We have been diving here regularly and it’s so nice to see familiar faces again, feel like home. Everyone was still there, the guide, the boatman, the cook, the waitress, the singer.. everyone.. it’s just nice to see people enjoying staying and being happy there. They also assigned us to the very same room we always stayed, near the restaurant next to the boat bay where we could peek out and see if the boat is ready for us. Sometimes we spent surface interval there waiting for the crew to pick up our meals, we could sit at the edge of the boat and looking at the crabs running around in the rock, and sometimes saw pipefish, cone snail (cone snail???), or just take a dip early in the morning before we went out to the sea.
I like to sit in the boat front or the roof top and let the wind carries my thoughts away on the way to Menado Bay or Bunaken. Although I miss the school of dolphin with their chattering sounds, this time we were still lucky enough to see very small group of them, a very big fish breaching far away in the horizon (don’t know what it is but it was huge) (food for thought: before human discover that earth is round, how far is their estimated distance to the horizon?) and breaching eagle ray in Lembeh Strait. Lembeh? Yah.. eagle ray breaching in Lembeh Strait. Not a very common sight.
The weather was rainy, raining almost every day, just like Singapore, just like Jakarta, just like Lombok. Something had gone haywire in the system that the weather changes. If you look at my primary school’s geography book and maybe in current primary school book too, May-June-July-August are supposed to be summer. Summer. Hot. Hot. West Indonesia. Central Indonesia. East Indonesia. Singapore. South East Asia probably. Not raining profusely like now.
So I didn’t have many chances to go to the rooftop and enjoy the sun and scenery because it was either raining or the surface wind was damn cold, most of the time we were already shivering after the dives, the second last day I couldn’t hold my spoon properly during lunch before my hand and lips kept shaking until I was worried that I would feed my nose.
But of course, there were still chances to see the Lembeh Strait with its calm surrounding and somehow there is peace inside me knowing that it still welcome me and it will still in the future, to see the dark and mysterious bay, even though I miss the calm blue giant silk on the surface in Bunaken, disturbed by the ripples of the wave and rain.
We didn’t log as many dives as usual, because first day, our guide knocked on our door, wearing half wetsuit, shivering and telling story about how they were almost trapped in Bunaken because of big waves, current and pouring rain that reduced the visibility and they were almost unable to navigate home. There was also an accident with other speedboat splitting into halves because it couldn’t navigate and crashed to the rock, lucky no casualties.
We had seen that the sea didn’t look calm on the way to the resort, so we agreed not to dive the first day, we could take our own sweet time assembling the cameras etc.
We also only did one night dive throughout the trip because the site was quite empty. They were experiencing unusual monsoon sometimes before and big wave swept away little critters in Menado Bay area, when we visited on first day, it was quite empty.
We spent a day in Bunaken in rainy weather, but the sea was quite calm underwater. In fact, they just saw Dugong in Fukui Point. Dugong!!! Never before we got chance to see them underwater in the wild. We willingly jumped to the same dive site two days later but the mermaid was nowhere to be found. I missed my Pyramid Butterflyfish soup and was greeted with them again on the third dive, but still the Redtooth Triggerfish was not as abundant as usual. We also saw more big fish like black tip and white tip shark swimming along the wall, with small medium green turtle cruising by. The visibility was not as good that day, but the shallow area was still pretty and colorful like what I remembered, with school of batfish lurking around. A regret here was, we left the wide angle dome at home. We just somehow forgot about it although we brought the lens..so..ehm..luckily we didn’t saw the Dugong?? I guess…
We met the tiny puny Hippocampus Pontohi, skinny sea-horse, pinky finger nail size in Menado Bay and Bunaken. Not one, but five, on different times though. Two yellow ones, two black ones, and one dead one. Seriously, I also had no idea how our guide managed to find, when he saw the fellow, it was floating near the coral but it never hooked its tail, then he realized it was dead.
Lembeh Strait. Since our guides had known us, they had set our ittenary for us and determined to find specific thing for us. We are very impressed that they remember what we want. Last trip, we requested to see Flamboyant Cuttlefish, which is the almost ‘last’ (it would never be last) missing link in our quest for macro hunting. We found Flamboyant Cuttlefish, brought back good pictures, and asked whether we could find Hairy Frogfish. We saw Hairy Frogfish before, but it was not the ‘original’ hairy Hairy Frogfish, alias their hair not messy enough for our liking. Haha… after that last Menado trip, we actually saw two Hairy Frogfishes in Bali, but the hair still didn’t seem right. And on our last day to Lembeh at the end of last trip, the guide told us about the site for Lembeh Seadragon, just next to the Bitung jetty. We mentioned that that would be next trip agenda.
So this time, they remembered and made it their ittenary. When we departed with Lembeh boat (by the way, the fisherman boat had been upgraded to diving boat by the same boatman, congrats to him…J at least we didn’t need to duck our head inside the boat and geared up in the front deck). To be honest, I actually missed the giant stride from the front.
So, repeat, when we departed with Lembeh boat, we expected at least 20 minutes journey, when about few minutes, the boat stopped, we were still in the middle of busy jetty, and our guide said, we dive here, to look for Lembeh Seadragon.
Sure! We jumped, straight away our guides (Guides… we were pampered with one to one guide here) found the Lembeh Seadragon, when I saw it, I almost fainted. How am I supposed to take a picture of a creature, as thick as hair line, less than 2 cm long, with same colour with the background, and even smaller and shorter than the debris of the messy coral it was hanging on?
It was very difficult task but our guide was patient, every time I looked through view finder, it’s not uncommon that I lost the object again. Somemore, our funky guide demanded to see photo result through LCD when I signaled to him I was done. Not really sure, I think unless he found it nice and acceptable, we should keep trying. Ha…luckily I passed. : )
So it was a designated dive for Lembeh seadragon because we didn’t really find other bizarre critters. Second dive in TK was dedicated to Hairy Frogfish. (They remembered too! I’m really impressed…they even remember hubby’s broken fin’s strap last year) We descended to the very same spot the guide found it few days before, but we couldn’t locate it for the first hour of the dive. So we were just lurking around, took pictures of other critters like Harlequin Ghost Pipefish, Dragonet, Flying Gunnard. We lost the guide few times but we gathered back, it was very difficult to determine the direction of tank banging sound so sometimes, even when we were calling each other it was hard to decide which way to go.
Both me and hubby were taking picture of one friendly Dragonet for quite sometimes when we realized we lost the sight of them again. We split up but still maintained visual and headed to shallower area when hubby waved at me and pointed on something on the sea bed. I saw it, it was the hairiest, the most properly messy hairy frogfish we had been trying to find. Hihi… the angler looked like a perfect ribbon on top of its hairy head, and it was pink in color. We took pictures, and tried to call the guide using my dive alert (new..hehe! It’s signaling device that pump air and create pow-pow sound underwater or in the surface) somehow, both of us had the feeling that we were in shallow around 5 meter. We had been diving for one and half hour more and I realized we only had 30 bar left in our tank, when we checked the depth, ops… it was 12.8 meter. We basically lost the sense of depth. Very reluctant, we had to leave the hairy friend there, we tried to remember the landscape but there was no clear landmark in sandy area, so we only remember the depth and off we started to ascend to shallower area.
When we surfaced and saw our guide again, they told us they found another green Hairy Frogfish in another side of the boat at 10 meter depth. They had been trying to call us too but both sides couldn’t hear each other as we were apparently too far apart. So we climbed up to the boat, changed tank and descended back on the other side. However, the Frogfish got bored and decided to go down to the depth and we couldn’t locate it anymore.
Nevermind.. we got one..
Is it me or it looks like messy little girl with beautiful ribbon on its head?
Third dive, since the agenda was cleared, we decided to dive in Nudi Retreat, a nice secluded mysterious bay. I thought of finding back the white Porcelain Clown Frogfish we saw many times we went there. Hubby had the same thought as I saw him going to the coral we found it last time. It was not there anymore.
We actually still had special purpose for this third dive, to find pygmy seahorse. It’s just not a complete dive trip without seeing them. However, my camera trigger had been having problem for that two days. The button from the housing kept coming off and it was very hard or impossible to trigger. It happened many times before, but for whatever reason, I still could use it back then. But not this time. Arggggghhhhh…..
We didn’t find the Pygmy Seahorse in their usual seafan but we found them in another, one was directly looking at me and didn’t move and it was of course the perfect time for the button to come off. Although I was pissed, but at least it didn’t happen during the Seadragon or Hairy Frogfish dive. Because that would be *&blurblb…*&#%*%blurrbbbb….#*&*@#%blurrnbbbbb…
We went back to the resort with around two hour car ride, we had a lot of pisang goreng and other snacks to accompany us along the way though.. but I started to get itchy from the seawater rash on the neck and upper lips.. and don’t know why, I was stung by a bee in the morning. Minding my own business, I was in the middle of locking our room door when I heard bee buzzing around. I didn’t give much thought until it flew behind me and stung my upper back near the neck. It was very painful for few minutes but luckily I had my rash medication in hand. After that, it became very itchy. Crazy bee!... So along the car ride I kept watching myself to see if it’s a superbee that stung me for a reason to turn me into… bee superhero? Who knows….who knows…
For today trip in Lembeh they bought us each two packages of yellow rice with eggs… yummy… although I’m not sure why for the last two trips we never went to the spring water source for shower after the dives like usual, but at least they brought gallon of fresh water to rinse ourselves before we ended the day. Ohya,.. the Bitung jetty looked different, I think there is an extension to the pier area and the ice cream man who always around was missing. So no ice cream.. hik.. hik..
The last full diving day we were suppose to dive in Bunaken but somehow there was a miscommunication and we ended up diving in Menado Bay. The weather was sunny in the morning but then there was pouring rain and the sea was unusually choppy at second and third dive. So it was bless in disguise that we didn’t go to Bunaken. The first dive was disappointing, we tried new location and there was no critters to be found. Second dive still not as good but third dive we saw quite a lot of things, still we decided to skip the night dive.
Last diving day in Menado Bay, we squeeze three dives before two o’clock. This trip had been very satisfying, as we could dive as long as we want, that’s why we like and chose this guide. So we had average one and half hour at least for each dive. And this trip was shorter than our usual one week trip because of the crazy fluctuation of the air ticket price, so instead of coming back Saturday, we came back Friday.
We started the last diving day very early, leaving the dock before seven. The sea was choppy and the sky was gloomy, but just like like year, our early morning first dive was very nice.
Underwater, it was bright and nice. Only two of us with the guide and we scattered around looking for critters, maintaining visual. This is the morning we found three Pontohi sea horses, including two black ones I had never seen before. It was first thing in the morning, and there was current slapping. I couldn’t take good pictures of the black Pontohi and gave up after quite a long try. We found juvenile Harlequin Shrimp on the first day here too, but the color was still transparent and it was running around frantically. This time our guide found our favorite Boxer Crab, and it confirmed the suspicion I had since long time ago, it have evil eyes looking at you as if it is planning to do something nasty, in humorous way. Hi hi hi… after hubby and the guide left, I still watching the cute crab throwing its pom pom in the air and slowly walked, walked, walked, while still looking at me evilly and then disappeared behind a rock.
We also found a purple frogfish the size of thumbnail. It was not pretty but I love the perfect shape of this hunchback cute fish in miniature. So bloody cute! It was busy and rewarding morning dive for nice last diving day. Second dive we went to another dive site, the sandy bottom area with grass landscape. This time we found Green Ambon Scorpionfish with short eyebrow, the less common kind according to our guide. We also found a little cream colored Painted Frogfish that is also very cute and walking very actively on the seabed. We spent good ten to fifteen minutes just enjoying ourselves watching the tiny busy friend, and rewarded with yawn. Not one, but three yawns in a row and another yawn later on. We tried to put very boring face hoping that it would yawn again, I even took out my reg and simulate yawning for it, but it didn’t bulge anymore. He he…
.jpeg)
On third dive, we found a pair of weird looking white short haired Frogfish, I don’t know what species they are, one of it was pregnant. If only we had a loooong trip, I would like to see the babies of Frogfish, imagine how cute they would be. We also found another cute little cuttlefish who played peekaboo with me and peeping shyly to the camera, hiding half of its face but curious.
Third dive we decided to go to a dive site nearby that all of us including the guides, hadn’t been to. The visibility was not good at first, but it picked up. I remember we were cruising and I saw nice big humongous coral formation in the middle. There were many corals everywhere, and we could see many fishes playing around. We found shrimps, crabs, some nudibranch, but further into the dive, we didn’t stop much for picture because the current start picking up. Soon we were drifting like superman, but it was one of the nicest drift dives I have been. The current brought us to fields of nice bubbly beautiful soft coral as far as we could see. I was enjoying that moment so much and it continued to pamper us with beautiful scenery until the end of the dive. What a nice closure. We surfaced up with very happy poetic mood.
After washing up, we lazed around in the restaurant, to the observation tower enjoying the peace, the scenery, and the last day of the trip where we could hear the sound of the wave crashing to the shore (love it), birds and cricket chirping.., how nice..
That’s all folks..
Goodbye nice people, nice food.., mantis peacock who played peekabo with me, pretty pipefish who never stop blinking its eye, tiny long horn cowfish juvenille who accompany me when there was nothing else I could find, pretty clownfish, blue ringed octopus, and stingy octopus who occupy the whole oeyster shell, abandoned and refused to share the space with its girlfriend.. miss you all already..!
