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DIVING IN BEAUTY happens along a seemingly endless, bottomless, 200 metre deep underwater wall that is home to hard and soft coral gardens of sparkling, vibrant colours; where nature’s artistry is displayed in an unimaginable array of shapes, designs, and textures, inhabited by an equally diverse population of large and small marine animal life. The beauty of it all is astounding. This is wall diving amidst the astounding seascapes of Bunaken Marine Park in Northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. This is diving in beauty.
We returned again this year to The Happy Gecko / Cicak Senang family run resort we have come to love, where our mornings are spent completing two relaxed, personalized wall dives, followed by an excellent home cooked lunch. Afternoons are spent relaxing in our hammocks, overlooking the ocean bay, napping, reading, and just relishing being in the moment. The day's routine concludes with a homecooked meal in the dining room overlooking the lights of Manado city twinkling across the bay, then retiring early, to be well rested and ready to repeat the same routine in the next day’s adventures.
My early morning, pre-dive yoga practice is often enriched by the delightful snorting sounds of a family of
piglets passing by the cabin, and a rooster crowing to greet the day with its brood. The animals living next door to us all seem to prefer the five thirty a.m. grazing time. One particular morning, as I am practicing Garudasana, a balancing pose that requires focusing on an object in the distance, I notice that my object of focus - a volcano across the bay on mainland Sulawesi - is active.
“ Wow! Check this out Stan! “ says I. “That volcano is erupting!”
We learn from our host later that the volcano in question does this daily. She claims it is emitting steam, but is not concerned, as it is far away. (As in perhaps thirty kilometres)
“Okay then”, says I. Such is the vibe of this laid back island community.
So glad I got to enjoy an evening music jam session with a few of its members before we moved on to our next destination to try out muck diving in Lembeh Strait.
SEEKING BEAUTY IN MUCK. Or black sand. Or amidst trash and rubble. I’d be lying if I said I was immediately thrilled with it. Quite the contrary. My mindset
is still set on diving in beautiful seascapes, and I find myself comparing the two and shackling this new experience with expectations. Never a good idea. We have noted before, when changing travel locations, that there is usually a two to three day period of adjustment before we psychologically leave the old place and accept the new for what it is. The same theory, it now appears, holds true for dive site locations. Evidence: on day two in Lembeh I went night diving, and it all became immediately clear to me. I understand now why people love muck diving, for which Lembeh Strait is reputed to be one of the most bio-diverse areas for microscopic marine life on the planet.
In the space of one hour we see some bizarre, alien creature every two minutes. Most of the muck inhabitants are shy, hiding, and relatively small, but often very beautiful. One size exception is a giant stingray - two to three metres in diametre - whom we watch for several minutes trying to bury himself in the sand. He is visited at one point by a lovely, much smaller, 40 cm long ribbon tail blue spotted stingray passing by.
We see flamboyant cuttle fish, exotically painted Mandarin fish, tiny coconut octopi, numerous beautiful nudi branches, miniature sea horses, peacock mantis shrimp, cushion, crown of thorns, and feathered star fish, and many other species too numerous to list. The mediocre seascape is not the feature, but is instead merely the canvas against which the beauty of all the little things is featured. This is muck diving. This is also macro diving - looking for small marine creatures - misleadingly defined as such because photographing the tiny creatures often necessitates the use of a macro lens on the camera.
Having said that, I am including a link to a three minute video on muck diving in Lembeh Strait - prepared by professional photographers using those high end cameras with the macro lens and huge stereo underwater lights - that offers photogenic quality and perspective that my Go-Pro camera could only wish for. We saw many of these critters while muck diving in Lembeh Strait.
Some say you either hate muck diving or love it. Another perspective we prefer is that it provides another dimension to diving, another way of looking at the astounding world of marine biodiversity,
and it is another first for us. We look forward to returning to dive in both marine ecosystems again next year.
Another reason we would return to Lembeh has to do with the exceptional experience we had at the Kungkungan Bay Resort. We have done a lot of travelling over the years, staying at hundreds of hotels, but this is the first hotel where the staff form a musical corridor to send off departing guests with a farewell song in which they repeatedly thank them for coming, ask forgiveness if service was lacking at any time, then invite them to come back to visit again the family they are now a part of. Where else does this happen?
Encouraged to bring out my guitar, the entire staff then joins me singing a few Indonesian songs I have become familiar with, adding a video of the experience on their hotel website, followed by an invitation to return next year to do a concert at the hotel, and to share a performance at a local school. I am so in! The Bev Zizzy World Tour continues, it seems, in its delightfully impromptu unplanned spirit of connection.
Thank you to
our wonderful hosts at Cicak Senang and Kungkungan Bay Dive Resorts for the wonderful experiences in Northern Sulawesi. And so it is that our global family grows.
Thank you for your interest in our travels.
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Gail
non-member comment
Hi Bev
Very well written account of your diving experience. The whole underwater world looks so wondrous an