar Inn. Lovina is on the North coast of the island, just West of center. We went there because it was close to the Menjangan Island nature preserve where they have strongly protected, and even cultivated, the corals. Fishing is banned (though it still happens), and there has never been any dynamite fishing there, and the storms have not damaged the corals like other places in Bali.

When we finally got into the water at Menjangan, it was mind-blowing. Especially after the mostly bleak and sparse corals over at Gili Trawangan, this place was the complete opposite. It was absolutely the FULLEST garden of corals we’d ever seen. Also, the currents are not strong here, so the water clarity was like an aquarium. We had visibility for 30 meters plus! The fish life was not quite so abundant as other areas, but the corals were out of this world. We dove twice, with a 1-hour snorkel session in between. We liked it so much, we even came back the next day and just did a full day of snorkeling. Happily, we had gotten along really well with the other folks from our dive trip, so we all went back out together for the snorkeling trip. Since we were very excited about the park, we decided to rent a dive camera (expensive!). The dive pictures aren’t as nice as the snorkel pictures (because of the low light), but they give you an idea.

Our first dive was along a wall, and it was filled with really spectacular and HUGE coral fans. It’s amazing when something so fragile can survive so well to become so big. Other corals and sponges also grew to gargantuan proportions. We finished up in shallower water in a sandy bottom area with aquarium clear water, and tons of corals, large and small. As soon as we surfaced, Jime and I jumped right back into the water for snorkeling. The second dive was almost equally spectacular to the first one, but I think that snorkel spot we had between dives (Sandy Slope) was really our favorite spot in the whole area.

(Diving at Menjangan)

(Snorkeling at Menjangan)

Our time in Lovina was short, but definitely packed. Although most people go to Lovina primarily as a way to get to Menjangan Island (1.5 ours away), apparently the thing to do in Lovina itself is to go see the dolphins. I had no idea until we got there, but apparently there is a large resident pod (or several) of Spinner Dolphins (the kind that spin around in the air when they jump out of the water… and which, to my knowledge, nobody is sure why). So, our last day in Lovina… in fact the day we were already scheduled to leave, we hired a boat with our friend Emily (from the dives) and went out to see the dolphins.

We were picked up at 6AM, and taken to a boat launch. It was just BARELY after dawn. We piled the 3 of us, another couple that we didn’t know, and our driver (a fisherman) into a small Balinese fishing boat (Jukung), and off we went. Even though some other travelers had warned us that it was a bit crowded and crazy, I was still not prepared for the level of chaos that occurred. There must have been at LEAST 50 other boats out there… all in the same bay, and all racing around like crazy people at every sighting of a dorsal fin. The poor dolphins! With that many boats, many of the drivers were blatantly aggressive in trying to “get there” before the dolphins dove back under the water. As a consequence, it seems like the general strategy was to just go full speed to the center of the pod. That part did not make us happy. Oh, and bear in mind… this is the OFF season. I don’t even want to imagine the lunacy of the high season.

In any case, we DID actually manage to see some dolphins, which was cool. And yet, if I had to do it over again, I would not. I’m all in favor of local folks figuring out how to make a living with all the damned tourists around, but… I think this particular sport is ripe for some regulation. I haven’t figured out yet why the dolphins haven’t left forever. Maybe they will some day, or maybe they don’t mind as much as I imagine they do. Either way, I think the current system is not healthy. I hope they figure it out soon.

(very close boats)

(Dolphins!)

We got back from the dolphins a bit late, and had JUUUUST enough time to grab a quick bite to eat and then run out to catch our bus. We thought we’d be on the same bus as Emily, which we were looking forward to, but at the last moment, we arrived at the bus stop, and she turned out to have a different bus, so we quickly said our goodbyes, and we were all on our way.

Our next destination was yet another small island, called Nusa Lembongan. We had considered going to this island earlier, because we heard it had some of the best diving that Bali had to offer, but we originally decided against it because we’d also read about most of the dive sites having strong currents. Well, over time, we learned a bit more, and also had gotten a lot more experience diving and snorkeling, so we decided to try it.

On the way, since all the (affordable) boats to the island were in the morning, we stopped for a night in the port city of Sanur. Sanur felt a bit like… a more high-end beach town. To give it a California comparison… it felt to me a bit like La Jolla (or maybe Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica). The restaurants and accommodation were generally catering to more high-end travelers than ourselves. Still, we managed to find a decent cheap spot. And what’s more, we even managed to find ourselves a pretty great shopping street. We found places with awesome sarongs and shirts. We got me something like.. oh… 7 or 8 different ones! As we were walking around town looking for the bus company, we found a special celebration happening right on the beach! Similar to what we had seen in Padangbai when we first got to the island, everyone was dressed in similar special clothing, and there were dances and music, and food arranged for beautiful offerings. Pretty magical!

First thing the morning, we were off to Nusa Lembongan. I would say I wish we’d gotten there sooner, because it was everything good about Bali, but… I think we just got there at the perfect time. The life on land was quite laid back but plenty interesting. It was not overly touristic, though there was at least good support for the tourists. The hotel we eventually found was not on the coast, but only maybe one block from it. It even had a swimming pool. I know it may sound a bit strange to have a pool at a place whose major draw is sea life (you want to swim? The ocean’s right there!), but it was a nice place to just relax and cool out on hot days when we were done snorkeling or diving.

The major non-tourism-related industry on the island is actually very interesting. They do sea weed farming! It’s pretty incredible to see happen. Aside from the different colors of the various seaweed that they’d spread out on tarps on land to dry, even the “farms” in the water were neat. They were all spread out in perfect little squares of space, roped off like any land crop (but much smaller than a typical farm plot), and then strung with a grid of small ropes to grow the plants on. To start off a crop, they’d use some starter plants from the previous batch, and tie a few bundles onto the lines in the grid. I don’t know how fast any of their plants grew but I do know that they seemed to go out there collecting every evening. I believe they ultimately sell the seaweed both as a direct food product, and also to exporters (i.e. to Japan).

(Seaweed farm)

The way the island was laid out makes Nusa Lembongan a SPECTACULAR spot for sunsets. In fact, we went out to see sunsets just about every night. Some nights the cloud cover was too heavy, but most nights, there was just enough to really give the light something to bounce off as all the colors rolled through. Jimena enjoyed pigging out on her favorite fruits (Mangosteen) and we’d take a big bag of them to the beach and watch the sun come down every day. I think that out of our whole trip, these may have been the best sunsets of all. And here, even the seaweed farming helped, because as we’d sit there on the beach, and there would be farmers standing in their small boats and poling their way across the water like in Venice, highlighted beautifully in front of the glowing horizon.

One night we were sitting at a restaurant researching dive shops online and the guy next to us was looking at some neat dive photos. We asked him if he knew any dive shops that he would recommend, and he said “yes… but I’m biased!” It turned out that he was the owner of a great dive shop called Big Fish Diving. He gave us great information about where to snorkel, and after looking at different companies online, we decided to dive with his company. We had a great time, and really appreciated the great connection we had made. Even better, the dive shop hosted talks twice a week, and we got to geek out and listen to a lecture on “Weird and Wonderful Marine Life”, and it was about corals and related animals. It was a pretty great talk, actually, and a lot of fun.

Now that we’re talking about diving, though, it’s finally time talk about what it was like down there! Inside the water, there were some currents, but the local dive shops know how to time their dives to aim for calm periods (between tides) or at least start from different directions for drift dives, depending on the direction of the current at the moment. Also, many dive and snorkel spots are naturally sheltered from the currents, so it really wasn’t as big of a deal as I’d been expecting after reading all the descriptions.

When you dive (or snorkel), there’s really only one place walkable on this island (called Mangrove Point, but if you hire a boat, they can take you to plenty of other spots around this island and its 2 immediate neighbors. The sea life here is really spectacular. I wouldn’t have guessed it, even after reading all the reviews of every dive site on or around Bali and Lombok but Jime and I really enjoyed our diving and snorkeling here. It’s not as convenient to snorkel because you have to hire a boat to get to the good spots, or rent a bike and go through a lot of hassle to get to Mangrove point, but when we were in the water it was really amazing.

The corals are every bit as healthy as they are at Menjangan, but they’re actually TEEMING with other fish life as well. The diversity and volume and beauty of the place just totally blew our minds, even after everything we’d already seen. Also, here, you can dive with mantas (las manta rayas gigantes)! There aren’t very many places in the world where you can reliably see manta rays year-round, but this is one of them. Interestingly, there are apparently different kinds of manta rays (which I had never heard before). There are the super giants, that live out in the open ocean, and they can reach up to 6 or 7 meters (22 ft) in wing span! And then there are the coral reef mantas, which are still bigger than any other ray, just not QUITE as big as the open ocean ones. The reef mantas can still get up to 4 or 5 meters, but are more commonly around 3 meters. Either way… they’re still a 9 foot creature that looks like a black flying saucer and yet flies gracefully through the water like an eagle. They are incredibly beautiful!

Unfortunately, it seems like the best place to see them is less than beautiful, but it was still worth every minute. To go see the bigger mantas, you have to go really far out, like maybe a 2 or 3 hour boat ride, and even then you have absolutely no guarantee that you’ll find them. With the reef mantas, it’s only a 30 minute ride, and they’re almost always in one of two or three places, and you can see them from the surface, so if they’re not in the first place you look, you just keep hunting around until you DO see them, and then you jump in. The place we found them on our dive trip was an area called Secret Manta, and the water conditions were less than ideal. The waves were heavy (as in, you can see them smashing on the rocks with lots of spray at the surface. Under water, where things are always a bit calmer, the surge would still just casually shove you about 1.5 meters (4-5 feet) at a time. This meant you had to really be careful not to be too close to anything (rocks, other divers, etc). Also, there are virtually no corals at all in this spot, and visibility was terrible. Oh, and it was covered with little jelly fish. Fortunately, they were mostly just the comb jellies, which don’t sting, but I still prefer to avoid them if I can, so *I* don’t hurt THEM. All this, though (surge aside), is what draws the mantas here. They eat the things that make the water cloudy. They come here, and they fly through the water filtering out all the little tiny animals. So, if you want to see them, this is where you go. And see them we did! I think all in all, we spotted at least 4 different individuals, but we had many more sightings. And they weren’t shy, either! Sometimes they’ll be swimming along, and since visibility is so poor, they’ll be heading right towards you. They’ll get REALLY close, and then they’ll just sort of slip past you, or under you or over you… with no change at all in their flow… as if they’d been planning to go that way anyway. They do not startle. It’s pretty magical to be sitting still and quiet under the water when this gigantic… black angel appears out of nowhere, glides effortlessly right over your head, maybe missing you by mere centimeters, and then floats away again, disappearing slowly from view like a ghost fading into mist.

After our dive, we got back in the water for a bit of snorkeling so we could get some pictures with our snorkel-only camera. It’s much rougher floating on the surface, so we only stayed for about 10 minutes or so, but even so, we still had plenty more awesome close-encounters. We came back another day and did a snorkel-only trip, and then we got even more pictures, and a couple of nice videos.

Aside from the mantas, we also hit a couple other really beautiful spots. At one spot, called Toyapakeh (which had some really COLD, deep sea currents that even made ME shiver), we saw another sea snake! This was another Banded Sea Krait, the same kind we saw at Gili Trawangan, only this time we DID have our camera! Redemption!!

I think our favorite, though, was probably a spot called Crystal Bay. That’s the place the really defines what I said above about this being perhaps the most amazing snorkel spot we’ve been to. There were a million hard corals, soft corals and anemones of many sizes, shapes and colors. The place was just covered with soft corals especially, all just swaying in the light surge like fine hair in a swimming pool. I’ll say it now: some day, I will build myself a reef aquarium. It will be at least 250 gallons. And when I start it, my absolute ideal dream would be to get it to look even a LITTLE like this place. Aside from all the corals, this diversity and abundance of fish life was incredible as well. We saw all of our favorites! It was like a finale of a play, where all the actors come back out on stage for one last grand performance (which was perfect, since this was our last hurrah in Indonesia). We saw a gigantic Yellow Boxfish that was probably bigger than any we’d seen before. We saw Spotted Boxfish, Moorish Idols, Unicornfish, Nemos, you name it.

(Hard corals and swaying soft corals in green, purple and blue.  There are many MANY more beautiful pictures where this came from!)

We had a miscommunication with the boat guy. He said our time was up, when we still expected to have another TWO hours in the water. After some re-negotiating we settled on 30 more minutes… grumble… As soon as we got back to snorkeling, Jimena SAW AN OCTOPUS!!! Crazy screaming, yelling, octopus, getting the camera ready, zoom in, video mode, GO!!! She managed to get an incredible video of the octopus swimming, hunting, swirling, changing shape… when here comes this other stupid boat right at us!! Pause video, look at boat to make sure we don’t get run over, and try to find the octopus again. We got to watch her for a few more minutes of swimming and hunting, and she was incredibly beautiful. What a performance! She was shallow (maybe only 5 meters), so even the lighting was decent. She moved, and oozed, and hunted, and changed colors and textures in a heart beat. She was even in relatively shallow water. Yes, we do in fact have pictures, and even video (though you’ll have to see the video in person). We watched her for a good 20 more minutes before she finally went to a spot a bit deeper (about 8 or 9 meters) and then just stopped, went dark, and stayed still (lights out, show’s over folks). We still watched for another 10 minutes or so, and I even did a couple dives to her, which caused her to change colors when she saw me, but also caused her to slip into a bit of a hole until I left. Still, all in all, we couldn’t have asked for a better send-off for our Bali trip. We had the most amazing corals and fish, and even a final octopus show encore. After 2 amazing months here, it was really hard to leave, but having this last… fling… with the under water world, was definitely the perfect going away present.

To see the full set of pictures from the second half of our Indonesia trip, and all the amazing, freaking BEAUTIFUL coral pictures, Jime has them up here:
http://alexjimenartw.shutterfly.com/pictures/2738