Tanjung Cleng

Mo and me booked a snorkeling trip with the dive company Pure Dive, because they were said to be the most ethical and environment-friendly ones on the island. We wanted to see manta rays, as it should be a once in a lifetime experience, without disturbing the animals.

Our guide Sandra from Pure Dive explained to us, that we would be the only ones snorkeling, all the others ones on the boat would go diving. We were afraid that only the divers would be able to see the mantas, but Sandra told us that the likelihood should be quite high that the mantas would come closer to the water surface on that day aswell.

When our boat headed towards Manta Point, it suddenly became very cloudy and windy and began to rain. When we finally reached the Point and our boat stopped we were veeery cold (maybe the first time for me in Indonesia?🥶) and also veeery happy that we took the pills that Sandra gave us against sea-sickness. 😅

We couldn’t wait to go into the water (because it was warmer than the air 😅). When we were finally under the surface we followed our guide to the more shallow part near the cliffs. Suddenly we saw something veeeeery big and black swimming directly beneath us 🤯 I didn’t imagined the mantas to be THAT big 🫣 and at first Mo and me had to get used to be that close to the animals - we knew that the mantas shouldn’t be dangerous but they were about 2 to 4 meters in width so that was quite impressing 🤯They were so beautiful how they were slowly gliding through the water 😍 swimming close to them was indeed an amazing experience ✨
The second snorkeling spot that we headed for was underwhelming (dead corals and only a few fishes), but Mo and me were still amazed by the experience of swimming next to the mantas so it actually didn’t matter to us.
Since we forgot to take the gopro with us we were very happy to get some pictures and videos from the divers that went together with us!

After our trip we changed our accommodation because the pain in my ear got worse and the doctor that I went to (a surprisingly professional one!) said to avoid going into the water and driving too much scooter. Since our bungalows were quite far from the main roads we chose a accommodation which was closer to some restaurants (…also the spider and cockroaches situation was getting a little bit annoying - in the evenings Mo and me always guarded each other while peeing or taking a shower😅).

Our new accommodation looked amazing (and was also free of insects 😅). For dinner we went to a Warung that Denise recommend to us - we had the best watermelon juice so far and the food was also very good. 🌶Read more