From Bali to West Timor, Indonesia by Liveaboard

by South China Dive Club

Chinese New Year in Hong Kong is generally cold and wet. So what better way to spend it than in Indonesia, where it's warm and wet. Eight of us decided to spend 2 weeks on a boat doing some diving between Bali to West Timor. We set off on a Friday afternoon, via Singapore, before arriving in Jakarta. Early Saturday morning and we flew to Denpasar where we were met by Marc and Sheren, who are now living there. We were also met by Vidar, whose boat we were diving from. He arranged for 4 taxis to take us to the boat. 3 of them arrived at about the same time, but then Marc got a phone call from Brian because they were lost. This was probably because Brian had his GPS out and was telling the driver which way to go. Finally they turned up and we stowed the gear on to the boat.

Inevitably Brian immediately set his gear up to make sure he was ready for the first dive the following day. In the meantime Louisa checked the vitally important schedule - the meals schedule, and was very pleased to find there were rather a lot of them. First a pre-dive breakfast, followed by a post-dive breakfast. Then lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. As a bonus there was always some food lying around just in case she got hungry between meals. We met the rest of the crew, Vidar's wife Alice, and the Indonesian guy whose name I can't remember. The two of them were responsible for the wonderful food. Also we met the couple who were going to be helping out with the diving. Adam, a photographer who was also going to do some of the driving, and Nienke from Holland. We had dinner with Marc, which gave him and Keith time to catch up on a few of their favourite arguments.

Our first dives were drift dives at Nusa Penida and Lembongan, with excellent visibility and loads to see including trumpetfish, surgeons, several different type of triggerfish, puffer fish, wrasse, sweetlips. It was near here that Marc and Robert Ho (and later Keith) subsequently saw Mola Mola, but we were not that fortunate.

Vidar's boat has been adapted for technical divers, and has a lift. So at the end of the dive you can swim into this steel cage, stand up in chest high water, and wait while he winches you aboard. I think we should recommend this to Yip II and Hong as it makes life a lot easier.

The second night was a bad one. We were trying to get across to the straits to the north of Lombok, but the weather was against us. We hit a storm, and the wind and currents meant that while we were within sight of the islands where we were going to anchor, we couldn't get to them. Instead Vidar had to turn south for a couple of hours and parked in a sheltered bay on the south side of Lombok. At one point I was thrown out of the bunk and on to the floor. Not to be outdone (when is he ever?) a sleeping Keith was hurled out of the top bunk and hit the far wall of his cabin. Gravity, realising it had been caught out, then reimposed the normal order of things and brought him crashing to the floor. On a more serious note, 3 bottles of my wine were smashed. Fortunately this libation to the sea gods worked and the storm abated. Even more fortunately, due to the subsequent generosity of the others, I didn't have to spend any sober nights in with a good book. There were several other unhappy campers on board, including our Glorious Leader, who showed his displeasure by throwing up all over Adam's feet. That didn't stop him being first in the water the following day as we dived along the south coast of Lombok.

The following night we were steaming again, but this time the weather was better. Brian tried to chop Keith's fingers off, and we got caught up in the middle of a pearl farm from which Adam had to cut us out, but apart from that it was a quiet night. However it did provide us with the opportunity for a physics lesson on the refraction of sound. After a couple of bottles of red wine the details are a little hazy, but as sound travels from a denser medium to a less dense one, it is refracted. So if you are standing uphill, you will be able to hear what someone lower down says, but they won't hear you. There were a variety of ingenious solutions to this problem involving orange boxes and shovels, but the simplest seemed to be for the 2 parties to the conversation to gradually work their way up the hill, and then down the other side.

We did a couple of dives on the south of Lombok, and then dived the straits between Lombok and Sumbawa, including the wreck of a small tug near Moyo island. We also dived next to an active (but quiet) volcano. There were bubbles coming up through the black volcanic sand. We swam along a rocky ridge, and there was a cold upwelling which made this dive a bit chillier than most. A blue fin trevally followed us around, and there were schools of fusiliers, snappers, trumpet fish, and lots of coral on the rocks. Later I did a dusk dive with Steve Sloan and Tam. Just after we got in we saw 7 mantas. They reappeared periodically during the dive.

As we were sitting on the boat watching some sea snakes in the water, Louisa decided to go fishing and eventually she caught something. I am reliably informed by Les that "it were a big bugger". Keith helpfully provided several identifications, including a rock, a ray, and culminating in some words of Latin that only Brian understood. Louisa told us that it would be best steamed with ginger, whereas Steve Sloan felt it would go well with a nice white wine. Unfortunately we'll never know the truth, as despite Les's best efforts it got away. Steve and I were forced to console ourselves with the wine. Meanwhile Vidar was on the gin and alka seltzer - a strange mix that I can't see catching on.

Further along Sumbawa, getting closer to Komodo and we had an a excellent couple of dives at Pulau Kelapa. This site had a number of pinnacles, with lots of white tips, nurse sharks, a hawksbill turtle, rays, trevallies, several octupi. We swam from pinnacle to pinnacle and the viz was so good it was like flying over a series of valleys. Down at the bottom we saw a huge white tip attacking something. We also saw an octopus breaking open a shell.

We actually got off the boat at Komodo, and in an hour's walk, we saw 3 of the dragons - 2 large males and a smaller one.

Back to the diving and on the south side of Komodo we did some excellent dives including a high current dive on a submerged pinnacle. The sea bed was at about 60 metres, and the pinnacle comes up to within 3 metres of the surface. The current was quite strong and there was plenty to see including sharks, jacks, tuna, giant trevallies. On Trevor's recommendation we also did an excellent night dive along a wall at Pantai Merah. Louisa and I also had our best dive of the trip. On the back of an island, hidden from the current was a calm little bay. It looked like a pleasant, but not spectacular site, and we were not expecting anything special. We dropped down and immediately saw a manta ray circling, which we sat and watched for 15 minutes. It seemed quite curious and came very close. By the end of the dive we'd also seen a turtle, a 6 foot long giant barracuda, white and black tip reef sharks, a nurse shark, a school of dogtooth tuna, 2 morays, a school of over a hundred unicorn fish, clown and red-tooth triggerfish, some large emperor angelfish, giant trevallies and plenty more besides.

From Komodo we headed across to Rinca, then along the south coast of Flores, where the diving was not quite as good (although I think we'd been spoilt). Brian apparently spent one of these dives trying to molest a nurse shark. According to Keith he was looking for its dangly bits. Brian told us he was trying to sex it, but apparently it didn't want any and swam off in a huff.

Then we got to the straits of Alor, where the diving was again excellent, as was the visibility. We dived below a steaming volcano on a vertical wall. The volcano had erupted 10 years earlier, so there was not a lot of coral, but there was a lot of fish life. To keep Steve happy we almost did a wreck dive. It was one of those wrecks that you can see from the surface. In fact the deepest part of the wreck was about 5 metres above the high water mark, so the visibility was quite good. It was surprising to see that the prop was still on it.

Drift diving can be the most relaxing way to dive. The current gently carries you along the reef, while you just sit there and watch the world go by. But it can also be the least relaxing way to dive, as sometimes the current doesn't want to carry you gently along the reef. Sometimes it wants to throw you up the reef to the surface, and sometimes it wants to drag you down a wall to the murky depths. Sometimes it wants to do both, and sometimes it just wants to carry you away from the reef and into the wide blue yonder. On one particular dive it tried to do all of the above. Despite that (or perhaps because of it) there was still a lot to see, a turtle, a huge bumphead parrot fish, some tuna, sea fans.

As we dropped in on our last dive of the trip, an SMB fell out of my pocket. This attracted the interest of a school of Giant Trevally. Several of them had a go at it and spat it out before I managed to catch it. This was another great dive, and included a school of over 30 large bump-head parrot fish, along with the usual white tips, snappers, fusiliers and the ever-present trumpetfish.

Kupang in West Timor was interesting. It was a bit disconcerting to be met by a crowd of people including one with an Osama Bin Laden T-shirt who seemed very interested to know if we were Americans. But before long we were at the airport. Trevor had had the foresight to put us on the first of the 2 flights, so if it didn't go we'd still have chance to get the second. Unfortunately the first flight couldn't land because it was raining. Apparently it turned around and went back to Bali (just as the sun came out). We then had several hours of waiting punctuated by the occasional news that the plane had left Bali again. Judging from the announcements it must have left Bali about 5 times. Several hours later a plane arrived, although I don't think it was the one we were expecting as several of us had boarding passes for seats that didn't exist.

Two weeks trapped on a small boat with such a small number of people could have been a recipe for disaster, or a recipe for boredom. Surprisingly the time went by very quickly and without too many arguments. Inevitably Keith had to have his daily argument, without which he presumably explodes, but the rest of us were able to pace ourselves by taking it in turns to provide him with opposition. The subject matter of his arguments varied quite extensively, as you would expect for someone of his diverse interests, although for some reason The Great Escape argument was repeated in various forms on a number of occasions. Overall the diving was excellent, the boat is great and the food was wonderful. Whether it would be better to do Komodo and Alor as separate trips rather than trying to combine them is debatable, as some of the diving in between was not quite as good. But we were diving there partly because the weather forced us to, so perhaps it would have been better if we'd been able to keep to our planned schedule.

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