Hello Everybody,
It's been a while since our last blog...thats because we were diving in the great Lembeh Straight, Indonesia. We've been back about a week now but editing all the pictures took me a while to get ready. I'll include a few of the best shots but everybody is expecting a little video so maybe I'll post part of that later. If you want a nice little sideshow just follow this
link to the Piersons Blogspot...they did such a good job you should watch it!!
The Trip...the quick explanation is we dove our brains out, In 5 days we did about 17 Dives and saw the craziest critters ever. Now back to the beginning. We started off by flying to Bali where we stayed the night. The next day took us to Makassar on Garuda Airlines...yes thats the one that crashed last month. Needless to say our flight was delayed 1-2,4 hours at which point we were told a new plane was coming. When it arrived we were a little worried when the technition brought out a ladder and proceeded to demonstrate how the Baro Probes (Pointy things on the front of a plane) was moving around freely. That didn't instill a lot of confidence in the airline which soon canceled the flight. The next day we were up early and on the way to Lembeh without incidence. We started diving right after we got there. We stayed at Nomad Adventure Divers (NADS:) They treated us great even after their Gererator caught fire and we didn't have any tanks for diving. In reality they worked their butts off for us.
The diving was amazing! Yes we had great soft corals, sponges and crinoids, but the main attraction was the Muck!!! Thats right, some of the craziest animals were found of the sandy, and sometimes polluted beaches in the straight. The critters ranged from Hairy Frogfish and Mimic Octopus to Flamboyant Cuttlefish and colorful nudibranchs. Look at the size of this Pigmy Seahorse...thats my finger next to him. Needless to say we had a great time getting waterlogged.
After Lembeh we had to say goodbye to the Fly's who needed to return home to work. Thus the Piersons and us decided to stay the weekend in Bali. Especially since the package included our ticket, hotel and breakfast and was less than an airplane ticket alone! Nice!!! We enjoyed a nice weekend at the
Kuta Lagoon resort. We went up to see the lake district with sunset at Tanah Lot Temple. We also fit in a shopping trip to Ubud and the Monkey Forest. Ken...don't harass the monkeys ;-). In the end we enjoyed some wonderful food and found some great art to decorate our homes. Anyway, I think that covers everything. Here are a few pictures to fill in the blank spots. We hope you are all doing great!! Drop us a line if you have a moment. Take care!!!!
Shoshanna and I headed of last Friday morning to spend our long weekend in Chuuk diving the famous Japanese ship wrecks. For those who don't know, much of the Japaneses fleet used Truk as one of their main navel bases. The U.S. sent a bunch of carrier based planes to bomb the ships in the lagoon. Unfortunately, most of the large battleships & destroyers were tipped off when they saw a U.S. scout plane the day before and left. Even though their is a impressive display of ships throughout the lagoon. We dove the Fujikawa, Heian Maru, Shinkoko & Yamgiri. Almost all the ship had a impressive display of soft corals and sponges covering them. Along with the sea life there were many artifacts from the ships themselves. Saki bottle were everywhere, I
guess they liked to party!! There was also china, planes, bombs, massive 14-18 inch battleship shells, and even a skull blown into the bulkhead from a huge explosion. Besides the 18 or so gray reef sharks that started surrounding us, we had a pretty relaxing weekend. It was a fun but quick weekend that was quite comfortably spent at the Blue Lagoon. I hope you all had a great weekend too. Take care and don't forget the fallen on Memorial Day!!!
