24th - 29th February 2012
Despite some good meals at Scubana I still wasn't overly impressed after an hour in bed wondering what 'that' smell was, I turned to sniff my pillow to find a very strong animal scent possibly a bit of wee. Lush. A failed dive trip the next morning clinched it. They left without checking our equipment, the stuff was old and not looked after, my spare breather didn't work properly and neither did Djalma's main breather, coupled with a persistent leak from the air canister, we decided to give the dive a miss and went snorkelling instead.
The snorkelling was a gem, the visibility was pretty good and we followed the edge of the drop off. We saw NINE turtles and an eagle ray among other things. We checked out Panorama when we got back and I much preferred the look of things there, for a five dollar increase for the two of us we got much better digs, a cool, dry, light and airy room with a shower and sweet water that wasn't at all saline for washing. We sorted out business with Randy, the owner of Scubana, and moved our things across. We sat on comfy chairs on our long wide balcony and read our books with a gorgeous sea view just in front of our propped up feet.
Bunaken is a small island just off the Northern coast of Sulawesi, there's nothing to do but diving, snorkelling and perhaps a spot of reading. The current brings presents from the city of Manado, persistent, never ending drifts of plastic bags and coke labels sweep through the water to be washed up the south facing coast of poor little Bunaken. Fortunately for us, our little stretch of sand was swept clean every morning and the retreating tide didn't leave anything but little brown leaves to keep the shedding pink and white flowers company on the sand.
Saturday and we actually managed a couple of dives in the morning. Diving with Panorama was much more professionally managed than the other guys, good equipment and no problems, confidence restored. After a quick pancake and coffee breakfast we headed down to the little yellow houses on the beach to sort out wetsuits, BCDs, booties and flippers (according to the dictionary, this is the correct term, not fins... just saying). The first dive, at Fukui, was lovely we started out over a gently sloping reef with loads of big barrel sponges, there were some giant clams too. We saw a crocodile fish barely discernible in the sand, there were schools of cardinal fish and loads of other reef fish, the light wasn't amazing because the sun was slow to come out from behind some light clouds (so our photos weren't that fabulous).
We stopped back at the beach to pick up a couple of life jackets for two Singaporeans who were snorkelling and then headed to our second dive site, Turtle City. It didn't really live up to our snorkelling the previous day, we saw three turtles in total which isn't too shabby really. We followed the wall that most of the dive sites are spread along, the only thing that really killed the mood was the other guys who swam along touching anything and everything, crowding a turtle, chasing fish and kicking corals. We saw little of it in the first dive but with a big fat French guy as part of our group we saw it for the whole dive, it put Djalma in an awful mood and he mentioned it to the guy and over a delicious lunch we spoke to Sven, the German owner. The whole matter wasn't dealt with in the most delicate way and there was a little atmosphere over following dives.
We spent most of the afternoon updating our dive logs and chilling out until dinner at 7pm. We sat down and ate with Guy, an English guy (haha) from Kingston who was a dive instructor in Bali and a couple of girls, one Dutch and one Swedish, who had been volunteering at a wildlife sanctuary. Dinner was delicious and the atmosphere sociable. The older guys who liked to look and touch the corals (et al) were staying a little further along and ate at a different restaurant so we were spared the big fat Dutch man's rendition of 'I want to have sex on the beach' ugh, not exactly delicious for the ears or the eyes.
The dives the following morning didn't appeal so we chilled out all morning, I worked out and read 1089 nights, a brilliant travel book if ever I've read one. Djalma went diving in the afternoon and was in for an unpleasant surprise along with all the other divers. His dive
lasted a grand total of five minutes, almost as soon as the groups descended they were sucked down by a strong current, dropping about fifteen metres in just a couple of seconds. PANIC. Fortunately he regained his wits quickly enough to grab onto corals on the wall, pieces broke before he got one that held his weight. He looked around, couldn't see his group so he swam to the side bit by bit to where his group last was and then ascended to the surface the down current gone. It was awful enough for him but had it been me I'm not sure I would have reacted as swiftly, panic stations and a pooper scooper! When they came back, I was chatting to my Mum on FB and didn't really take in the potential consequences of what happened until later in the afternoon when I thanked God that Djalma was still alive and well.
We had another nice dinner, this time with two different girls, an American redhead and a Dutch brunette also from the sanctuary, as well as guy. We had a good old bitch about the lack of respect the old fat Frenchman, the old fat Dutchman and the old Alaskan were showing the reef after a good after dinner chat where we all got bitten by mosquitoes I never saw, we watched some segments of 'Planet Earth' to introduce the voice of David Attenborough to the girls. It made me feel proud to be English and have such an institution as the BBC and good old Dave to boast of.
Tuesday morning and we both decided to dive, we visited Tanjung Kopi first which had a really strong current where we started out from getting more manageable as the dive progressed, I can't say I enjoyed that first dive much, I like my dives to be a scenic as possible and as easy as the currents can allow. We were all down low on the coral bed holding onto anything to stop from being swept away, I tried to hold on only to dead corals and to be as careful as possible where I put my hands, at one point when we all stayed put for a few minutes to catch our breathe a small scorpion fish swam over my shoulder and sat on the ground in front of me, just so you know, they're poisonous. We finished the dive, and motored to the next dive site, Ron's point.
The dive here was much nicer, the beginning was okay but it was where we finished that really impressed me, just five metres under the surface we hung about watching fish float above perfect coral and Napoleon wrasse swim in the distance. I've been DYING to see a Napoleon fish ever since I heard of them in Dahab, Egypt, but the Napoleon I want to see is a big one, these guys weren't much more than a metre long, if that. We also saw a black tip reef shark, trigger fish, box fish and a swimming star fern which was the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time.
Waiting for the two new Dutch ladies, Charlotte and Kloske, to surface we soon headed back to land after our longest dive yet, 74 minutes of fun, we could have stayed longer but we were really cold.
The next morning Djalma went on one last dive, despite setting our alarm for 5am we didn't get up until 7.40am which is five minutes before you should be down by the boat if you want to go diving. I decided not to rush and let Djalma go without me, wrong time of the month and no breakfast, I'll be chilling out thank you very much! By now we had scabbed the wifi password and so I sat on the bed with the computer and sent off some emails trying to organise things for later. Djalma came back with a headache, he only managed one dive, his head was too sore to enjoy the second which was a shame because it was a dive site we both wanted to dive. We had lunch and chilled out, Djalma slept most of the afternoon and I worked out.
We left the next day on a small boat that took us round to the pick up point for the public ferry. I hadn't slept well that night, both of were cold (we should have turned off the fan), there was rain and some distant thunder that woke me up, not to mention one or two of Djalma's extraordinarily putrid farts that dragged me from the depths of sleep to fully bear witness to their nastiness. I was not impressed.
The ferry took an hour, we got a bemo all to ourselves from the port to the airport singing along to Celine Dion tunes, unfortunately for us and perhaps fortunately for the bemo driver we pulled up before 'My Heart Will Go On' reached the crescendo. We resolved to practise for some rip roaring karaoke on Manila (only Celine Dion and other appropriate power ballads will be playing on my Ipod from now on, after Beyonce...).
We miscalculated the check in time and arrived four hours early for our flight, we tucked into some tuna, aubergine, greens and steamed rice as a second breakfast while we sat at an open window and watched the rain wash the palm trees clean in the airport car park, eating, reading and writing while we waited.
We got our flight back to Makassar where we had plenty of time to kill until our flight back up to Palu, a good five hours back in our new favourite airport, we had dinner and killed time in the waiting lounge. Arriving in Palu we got a taxi to a hotel we had reserved a room at, our room was right on the road and two guys were chatting animatedly outside, it was gone 11pm and our room was far from soundproof. Stupidly I suggested that we try to look for another room, of course. The next morning we had rice and chicken for breakfast and got a bemo back to the airport for 9am. We killed more time here first by trying to find change for our bemo driver and then snoozing in front of a standing air-conditioning unit. I woke up so groggy I couldn't talk properly we picked up our complimentary snacks on the way to the plane. I love complimentary snacks and so far Sriwijaya (the Indonesian airline we flew with that day) had the best nibbles. We stopped over somewhere, I forget where and finally arrived in Tarakan in Indonesian Borneo mid afternoon. We found a “cheap” hotel that totally ripped us off for our tiny room and two single beds with sharp springs poking out the mattresses. We ate in town not really in the best of moods and then slept soundly.
Day three of travelling and we finally made it to Malaysia, after buying our ferry tickets to Tawau in Malaysia we waited some more and then snoozed uncomfortably in the stuffy ferry for three hours. Once of dry land with free 3 month stamps in our passports (a bit hairy for a moment when we realised that we had no idea if Djalma would be refused entry or not) we got in a minivan and only circled the block seven times before leaving for Semporna, the last stop before Sipadan.
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