Nusa Penida

After leaving the retreat I took a taxi to Sanur, which is a town on the seafront near to the airport, but not as near as the awful place Kuta-which is the part of Bali most heavily populated with drunk Aussies and trashy bars and clubs. Sanur is still very touristy, but having spent just an evening in both places it is definitely my preferred location. There is a long seafront of almost 10km and the whole thing is lined with restaurants, bars, hotels and stalls. I spent the evening walking along it and I treated myself to a beer on the beach at sunset. Then I had some delicious local food in the night market. My favourite dish here is gado gado-a salad of green beans, bean sprouts, tofu, Tempe and a spicy peanut sauce.

I stayed at Sanur so I could take the boat to Nusa Penida in the morning, an island I was told to go to by Marla to visit her friend in her dive shop. It is quite a big Island within eyesite of Bali. I just took a flying visit through as my next destination is somewhere I want to relax for a few days. The main reason for me to come here was because supposedly you can dive with manta rays, every single day they are at a site where they clean themselves on the coral. I've seen a lot of sealife, but have never seen manta rays and so it was something I was quite excited about.

We left for the dive in the morning, the site was on the southern part of the island and the journey took about 40minutes. The view of the island was impressive,-jurassic looking with steep cliffs and trees miraculously growing out of rock. The waves were crashing at some places and the resulting erosion caused some serious carvings and impressive rock sculptures. The waves on the sea were fairly big as well and the boat was rocking a lot. When we got to manta point, which is a large rock off the southern point of the island, we entered the water with backrolls into the sea. We went down and had a disappointing dive. The visibility was very poor, the waves were stirring up the sand and it meant in some places we couldn't see more than 2meters away. The swell of the waves was also quite strong, so we had less control on our movement which restricted where we could go. The main cleaning station was in the shallows and my guide was not comfortable to go there in these conditions. We spent 50minutes down at about 16-18ma, hoping the mantas would come and surprise us at any moment. Instead we saw lots of blue spotted stingrays, many of which were mating, and a school of catfish. But it was nothing as exciting as what I hoped. When we came up everyone was saying how unlucky we were because in recent days the visibility had been great. A few people saw about 5 manta rays at the cleaning station, but they said it was a poor sighting because the visibility was so bad. I was disappointed, but accepted this was the beauty of nature-it is unpredictable, sometimes it brings surprises that are like a gift and sometimes it doesn't. The excitement of it is that whatever happens it is real nature, not a man made or manipulated environment. So on this occasion I took the bad, for I have and my fair share of good dives recently!

After lunch we stopped at a bay on the way back to the dive shop to dive a site called crystal bay. This was a completely different experience. The visibility was brilliant-we could see 20-30m and there were thousands of fish everywhere. There was a lot of coral, but some of it had been damaged by a big storm last year. We could see where it had been knocked down by falling rocks, causing it to break. We saw many types of fish and coral, some of which I had not seen before. Some cornetfish (very long, thin silver fish with pointed noses and big eyes) were glowing with electricity, lighting up in a shiny blue. It just amazes me what happens down there! Then the finale to complete the dive was a sighting of a common seahorse. I am always amazed when someone finds something like this because they blend in with their environment and hardly move. The swell was moving it with the wave movements and it was clinging with its tail to a piece of coral. The second dive made up for the first dive and concluded the day with positivity.

I spend the rest of the day in the pool at the dive shop, which was in front of the beach and had a view of Bali. It was a fine location, I could see why Lauren had opened a shop here!

Now I am waiting for the boat which will take me to Gilli Air. There are three Gilli islands and I am going to the quiet one that has no motor vehicles and is walkable. One of the islands is known as party Isla d and the other is a resort island. I'm going to Gilli air for more diving and to do some yoga. I will send 3-4 nights there.Read more