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Published: July 23rd 2009
Greetings computer dwellers,
I type this blog from a steamy stinky internet cafe in the gushing noisy rain of BANGKOK Thailand. How did I end up here? The fun of improv travel of course! But first I will tell you of my voyage on a boat through Indonesia.
After baking and lounging in the Gili islands for almost a week, I was ready for something a little bit super-charged. I was hoping to find this adventure on a liveaboard scuba-diving boat called Jaya. The plan was to sail for 8 days from Gili Trawangan through Komodo National Park to Labuan Bajo, Flores and then come all the way back.
Normally I do not chat about the specific people of my adventures as much as I describe the moods and details of the experiene. But this section of the trip was as much a social adventure as it was a diving adventure. This was a nice change of pace as compared to my sometimes quiet solo traveling. Soooo...the leader of the trip was a surly bald English guy named Neil. He had worked in Thailand on a boat for 10 years (and had some crazy stories about the Tsunami)
but now was starting a relatively new boat trip business here in Indonesia. He did a nice job of rounding up all of us new passengers on the island the night before to meet for some food and drinks. Meeting your boat mates for the 1st time is a somewhat critical moment as we are about to spend some serious close-quarters time together. Even 1 sour apple could really affect the tone of the trip. But as promised by Neil, he seemed to have successfully harvested a compatible young group of scuba loving goofballs that were fun and easy-going. We were a diverse bunch; a couple from Germany, a guy from Paris, a girl from Norway, sisters from Spain, a handful of English guys and 1 other USA dude. We had a mostly Indonesian crew with a some Divemasters from Spain and France. Let the personality mixing begin!
We boarded the boat with excitement and anticipation. I was roomied and dive-buddied with the other American dude. We had randomly met earlier playing drums at sunset on a beach, so this made sense. We sorted out our small living quarters and the boat took sail for a full night of
traveling to our 1st destination. We were warned that this would probably be the worst night of the trip as we had to cross some open ocean and some straights between islands. That meant we would hit some current and choppy wave action. On top of this we had some very strong headwinds. Most of us were not so worried though and we settled in for the night.
SMACK!!! I awoke with a jolt in the middle of the night to a loud sharp sound. As my senses slowly tried to make sense of all of the new stimulus I realized that the boat was rocking widely back and forth. Then I felt a brisk spray of salt water shoot across the bed as I listened to the almost comical creaking of our large wooden boat. Sometimes our rhythmic swaying would be interupted by what felt like our boat running into a punishing wall of water. This would be soon be followed by another surprise spatter of the sea. This was made all the more impressive by the fact that my room was tucked away inside the ship and pretty far forward beneath the deck. The waves must have
been quite enormous for them to be able to reach my semi-protected area. Despite all of this chaos, I did not manage to fully wake myself up to find the origin of that horrible smacking sound. Some unknown amount of time later (2 hours? 2 minutes?) I slightly woke up again to grab onto the roof just before I rolled off my top bunk onto floor. This seemed fine and logical in my sleepy head as the boat was now swaying even harder back and forth now. I recall a very bizarre dream that was a somewhat normal walk-around-and-talk-to-people dream except every few seconds I was being thrown left and right onto the floor! This crazy rocking boat was not only trying to toss me from my bed, it was pushing me around in my dreams too! After what must have been a couple dozen smacks I truly awoke to decipher this mystery. The hinged doors to our cabin were not hooked shut so every time the boat took a large dip, the wooden door would come screaming open and smack against the wall. It actually looked quite dramatic in the wet blue moonlight. I did everyone on the boat
a favor and clambored out into the puddles to fix this problem. Phew!
There were so many cool things on this trip that I am not sure which stories to tell. I suppose since this is a scuba diving trip I should start there. Our 1st dive was a "Check Dive". This is a way for the Divemasters to see our skill level (buoyancy at different depths, air consumption, ability to follow) and double check the gear. It was also our 1st of 17 dives. Although we were told that this dive was not going to compare to what lies ahead, we were all quite impressed. The visibility was magical. We descended down a large sloping wall covered in the most diverse and colorful coral I have seen since Australia 7 years ago. Swimming next to this underwater mountain and being able to see so far up and down inspired just a little bit of awe. We all popped up from the dive onto the surface of the water with big sloppy grins on our face as we knew we were in for some great diving.
It turns out that mountain was not a mountain but a Volcano!
Our next dive was on a different part of this underwater volcano called Bubble Reef. As you swim along you can see a steady stream of champagne bubbles gurgling from the ground. Swimming through this bubble land was delightful and unique. We watched our Dive guide shove his hand in the sand. We did the same and immediately felt the our hands heating up. We could feel the heat from the volcano! Next we swam past a blurry area emitting from a coral. As we got closer we could Really start feeling the heat. Sooo coool! Add to this great visibility, stunning gardens of coral and a dense population of tropical fish and you have a tremendous dive.
A gang of happy divers ate our yummy Indonesian dinner of fresh fish and spicey rice on the deck as the sun began to set. Suddenly our captian emerges from below wearing a Batman costume! This did not immediately make any sense until he pointed towards the sky. Sure enough, we saw some giant bats silhouettes filling the sky. The longer we watched, the more that appeared till eventually we saw them in all directions. There must have been 1000's! (sadly
none of my pictures could capture this difficult lighting). Our Bat Captain and his creatures of the night led us further away from the population centers. Eventually all of the manmade lights blinked out. We could see nothing but the stars. Eventually we saw the moon rise. Now, I suppose I have heard of a "moon rise" before but I don't particularly remember this being all that interesting. Well, this moon emerged from the dark horizon as fast as any moon I have ever seen. It was a dark red and cast a spooky haze over the ocean. I must have spent hours just staring out at all of the marvelous and strange sparkles shimmering around us.
We continue to have more glorious and unique diving. One dive in particular deserves a mention. It is called Castle Rock. We are told that it can have some serious current so we need to be careful. Normally scuba diving is a relaxing recreational hobby...especially in warm water with good visibility. You just through on some dive gear and look at the pretty fish. But when current enters the equation, we have to be more careful. Why dive in current? Because big
fish like strong current as it brings nutrient rich water full of yummy food. Castle Rock has current because it is a giant coral at the crossroads of 2 very strong currents. These currents look like roaring riers from the boat with 1 glassy calm spot in the middle. It is here at the "Splt" that we want to be. We are told to jump into the water and descend as fast as possible. The current will be rushing you towards the reef so grab it or you will be swept out to sea! I hype up our nervous group with a round of "Eye of the Tiger" before we drop to ease the nerves a bit. BA! Ba-Ba-BA! Ba-Ba-BA! Ba-Ba-BAAAAA!
We do our backrolls and bam! we are met with the promised currents. I have dove in some serious current before but this is way beyond anything I have felt. I am kicking as hard as I can muster and I am barely moving! As each person diligently clasps onto a rock, the lower half of the body is pivoted in the direction of the water rush. We all look like windsocks at an airport. Our dive guide
is as cool as a cucumer as he checks if we are all good. Sure we are! So he leads us further into the chaos. To move just 10 meters is now a serious challenge. We have to get our breathing back down to a normal pace and pick out our next rock to hang ourselves on. Each segment tires me out just a bit more to where it is getting harder to return to normal breathing. Sometimes I can feel my heart pounding in the temples of my head. I am huffing air like a maniac. My vision is even a bit blurry and dark. At one of the pitstops I look over at my dive buddy and we start pumping our fists to "Eye of the Tiger". I can hear it in my head. BA! Ba-Ba-BA! My nerves calm a bit and I push on. Eventually we make it past this angry water and arrive at the glorious Split! It is here we can hunker down and watch the action. Sharks everywhere! Giant schools of fish, barracuda, turtles, rays, oh my! At this point we are all running absurdly low on air so we ascend to highest point
on the rock. We are now blowing like kites hanging on for our 3 minute Safety Stop. At the end of this interval he counts us down for release...3....2....1 and we are shot to the surface like sky-divers jumping from a plane (expect we are underwater and going up)! Wow! What a rush! Definitely one of the most intense things I have ever done. Most everyone had a similar reaction to the dive as me. A few people were overwhelmed and actually did run out of air. Another person blacked out for a few seconds. Yowza! But we all loved it and did that dive a total of 4 times on the trip.
The days are spent lounging in hammocks, eating, sleeping, playing poker (I won some money!), dance parties, jam sessions and more sleeping. I even gave a few music lessons about modes and tonal harmony! We saw almost every sunset on 1 side of the boat and then watched the sunrise on the other. One ambitious day we all jumped from the crows nest at the top of the mast. This was insanely scary but totally worth it. Another day we visited a ultra-small village on a
nearly deserted island and gave them some gifts. They were all in very poor health but in generally good spirits to meet us. Sometimes dolphins would swim along with our boat and send us scrambling with happinesss. Flying fish were always skimming across the surface like stones. We did some incredible drift dives, muck dives and met eye to eye with more sharks. I got some decent pictures but overall I am still discouraged by the technical aspects of underwater photography. I prefer the purely creative point and shootiness of video.
It was a spectacular trip and we were all sad to say goodbye. No later than THAT NIGHT did I get a text from my favorite LA lady Kristi saying she wanted to come to Asia and party with me. 2 days later and we are about to meet in Bangkok! Holy Crap! I gotta go pick her up from the airport right now!
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Jenny
non-member comment
scary!
brad, your account of diving into that current gave me heart palpitations! very scary. but sounds like you loved every minute of it so i'm glad. say hi to kristi for us and hope you guys have a great time in thailand!