Diving Amed: Jemeluk Wall and Amed Pyramids

Our second day of diving in Amed was not quite as great as the first as far as visibility goes (it rained the previous afternoon), but we still saw a ton of stuff (and cemented the hunch I had that neither Tim nor I is capable of taking non-blurry video of a nudibranch).

Our first dive was the Jemeluk Wall, with a bit of a current. Video highlights include:

- heading out on the jukung again (this time we were two jukungs' worth of divers... each jukung fits max 4 people including the captain)

- a school of fish (who our dive guide said were "jawfish" due to their open-mouth plankton feeding, but my online research says jawfish are little sand-dwelling guys?) at 0:12... they show up again at 0:44

- pretty purple tube-y things... I'm sure they have a technical name, but I'll go with pretty purple tubes

- lionfish at 0:45

- cool blue nudibranch at 1:01

- scorpionfish (sneaky, blending in) at 1:11

- cool leaf scorpionfish at 1:19!

Second dive of the day = Amed Pyramids, a series of concrete pyramids installed offshore by the local community in the '90s to serve as the basis for a rejuvenated reef. They're pretty well covered in different corals and are currently serving as a hideout for all sorts of fish.  The visibility was crap- we actually lost our divemaster for a hot second at one point- and the current was pretty strong. But despite that, Tim managed to take some awesome video of the fish swimming into said current.

Video highlights:

- heading down!

- egg ribbon of the Spanish Dancer nudibranch 

- a couple two-tone dartfishes at 0:54

- lots of little colorful fish hanging out in the current, anthias and such

- the pyramids begin at 2:32, surrounded by tons of fish, including what I think is a school of yellow, 5-lined snapper at 2:48

- at 3:26, what I think is a midnight snapper and a couple horn-less unicornfish?

- anemone fish at 3:46

- moray eel snapping his mouth shut at 4:00

- another leaf scorpionfish hanging out inside the pyramid... this time the pink/red variety: 4:25

- a starfish and a cool black and green striped nudibranch with orange accents at 4:45

- granulated sea star at 6:16

- another nudibranch at 6:52

- a cool juvenile many-spotted sweetlips fluttering around on the reef at 7:12

- goatfish at 7:21- check out his little chin barbs digging in the sand

- some sort of filefish, maybe, at 7:41

Diving Amed: Bunutan and Deep Blue

Over Christmas, Tim and I headed back to Bali, to our favorite low-key fishing and salt-making village (or group of villages, really), Amed. We decided to do some dives while in the area... good times!

Our first dive was at Bunutan, a quick boat ride away (jukung, the Indonesia outrigger canoe, to be specific) from our hotel on Lipah beach.

A great dive- we saw a ton of stuff... check out the video below. Highlights:

- heading off shore in the jukung

- the lovely

- cool barrel corals
- a big ole moray eel hanging out outside of his hole (1:01)
- some sort of kooky little fish (filefish maybe? at 2:00)
- 2 blurry nudibranchs, doin' it (2:08)
- a ginormous, blurry nudibranch (hexabranchus, perhaps), with an emperor shrimp on its back (2:29)
- lots of pretty, colorful fish, including pyramid butterfly fish, red-tooth triggerfish, emperor angelfish, brown-marbled grouper, needlefish...
- 3! pygmy seahorses, barely visible as they are the size of a fingernail clipping, hanging out in the sea fan (3:33)

Not pictured, but seen on the Bunutan dive:

- a baby white-tip reef shark under the coral!

- like 10 blue-spotted stingrays hanging out in the sand

- a walking feather sea star... I rarely see them on the move!

We also saw this cool spiny lobster, hanging out below the coral:

After a brief on-shore rest, we headed back out for a killer dive at Deep Blue, a 2-kilometer long drift along some lovely coral.

Highlights of the video:

- orange, hairy, orangutan crab (which I wish our divemaster hadn't poked) at 0:21

- a cool school of rainbow runners swimming to and fro around us at 0:41

- moorish idols at 1:10

- blue and yellow fusiliers at 1:20

- Tim, upside down, his preferred diving method (2:15)

- a couple big titan triggerfish (2:22 and 4:04)

- emperor angelfish (2:30)

- lots of awesome anemones and anemone fish (2:37)

- lionfish (2:47)

- blurry, but cool porcelain crabs in an anemone at 3:00

- panda butterfly fish at 3:18

- a big old map puffer at 3:27

- oriental sweetlips at 3:45

- another moray eel at 3:56

- so many anemones!

Not on video:

- another orangutan crab

- another baby white tip reef shark

- a couple napoleon wrasse in the distance

- clown triggerfish

- midnight snapper

But the highlight of our Deep Blue dive was this big school of bigeye trevally (also called jacks)... awesome!  Reminded me of the scene in Finding Nemo when the school of fish is giving Dory and Marlin directions.

Diving the Liberty Wreck

After our jungle adventures on Sumatra, Tim headed back to Bangkok, while Chuck and I made the journey to beautiful Bali.  Our destination was on Bali's east coast, Amed, a spot to which I had previously traveled with Tim, the EPA girls and Martha. Specifically, we headed to Amed because a) it is very close to the Liberty wreck dive site, which I thought would be a good refresher dive for Chuck, b) it has lovely snorkeling and views on Lipah beach and c) it is the jumping off point to the Gilis.

But first: the Liberty wreck dive!

Tim and I did this dive over a year ago for my birthday and really enjoyed it... it's a relaxing shore dive: a cool, historically interesting wreck (check out my previous post for background) that is now coated in coral and teeming with fish.  And this time I had my camera so you can see just that!

I split the video into 3 parts. Check out this map to get a sense of the wreck and the route we took.

Part 1: Descending and approaching the wreck on the south side, at the stern, then swimming around the far side, with the deck on our left.  A big titan triggerfish (watch out, they're bitey!) at 1:09.  Sweet, giant barrel sponges all over the wreck.  Moorish idols and other fishies.

Part 2: Swimming through the wreck through the part of the ship that is broken in half, into the hold.  A freediver passes us in the hold... lots and lots of coral covering broken ship parts:

Part 3: our ascent over the sandy bottom between the wreck and the beach.  Chuck pointing at another titan triggerfish. A cool anemone with a couple Nemos in it.  Some fish trawling the sandy sea bed (Chuck and I decided that if they could talk, they would be saying "Hashtag om nom nom nom."). And the piece de resistance, at 0:42, a cuttlefish hanging out and then ultimately expressing his displeasure at how close I got by changing colors: he goes from sand color to bright yellow with distinct black spots right around 0:54.  Then more Nemos, a goatfish sniffing around with his weird little barbs, then some cute electric blue fish.

The dive was quite lovely, but the whole time there were some some shenanigans going on inside of Chuck's mask.  You can start to see it below a bit... Chuck's eyes look a big buggy/squinty, no?

That would be because she was in the midst of a mean case of "mask squeeze," which is an affliction experience by newbie divers once (and usually never again).  When you fail to breathe a little bit of air into your mask to equalize it as you descend and the pressure increases, putting major pressure on the blood vessels in your face around your eyes.  

When we surfaced, Chuck's eyes were almost swollen shut, her eyeballs were bloodied, and there was bruising all around her eyes (she looks a little weird in this shot because I took it with the underwater camera, which has a bit of a fisheye lens thing going on).  Scary!   

Thankfully the swelling went down within a few hours and she was left with two black and bloodied eyes, but no permanent or really even painful symptoms.  Phew.  But she did have a lot of people staring at her over the next few weeks, as her face looked a bit zombie-esque:

Amed Amusements

The final stop on Martha's whirlwind Indonesian trip was Amed, my favorite beaching/snorkeling/chilling spot on east Bali.  I love the mountains sitting right next to the sea in the Amed area... it makes for some pretty beautiful scenery:

 

The mountain and sea views from our hotel room at Baliku ("my Bali")... please note the frequent rooster and pig noises:

Jukung fishing boats all lined up along the black sand beach:

I just liked these vintage-looking matches:

Baliku's delicious bubur hitam (black rice pudding, topped with coconut milk and palm sugar syrup)... the rest of the food at Baliku was pretty awesome, too.  Particularly their beef rendang, which is served fusion style with pita and cucumber yogurt sauce- awwwwwwesome.

While in Amed I was actually successful in getting Martha to snorkel!!  Score!  We had tried in the past with little success, but I was determined for her to see the beautiful coral and fish just under the surface in the Amed area.  Turns out the key is: rent a life vest!!

We saw a ton of stuff, too (although I forgot my underwater camera... doh!).  Right in front of our hotel, we saw some sweet coral as well as the coral-covered Japanese wreck.  Then we spent some time at nearby Lipah beach (having hopped motorbike taxis to get there- exciting!), where there was more lovely coral and lots of fish, including Moorish idols, titan triggerfish (which we saw picking up and transporting bits of coral), trumpetfish, giant clams, a Spanish dancer nudibranch eggs, and approximately a zillion other fish.

Lipah beach is pretty awesome- rent a chair and umbrella for the day, snorkel and swim, listen to the gamelan being played behind you:

We also did a sunset cruise on the junkung (like Tim and I did for my birthday last year), which was lovely:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also saw some amazing sunsets from our hotel's balcony area... the perfect happy hour drink spot:

 

From our balcony we could also see the top of Lombok's Mt. Rinjani looking imposing in the distance. Check out Colleen and Steve's insane photos from the top of Rinjani!

And lots and lots of jukung fishing boats, out quite early in the morning (this is them coming back in at 7 am) with their beautifully colored sails:

Miss you, Amed!

En Route to Amed

The rice paddy viewing on the way from Ubud to Amed is pretty amazing:

The foot of the volcano in the background:

Martha <3s paddies:

Awesome terracing:

Temple Time

 On the way from Ubud to Amed we also stopped at Pura Goa Lawah, which is one of Bali's nine directional temples forming a chain around the island (you may remember Pura Tanah Lot, which falls into this same category).  Pura Goa Lawah is on Bali's east coast, right on the water, and the temple abuts a large cave that is apparently filled with bats, although we didn't get close enough to confirm.  

Here's Martha just outside the temple:

There was a fairly large ceremony going on in the temple when we were there.  It felt a little bit strange to be there, like we were invading a private event, but noone seemed to mind and our driver assured us it was totally cool for us to be there.  

Our driver told us the ceremony was a post-cremation ceremony in which folks from neighboring villages brought offerings to this important temple on an auspicious day.  And bring offerings they did- by the truckload!:

 

Streams and streams of people walked into the temple, all decked out (men in white tops, white headwear, sarongs and women in lace kebaya and sarongs), with rice and flowers in their hair and on their foreheads.  Things we saw being carried as offerings included: flowers, rice, live chickens and ducks, cooked chickens and ducks, baskets full of all sorts of stuff, most of it carried by the women on their heads and piled high in certain areas within the temple compound:

 

There was a special procession of women carrying offerings, accompanied by music, bells, umbrellas and a guy on a loudspeaker (praying, I assume).  The video below shows them coming into the temple and departing post-ceremony:

 

Once all inside, they stood near the front (well, near the cave) where there seemed to be a blessing of some sort going on:

More and more people kept squeezing in:

Some sat, some stood:

The procession on the way out:

 

 

There was a man passing out blessings and what I assume is some sort of holy/blessed water, which he sprinkled from his silver bucket into upturned hands and onto heads:

 

A pretty cool experience!  I wish I knew a little better exactly what was going on, but it was definitely a neat thing to be a part of anyway.