Total Miles Traveled: 34,560
Wait, what? More diving? Yes… yes, really. We really like diving and we were keen to explore different diving (diving wrecks, diving with Nitrox, and seeing really unique ocean life. So we asked ourselves, where else could we go right now where the diving is supposed to be superb? The answer: Bali, Indonesia. Not only does it offer great diving but also boasts the best massage we’ve ever gotten, good shopping, good/cheap eats, and interesting cultural activities.
After a day of travel, we arrive on the northwest coast of Bali in Tulamben, where there is a WWII U.S. cargo ship called the U.S.S. Liberty, lying just 50 meters off the rocky beach. The Liberty was damaged by a Japanese torpedo and forced on shore before a volcanic eruption of nearby Mount Agung pushed it back in to the ocean. Today, it serves as an artificial reef and home to many sea creatures and fish.
To get to the dive sites, you simply wade in off the beach, ride on the back of a motorcycle in your wetsuit with your mask and fins, or ride in this wooden catamaran/dive boat. The boat was fun to dive off of. There’s no ladder to get back in. You have to hoist yourself up after taking off all of your equipment in the water. Luckily the waves weren’t too bad.
This is what they call “fish soup”:
When diving a wreck, you feel a little like Jacques Cousteau:
We picked up a little hitchhiker on one of our dives. At first, I couldn’t figure out why Lisa was wiggling in the water, and the divemaster just pointed at her, but wasn’t concerned. This, my friends, is a sharksucker – yes, a fish that sucks on sharks (or turtles or divers) for the stuff that grows on them – only this time, it’s Lisa’s butt!
After a while, Lisa and Mr. Sharksucker became friends:
Until Lisa somehow got rid of him and he ended up on my leg. What did it feel like? Nothing really. Until you try to get him off. Then he starts really sucking but not long enough to give me a hickey!
There were other cool things to see around the Liberty wreck, like this 5-foot long giant barracuda.
Check out this guy’s teeth!
On another day, we went to another dive site called Seraya Secret famous for its “muck diving,” which means the visibility in the water is low, but there are lots of small strange creatures to be found.
The star of this dive site is the harlequin shrimp pictured below. I wish this were my photo, but my underwater photo set up is really, really poor (I’m still using an old 4 mega pixel point and shoot that doesn’t work all the time). These guys are fun to watch and their diet is almost exclusively starfish.
- Photo Credit: Dave Harasti
You’ve seen mantis shrimp before when we went to the seafood restaurant in Kota Kinabalu. Here’s one hanging out in the open, which you don’t see very often because they’re hiding in their burrows.
Now here’s something super rare – a YELLOW mantis prawn. This blurry photo proves I saw it! I wish I could have lured it out with a chicken sausage! Amazing.
Yet another awesome thing we saw at Seraya was a cleaning station full of shrimps, catfish, and a spotted moray eel. Here’s what a banded cleaner shrimp looks like. Apparently, if you go up to it and open up your mouth, these guys will crawl inside and clean your teeth. I won’t believe it until I see it though.
Here’s a video of the cleaning station. I could have watched this for the entire dive:
I think this one is called a snake eel, but not sure. You only see his head poking out:
But then, when we came back at the end of the dive, this guy was out of his burrow doing who knows what. There wasn’t anything around to eat… But look at the camouflage on the head while the rest of it just looks like a regular snake.
On another dive, we came across two humphead (a.k.a. napoleon) wrasse. Five feet long. They’re huge.
And we found a huge field of garden eels feeding. Here’s a video while I cruise over the field and they disappear in to their burrows.
Finally, here’s my favorite animal – the elusive octopus. We saw one on almost every dive, which is pretty rare. I’m fascinated by how they can change colors to camouflage and how seemingly amorphous they can be:
And so, our dives in Tulamben come to an end. Here’s a shot from 60 feet below the surface. We often forget to look up when we’re diving, but sometimes some of the best stuff is up above:
Check out the rest of the photos and videos from our time in Tulamben below:
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