I woke at 06:30 delighted to find I had a further 30 minutes in bed. Our bungalow turns out to be very comfortable with a very relaxing mosquito net suspended from the ceiling and draped over the bed.
Breakfast was hard boiled eggs with something that claimed to be hot chocolate but actually tasted of pears. I left that half empty.
We met Octopus, our divemaster for the next two days, at Eco Dive in Amed and drove to Tulamben where we kitted up for our wall dive. Octopus led us into the water via the pebbly beach and Ian and I struggled in the surge to don our fins, having never performed a beach entry before. With the task complete we descended to 4 or 5 metres, virtually blind in the 1 metre visibility. It was quite claustrophic and reminded me of Fort Bovisand. We continued to descend with the sand and pebbly bottom although we couldn't see the seabed until we touched it! After going around in a circle Octopus aborted the dive and we exited the water. I then congratulated Ian on completing his fiftieth dive!
For my fiftieth dive we dived the USAT Liberty cargo ship wreck that was sunk in 1942 by the Japanese. It was full of life, from butterflyfish, angelfish, clams, titan triggerfish, schools of jacks, scorpionfish, parrotfish, rock cod and wrasse to minute nudibranchs, robust sea squirts, garden eels, a goby and a blue spotted stingray. The thermoclines could actually be seen as well as felt for this dive. For a deep dive, I was particularly good on air.
After an hour we returned to the wreck and experienced much the same on the second dive, although I had an equalising problem, and also saw a pipefish, a seahorse, flutemouth, maori wrasse, snapper, batfish, christmas tree worm, goatfish, blenny and had big schooling fish swim extremely close to me, underneath me and up to my mask. On exiting the water I stumbled and fell to my knees on the pebbly bottom, which hurt [Editors Note: A week later the bruise on my knee is still present and very dark in colour].
Back at Kusumajayah Indah bungalows we made for the swimming pool then ordered some sandwiches. They didn't have any bread but by the time we had taken cold showers they had gone to a special effort for us and obtained some bread from Amed.
Putu collected us at 14:00 and drove us to Amlapura to see the Puri Agung Karangasem, the Kings palace, which was dull and small and left an awful lot to be desired. Having bought some biscuits for tomorrow diving we then went to Taman Ujung, the derelict remains of the water palace which, when restoration has been completed, I'm sure will look fabulous. There were many more rice paddy fields for us to enjoy on the drive back to Amed.
At the bungalows we splashed around some more in the pool before sitting down to some beer, noodle soup and lots of journal writing.
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.