Once again the banana pancake proves resistable to Helen (she must be ill) and I was tempted to pay extra for the honey and milk I had on last night's pineapple pancake but don't. The coffee isn't as sludgey but doesn't taste as good. We're picked up at 8 (ish) and taken further towards the eastern tip of Bali where we'll pick up the boat to Gili Selang, allegedly the top diving spot in Bali [and literally the most eastern point of Bali].
The second part of the trip, by boat, turns out (to Helen's horror) to be in one of the Balinese fishing boats. The hull is simply hewn from a tree with a couple of telegraph pole stabilisers. The hull is just about wide enough to fit a man's backside but there's no point as you sit on the gunwhale(?). Painted a base white then with multicoloured joins, poles etc. the massed array of these on every beach looks very pretty. Very few of them seem to go to sea, though. We're one, however, and the beach launch is followed by a gentle (given the size of the waves) ride. I think the stabilisers act as shock absorbers too.
Our guide, Octi, had told some wild tales about Gili Selang -- wild currents from three directions, currents dragging you down beyond 40m climbing back up against the current, then being shot upwards at 25m -- but it turned out to be quite mild. Very beautiful, though, the best corals we've seen though the fish life was a bit poor (always relative to the Maldives!). No pygmy seahorses though (only discovered two years ago) they're much deeper this time of year.
We barely arrive at shore before we're thrust back in to see the Japanese wreck just offshore. We go through the grubby shore [waters] and some superstructure appears. We go past that and over a big coral slope with plenty to see and fail to remember. One thing was that we managed to spot several (deadly) scorpionfish ourselves which was quite pleasing and, presumably, a handy life-skill. They're quite easy going here and let you dive until you've no more air (not literally but they let you go until you reach the common low threshold of 50bar in your tank [roughly one quater the pressure you start with]). So, despite going to 24m we complete our first dive of over one hour underwater and we still had air remaining.
There was a minor panic at the hotel when they wanted their IDR497,000 in IDR -- no credit cards, no dollars, only IDR. Luckily Putu stepped in with a cool half million otherwise we'd be facing a poor rate of exchange. We did explain that our budget was about IDR180,000 for two per day and we'd blown our IDR on day one [assuming there'd be easy access to cash or acceptance of US dollars].
Putu has planned to cross to the west side of the island today [it's only 140km across but the average speed is quite low]. We couldn't stay awake for the duration. When we neared Menjangan Island we had four hotels to choose from: the five star we avoided, the second was US$35, the third was US$45 so we settled for the fourth at US$25 for our room with air con and plenty of mosquito repellants (oh dear) and a four poster. As with Amed the bathroom is outdoors in that its private but has no roof. Odd, that.
We splash in the pool and then settle down for beers/journals and very pleasant it is too. The service is very good -- they saw us fiddling with mossie spray and brought out a mossie coil for our table -- and the food excellent. The on-site dive centre geezer is a bit of a wide boy but we're booked in for a US$65 two dive trip to Menjangan Island tomorrow.
Taman Sari Bali Cottages, Desa Pemuteran, Gerokgak S8.14233
E114.65295 Elev. 12m
We can see a great thunderstorm flashing over the hills -- maybe they really do have a storm every night beyond Lombok [the island to the east of Bali]. No thunder but these flashes are lighting the sky 100km further west than last night. That's a big storm. [Too big, I should think! A storm over the middle of the island, maybe?]
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.