Monday 10 and Tuesday 11 May - Day 7 and 8 in Bali
Today we are leaving Ubud. We have had a great stay here and really enjoyed ourselves. At 7am our driver is coming to pick us up and take us to Tulamben which is on the east coast.
We are staying at the "Wreck Divers Resort" which is across the road from the main diving spot in the area. It is just a short 300m stroll to the entry point for the shore dives.
As part of our accommodation package we are getting 4 resort dives each, which basically means we have a dive instructor each.
We arrived in Tulamben after about 2.5 hours of fantastic driving! I'm sure Made our driver drove F1 in a previous life. He caned the absolute crap out of his manual Toyota 4x4 the entire trip.
On arrival at the resort we are greeted by Suka our dive instructor. He showed us to our room (which was very nice, clean and spacious) and we arranged to have breakfast first then take our first intro dive.
For our intro dive we had some class time learning about all the equipment and how it functioned and then different things we should expect and how to address them correctly like ear pain or fogged up goggles.
We also covered all the hand signs that are required underwater.Being a typical Aussie Rachael struggled at first because the sign for wanting to go up or surface is thumbs up which to her means good and good or okay is thumb and pointer together with other fingers up. She eventually got the hang of it and we did warn the instructor before we went diving. Once this was done we started off in the swimming pool for about 25 minutes practicing with our instructors (we had one each) all the stuff we had learned in class.
We were both a little more confident now. We went on our first shore dive which we basically went up and round the shipwreck which is not very deep. We went to about 10 metres on this dive.
After this we went back to lunch and arranged for a second dive. This time we went to the Coral Garden which is the underwater aeroplane shape in our pictures. The guides had suggested this area as I had mentioned I would like to see a shark and we did. We were swimming along and suddenly one of the instructors was putting his hand on his head like a fin to indicate shark and pointing. He started swimming after the shark trying to get a good photo of it!
That evening we dined at a small warang across the road. The diving really took it out of us so we retired for an early night.
The next morning we wanted to get the dives out of the way nice and early as we have a long trip to Kuta later that day plus the instructors had told us that earlier is better as it gets quite crowded as the tour buses arrive.
Our guides also wanted to get away as they had to get home to their families (or cock fighting) and prepare for the festival that started the next day - Galungan. The festival is a Hindu tradition and is important to them like Christmas is to us. About 75% of Balinese are Hindu and the rest are Muslim or other.
We did the first dive for the day at the shipwreck and it wasn't a great dive because I had a lot of trouble with water getting into my goggles and Rachael felt nauseous as she had not eaten yet.
At breakfast we met a great guy from Perth who was traveling alone. His name was Shane and he was very easy to talk to. He gave us same great tips for shopping in Kuta and how to deal with the hawkers. Rachael sat out the second dive and I went back to the ship wreck with Shane and our dive instructors. We didnt have a camera this time which was a shame. My instructor took a banana down with him and we fed that to some of the bigger fish which caused quite a frenzy around us. The fish loved it!
Onto Kuta and we had the same driver as yesterday. We left at about 11:00am for our 3 hour drive (2.5 hours with Made driving). On arrival at Febri's Hotel we were 30 minutes short of check in time so we sat in the lounge and took a skype with the boys and had a Bintang and a cocktail while we waited.
The hotel was a lot bigger and nicer than we had expected. The main pool is big and deep and has elephants spouting water and a fountain in the middle and well as a shallow baby part. There is a second smaller pool near our room that also has a baby section. The kids club aslo looks really good. The room is spacious and comfortable and the aircon is cold. The bathroom is even bigger than ours at home! This is a really great resort for the money!
We are staying at the "Wreck Divers Resort" which is across the road from the main diving spot in the area. It is just a short 300m stroll to the entry point for the shore dives.
As part of our accommodation package we are getting 4 resort dives each, which basically means we have a dive instructor each.
We arrived in Tulamben after about 2.5 hours of fantastic driving! I'm sure Made our driver drove F1 in a previous life. He caned the absolute crap out of his manual Toyota 4x4 the entire trip.
On arrival at the resort we are greeted by Suka our dive instructor. He showed us to our room (which was very nice, clean and spacious) and we arranged to have breakfast first then take our first intro dive.
For our intro dive we had some class time learning about all the equipment and how it functioned and then different things we should expect and how to address them correctly like ear pain or fogged up goggles.
We also covered all the hand signs that are required underwater.Being a typical Aussie Rachael struggled at first because the sign for wanting to go up or surface is thumbs up which to her means good and good or okay is thumb and pointer together with other fingers up. She eventually got the hang of it and we did warn the instructor before we went diving. Once this was done we started off in the swimming pool for about 25 minutes practicing with our instructors (we had one each) all the stuff we had learned in class.
We were both a little more confident now. We went on our first shore dive which we basically went up and round the shipwreck which is not very deep. We went to about 10 metres on this dive.
After this we went back to lunch and arranged for a second dive. This time we went to the Coral Garden which is the underwater aeroplane shape in our pictures. The guides had suggested this area as I had mentioned I would like to see a shark and we did. We were swimming along and suddenly one of the instructors was putting his hand on his head like a fin to indicate shark and pointing. He started swimming after the shark trying to get a good photo of it!
That evening we dined at a small warang across the road. The diving really took it out of us so we retired for an early night.
The next morning we wanted to get the dives out of the way nice and early as we have a long trip to Kuta later that day plus the instructors had told us that earlier is better as it gets quite crowded as the tour buses arrive.
Our guides also wanted to get away as they had to get home to their families (or cock fighting) and prepare for the festival that started the next day - Galungan. The festival is a Hindu tradition and is important to them like Christmas is to us. About 75% of Balinese are Hindu and the rest are Muslim or other.
We did the first dive for the day at the shipwreck and it wasn't a great dive because I had a lot of trouble with water getting into my goggles and Rachael felt nauseous as she had not eaten yet.
At breakfast we met a great guy from Perth who was traveling alone. His name was Shane and he was very easy to talk to. He gave us same great tips for shopping in Kuta and how to deal with the hawkers. Rachael sat out the second dive and I went back to the ship wreck with Shane and our dive instructors. We didnt have a camera this time which was a shame. My instructor took a banana down with him and we fed that to some of the bigger fish which caused quite a frenzy around us. The fish loved it!
Onto Kuta and we had the same driver as yesterday. We left at about 11:00am for our 3 hour drive (2.5 hours with Made driving). On arrival at Febri's Hotel we were 30 minutes short of check in time so we sat in the lounge and took a skype with the boys and had a Bintang and a cocktail while we waited.
The hotel was a lot bigger and nicer than we had expected. The main pool is big and deep and has elephants spouting water and a fountain in the middle and well as a shallow baby part. There is a second smaller pool near our room that also has a baby section. The kids club aslo looks really good. The room is spacious and comfortable and the aircon is cold. The bathroom is even bigger than ours at home! This is a really great resort for the money!
Fantastic pictures Steve. Can't wait untill I get to do some diving!