ALOR (22 October - 6 November 2011)

(Note: there is a persistent technical issue that prohibited me from making my subtitle colors, font or size stand out. So to make it easier to read, I break the journey into multiple posts)

First thing first:...............

..

THE BLAH BLAH BLAH YADDA YADDA YADDA…..

For one and other reasons, and I also can’t pinpoint why, this will be our diving trip after more than one dry year. So we were planning big (as in visiting diving site we had never been and longer trip). There are few options come to mind, including Rajah Ampat (of course this is shelved as soon as the dollars and cents appeared), Wakatobi (shelved because of security concern, I’d love to go this area if our confidence improves), Sipadan (we shelved the plan in June and it would be easy to resurrect it back), Gorontalo and Togian (we actually one step away from booking air ticket until we were convinced that it might not be a good choice for us since it’s not macro heaven). Anilao came to mind but for this one , we decided to take it easy and wanting to be home. So we settled for Alor, one little nice hidden place that was almost forgotten. We first heard about this place when we visited Komodo Island in 2005. If you look at the map, it is located above Timor Leste. The distance from Alor to Autaro Island (the island that is part of Timor Leste’s territory I visited earlier this year with nightmare on the sea journey) is roughly the same with the distance from Autaro Island to Dili.

It certainly a lucky year that I got chance to visit this area twice, beforehand I didn’t even know exactly where is Alor on the map. I know it’s there, but don’t know exact point. Hm..

Anyway, eventhough we missed diving in our country, local dive masters, this trip is going to be different because we would be diving with localized German operator. He is a German, resides in Indonesia and speaks fluent Indonesian. So we kept our finger crossed.

For the preparation, haven’t dived for a long time proved not to be good idea. We had a lot of equipments to be serviced, and the most shocking of all, when we thought everything was ready, we found that our camera casing’s buttons were not in tip top conditions. Some were stuck, because apparently the salt residue had hardened and made it difficult to operate. Therefore we needed to do the servicing ourselves since it’s not available locally and it would take too long to send it overseas.

After overcoming the sparepart problem, we got very poor advice from the distributor to use denatured alcohol while doing the cleaning of the buttons. Tweeet. It was a horrible idea. And to be honest I was furious about this. Alcohol and acrylic don’t interact well and upon applications, since it had delayed effect, by the time we realized this effect like cracks appeared on our housing. What is more frightening than cracks on your underwater housing?

It was less than a week to the trip, there were not much solutions provided. What we could do was doing the pressure test in the chamber, which luckily proved to be okay, and be very careful on the trip. It’s still beyond me that fatal advice like that can be given by someone who supposed to know better. We kept hoping that everything would be okay.

Without further yadda yadda… let’s start with the journal.

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THE JOURNEY (ARE WE THERE YET???)

At first I’m breaking this journal into daily or diary mode, but the stories would be too scattered so I’m going for formatting by topic. Thanks for the suggestion sometime ago from a great friend of us (I always remember and appreciate suggestions. Long time no hear, I wish you health and happiness, hoping we can cross path again sometimes in the future regardless how far you are now).

Here is a bit of boring detail:

22 Oct: Fly Singapore-Denpasar

23 Oct: Fly Denpasar-Kupang

Fly Kupang-Alor

24 Oct – 3 Nov: DIVES

4 Nov: No flight day

5 Nov: Fly Alor-Kupang

Fly Kupang-Denpasar

6 Nov: Fly Denpasar-Singapore

We had two humongous gigantic trolley bags filled with our equipments, batteries, chargers, clothes, camera arms, two super heavy backpacks with strobe, camera and its casing and ports for the lens, we brought five lenses and therefore five ports for different usage. Normally our luggage will hit 45-48 kg, but this time it came up reaching almost 53kg.

Luckily we bought supersized allowance for the first flight, Singapore-Denpasar by Air Asia and pre-assigned seats. (Lucky because unknown to us, now they are applying counter check-in fee. If you don’t have pre-assigned seats, you’ll have to pay extra to do manual check-in unless you want to be randomly seated with strangers through automated check-in. Air Asia certainly know how to do business, but I hate the billion items of hidden charges that they have. Why don’t they just *&@#%& put nett freaking price?! No frill my butt, it’s getting ridiculous. Next time just add fee for sitting, or toilet usage. Borrowing the argument, not everyone need toilet. Nobody should pay what they don’t need rite? Huh!)

To avoid carrying more than one bag in the cabin, we stuffed everything else into the trolley except backpacks. For the domestic flights, we took out our charger box and the luggages were reduced to 45kg. We escaped the excess baggage charge on Denpasar-Kupang flight by Batavia, to our surprise, they accepted scuba as sport equipment. However, for Trans Nusa route Kupang-Alor, we needed to pay 15kg excess as each person was only allowed 15kg.

For Saturday, we would fly to Denpasar and spend one night there. The flight was delayed but it’s fine, we were busy trying the Osim foot massage they had near the waiting room. Upon reaching Bali, it was already dark, we got a bit of delay in the custom area because the officers wanted to check out bags. When they saw our underwater casings, they insisted they were new.(New=tax) We told them that’s because we took care of it well. They still insisted, and said that those brought by angmohs were all rusty etc. I snapped, that’s probably because they don’t freaking take care of it. We were having a lot of hiccup and crossing our fingers we didn’t spoilt the casing because we cleaned them, thanks to unintelligent advice, and now we were being accused because the casing were too clean? Get out of town! Yeah I know I shouldn’t be impatient in the immigration but I feel like stuffing someone's face into the casing already.

They were actually polite and were probably half joking and testing us, but it’s getting a bit too long now. I was on the way of opening my big bags to show them the lots of logbook that we had as a prove that we were not new divers but hubby found a better way. After trying to find some rusty spots, he noticed white speckles inside the casing, opened it and showed the officer. “ This is salt. It’s there because it had been used. Feel free to lick it if you don’t believe us.” They believed us and then created small talks about where we were going to dive etc while letting us pass. Lesson here, if you appreciate the stuffs that you buy with your hard-earned money and take care of them well, don’t forget to leave one damn rusty spot to prove that it’s not new!

I thought we were going to have slow traffic; luckily the driver was knowledgeable and able to find roads that were free from traffic jam. We checked into Puri Tanah Lot hotel, located in Legian area.

Eventhough we are familiar with Bali, we let the operator to arrange for hotel room as one packet and as soon as we reached, I already regretted it. The room looked kind of run down, especially the bed and blanket. The toilet was actually quite nice and clean, but somehow the sewer smell was quite strong eventhough it had mechanical ventilation. If only this trip was planned later, I would have known much better hotel with similar or even better price range. Nevermind, we went out to look for dinner, I was craving for local food, too bad it was western food area, finally we did find local Padang restaurant next to a very noisy bar, had quite a good dinner, stopped by convenient shop to buy bottled water and went back to hotel. We slept without using the blanket that night and it was a mediocre sleep. However, in the morning we were all ready to go.

The morning after, we had quick breakfast in the hotel and reached the airport quite early. However, there was some problem with the check-in as the counters can’t be opened because of technical problem. We queued there for a good one hour plus (not moving) in very irregular shaped line. I felt like I was at the edge of yelling at the counter because I was quite nervous about the connecting flight, and the way the staffs handling the problem or addressing the issues and the swarm of aunties trying to cut queue. We only had less than two hour before the third flight, and any delays would mean disaster because we were travelling with luggages. Luggages mean a lot of processes needed like claims and check-ins. Luckily, the problem finally cleared up and it was delayed just for approximate 15-20 minutes.

The flight was not really smooth, as it had quite a lot of medium turbulence midway. I even had mild, very mild travel sickness because of the rough journey. I’m not the best person who can endure travel sickness as lousy as I am, but there are actually two modes, only two modes of modern transportation that I never feel sick, which are motorcycle and aeroplane. So as soon as the vibration was gone, my giddiness was gone too. Reaching Kupang, the airport looked like Labuan Bajo, one room with one baggage belt and visitors standing a door away. Since the flight continued to Waingapu, I couldn’t rest my mind until we finally saw both our bags. It would not be fun if they forgot to unload our bags and it flew to Waingapu, while we needed continue flying to Alor.

Waiting room in Kupang airport was full. There was no place to sit, we purchased something so we could sit in its corner shop, Cup Noodles (or Pop Mie in Indonesia), and bottled tea. The flight was delayed for significant one-two hours so after the light meal, we ended up sitting on the floor at the end of the room, facing people’s backsides.

Alor flight was using small propeller plane, the plane looked run down, but we had actual floatation device instead of ‘use cushion buttom for floatation purposes’ sign we saw on our last remote domestic flight to East Kalimantan back then. Just like previous flight, we had quite rough turbulence on the air, I read some article back then, this kind of turbulence is called medium turbulence, it should not be dangerous or fatal symptom but it’s more about discomfort. But what the real discomfort it was, I was also suspected that the landing would be rough as if the plane would be slapped to the ground. Magically, the landing was smooth after all those.

We reached Mali airport, and had to stand outside while waiting for the luggage to be unloaded because there was not enough room in the arrival area. I didn’t mind because it was more airy outside. While waiting, I messenged the person who was going to pick us up. He gave me the description of the car and it proved to be great because they almost missed us, since there were other passengers.

From airport to hotel, we were going to stay in Nulfitra hotel, we didn’t see too much civilization. There were a lot of fields, kampong house, small stalls far and between. We tried to get a glimpse about some warung or small shop nearby where we could buy some toiletries later on.

Upon reaching Nulfitra around 4pm, Thomas was already there. He was going to be our dive master for two weeks. We had to drag our bags from where we were dropped to our room, went through uneven earth, big pebble surface and steps. My flipping back..! Whew! I can lift a lot of things that a girl may not be able to lift, but this bag was really wearing me off, together with the heavy backpack and another bag for the port. Hubby’s bag was even more heavier and bulky.

They gave us the room at the very end, facing the bay. There was small outdoor living room/seating area in front of the room, and the scenery of the bay was gorgeous. We were at room number eight, the furthest away from everything and everyone. Thomas sat down with us for some briefing, liability sign off and making appointment for tomorrow. Three of us were apparently not good talker with strangers, and certainly we were not chatty. He spoke Indonesian and English with us, his Indonesian was not bad at all. So everyday we would have two dives further and out of the bay, third dive would be in the bay. He left us with two baskets to fill our equipments in and would pick us up 7.30 in the morning. We would meet him again for dinner in the restaurant later, which we had to order now.

When he left, I quickly used the mosquito spray because my nemeses are back! Worse, the aircon in the room didn’t seem to be working, so we would be subjected to being bitten. The quest of finding warung was even more urgent that before since I only brought a quarter of bottle mosquito repellent, left over from my Timor Leste journey. We never had problem with mosquito in our previous diving trips, luckily, but this one would be big one. We also didn’t have a drop of water left. So we quickly moved the diving equipments to the basket, and off we went out.

From our room to hotel gate, it was quite a distance because we needed to pass by another hotel block, the restaurant, and another older block of rooms, empty area and finally the gate. After asking for direction, we went to the left after the gate, walked a bit and already saw the sea. Next to the sea, was public transport terminal and before that, a small warung came to our rescue. I bought mosquito coil and was extremely happy to see mosquito repellent, lotion style. Whatever it was, having and not having it would make and break my trip. We also bought water, biscuit, shampoo and soap.

Having dinner in the restaurant that night, it was not so happy meals. There was quite a lot of ants and mosquitoes. That was the first time we met the Germans and Thomas’s family, he brought his local wife and his son. After dinner, we quickly excused ourselves as we were tired and there were many things to do especially seting-up the cameras.

THE ACCOMODATION

We went back to the room and greeted by warm to hot aircon and stuffy room. The aircon was brand new, but it seemed like the electricity capacity was not sufficient to cool the room. We went to the restaurant area, asking for towel, remote control and finding solution for aircon.

The restaurant and the whole hotel basically only run by few local females on shift, and also an uncle who was the handyman for everything. Every facilities and resources were very limited to the point that we couldn’t find any meals eventhough we tried to order few hours in advance, not even instant noodle because the caretakers of the hotel were left without any supply or cash. (If you give enough time, like order dinner in the morning, you can choose the most sumptuous meals you want and they would prepare for you in gigantic gargantua megaloman portions. (read: huge) Alternatively, we had to bring our own raw food for them to cook. (See Fishing) Anyway, we had to take care of ourselves; collect and bring out our own rubbish, asking for towel or toilet paper, and basically cleaning our own room during our stays.

They promised us the uncle would come and check the aircon. We requested to move to another room but it seemed everywhere is the same. It’s not the room or aircon, but the electricity. Anyway, we found room number two at least had ceiling fan. We would be more than happy to open the window, since the scenery was gorgeous and it could be windy, but the mosquitoes were killing. Without mosquito’s nets, we needed to barricade ourselves inside.

I actually like original room number 8 because it was bright, very suitable for us who needed to meddle with camera stuffs every night and the bed equipped with pillows and bolsters (bolsters!) look comfortable and clean. Room number 2 lighting was somewhat darker but it had nicer toilet. The toilets were similar except number 8 had funny curbs and uneven depression here and there that made it look unclean.

So we moved ourselves to number 2, and I took the liberty to exchange pillow, bolsters and the bedcover from room 8, also hold ransom to the room’s towel hanger, we would need two for laundry, towels and wet diving clothes.

Anyway, since we were going to stay for two weeks, we wanted to make ourselves comfortable. From acquisitioning of the remote control (yes, they kept it in the restaurant) although we found out later that we didn’t really need to because there were only one or on good days, two channels available. Hi, TVRI! The most boring channel but it’s the Indonesian national channel. The thing that changed was, it had advertisement now! And mine, oh mine, it only had two commercial advertisements that repeated every 10 minutes. One of the advertisements was a preserved sausage that had kind of catchy song that I swear, for the last three diving days, it kept repeating in my head under water. I got so intoxicated that I told hubby the minutes I found that damn sausage in the supermarket rack, I would buy one.

Second, since the floor felt a bit icky, I took the mopping business in my own hand, as the same time ensure that the mat we stepped in everyday was clean so that we could sit on our clean floor. I also bought bleach (gasp, shamelessly admit a bit of OCD I have, bleach is my weapon), to help disinfect and clean the toilet. The toilet was clean, it's just they were using coloured cement to install the tiles, so the tile gaps are in dark grey color. I just want to be really sure it's the color and not dirt. The sweet thing aka auntie style of happiness, with the bleach, we got free detergent. Wahoo…! Hehehee…

We also emptied and refill the big pail for freshwater stock in the bathroom. They had shower but we prefer to use mandi style because the shower flow was weak. In Indonesia we call it ‘mandi pake gayung dan ember’ but for angmoh, they called it ‘mandi’. I guess they just picked up the easier to remember word. I have seen the term appeared in a lot of places, even formal publication, so I guess they made it legal now. It sounds funny for us who recognized the word though.

We could actually see the effort of the owner to make the hotel good, all the sanitary equipments and aircon were brand new and had reputable brand, including the toilet bowl we could only find on high end mall in Indo and even Singapore.

Another effort to make everything better, we bought a fantastic human invention of all times, wakaakkaka, mosquito killer badminton style. We forgot to take its picture so I googled it (sidenote: what is it with google still being red-marked in Word? It’s time they make it a verb already!). Back when my family had this fantastic equipment it only had one layer of wire and reputed to have mosquito only fainted instead of dead. The current one had three layers and rechargeable battery so we only needed to plug into the power socket instead of changing the battery. (Wahoo! Alor has good technology standard to my opinion :). So after buying this racket that cost about five bucks, we were having great time killing mosquitoes. I might be animal sucker that I hesitate to even kill a fly, for mosquitoes, I will hunt them down and make sure they can’t reproduce, but since I don’t have accurate motor skill, I kill them cold dead. Blood suckers.

So every time we saw something flying, we only needed to swing the racket and pltzzzz bzzzz blllzzzzz sparkzzzz krtttzzz, the fellow would end up smoking hot. If we just came back from diving, the two of us would fight over the racket and there were normally a swarm of them flying over our bags or inside the cupboard, we could hear endless multiple sparks that sounded like music in my ears.

Ours was red but everything else looks the same. Thanks for random person in cyber world whom I stole this image from.

Too bad our fun only lasted for less than a week. Maybe extensive usage, the racket lost its power, it was not spoilt, but didn’t electrocute well anymore. Too bad, we wanted to bring it back here so probably could have the same fun if we go out for photo outing in the parks. Luckily, I guess we managed to kill good amount of mosquitoes, eventhough we still needed to be protected by repellent 24 hours a day, we didn’t really see the ‘swarm’ anymore.

Another good thing about the room, it’s spacious and had enough power sockets. In remote places like this, we consider it as good as long as they have a free power socket for us to charge stuffs. This hotel has three, one was used for TV. It also has a big coffee table inside the room for us to convert it into charging and food station. We had nice bamboo chair to sit on or spare place for towels inside the room, long bamboo sofa in the back terrace (which provide quite a nice view also), and two sets of chair and coffee table in front terrace to sit, relax and had breakfast. Too bad we didn’t really make use of this to sit around because of mosquitoes and also because of sometimes over-chatty neighbors.

They also have small plastic wall cabinet in the toilet where we could put toiletries (got special place for toothbrushes!), and a cupboard inside the room for our barang2 so we could keep them neatly. I would say that we managed to make the room felt homy for two weeks. Beside the not so cool aircon, they made the effort of turning on generator (there you go), so on great days, we actually need to use the blanket even before sleeping time.

Despite the numerous blackout testified by other guests and Thomas, we only encountered two black outs, one lasted less than half an hour and the other was before we left for diving. So it’s not bad at all.

For the location, it was also great. Every morning Thomas would pick everyone up with his van, it took less than five minutes journey to the jetty. There were also two warungs in less than ten minutes proximity and for another fifteen minutes walk, we would reach the street full of food and fantastic shops that sell fantastic mosquito racket. We had dinners outside here few nights during our stays.

The bay that we were facing everyday was beautiful, it’s the deeper end of the bay we travel every day. We were facing the tiny island, Pulau Kapas where there was supposed to have unique dive site. Very unique indeed. Fancy diving with saltwater crocodiles? You can find 10 footer black, white and red saltwater crocodile here. No bluff.

The corridor in front of the room. The walkway to each room is the lower part on the left of the column, we hardly used that though. It's difficult to drag megaloman bags and it's made of lose pebbles!

Forget to take out the laundry.. last day laundry, try to catch the last drop of afternoon sun.

This is the mini outdoor private corner living room in original room 8.. Nice!

Ahhh.. the daily view from the terrace

This is the view from the back terrace.

Sunset

Sunset and the secret path coming from and to back of the rooms.

Some abandoned structures next to the room block. Still don't know what are those. Jumping base to the crocodile infested water sea? Hmm... maybe!

The bay in front of our room. Sometimes local fishermen passed by with their outrigger.

View to the other side of the room block.

Pulau Kapas, in front of the room. This is where you can find a lot of saltwater crocodiles. So don't be so quick to go for skinny dipping.

So I’m not complaining, I’m grateful that we stayed in that place for two weeks, I will go as far as to say it’s better than the accommodation we had in Bali, and probably better than over half of the accommodation I had experienced in my previous trips.

THE COMPANIONS

We didn’t always have good experience diving with angmoh. In fact, we had more bad impressions. Loud mouthed, using every swim stroke they have unnecessary under water, bragging and poor safety practice in disregard to safety of other divers. It could get very irritating with their behavior especially when they endanger others. A smack in the head would be a good revenge, probably by fins if they are really getting out of hand. Ops, I had no controls of my fins. You annoy them. No sorry. Asians are the same probably. We had seen many same behaviors also, although it’s easier to advice an Asian. I guess.

To be fair, we met a lot of wonderful Angmoh divers and luckily, this bunch of seven Germans are probably the best angmoh companion we had ever been.

When we found out that there are seven of them, two of us, and only one dive master, we were prepared to experience the worst. First dive, I was pleasantly surprised, they were grazing gracefully underwater without much effort and certainly had good diving practice. I had never seen buddy practice as diligent as their group. They stayed together, never separated from their buddy regardless many scenario they could have been separated when we were there. Lost buddy, strong current, deco warning, no. They stayed put and taking care of each other very well.

They were also pleasant and friendly to be with. Upon the first handshake, when the smiles broke, we were welcomed to their group. What I like most from them, they were not chatty group in the boat. Eventhough divers are easiest to bond, we have many things to talk about due same hobby, but sometimes it’s exhausting when someone held you captive and talked too much in one way conversation about their glorious divings. Unless it’s two ways mutual conversation where you can ‘click’. Here, we all loved to enjoy the surrounding, we scattered around, sat on the deck, side, read books or lounging on the roof top in the afternoon. So it’s kind of silent pleasant companions for us. If I thought I couldn’t wait for them to go home before I met them, I was then thinking I would miss their companions on last diving days when they had already gone back.

The diver that impressed me the most was Piers. He told us he had less than 40 dives on his belt but he was diving like a very experienced divers. Calm and collected, very good buddy practice, great buoyancy, graceful skill of saving Andreas’s mask and very enthusiastic diver, he never ever missed a dive. Normally almost everyone would sit out on the third dive, except us, some only dived on alternate day. But not him, he never sat out of a dive, not even when all his buddies stayed on the boat. And they were already there one and a half week before we joined them! That is probably the enthusiastic that only me can appreciate. I understand the passion and had only sat out few dives. One in Bali, a night dive on the same spot after we experienced crazy down current in the day. I regretted it the most. I admire the friend who still dived when we all sat out, she was very happy with her pictures as the reward. The Sunday dive in Pulau Dayang after we did five dives in Saturday which I don’t regret because it was so crowded you see more divers than fish and we had nice relaxing time drying our gear on the land. I think that was the last weekend dive we went. It’s far too commercialized for our liking now. And the day in Tioman where I was stung badly on the neck by something I didn’t know, it created horrible rash and pain and the scars lasted for probably more than a month.

Anyway, all of them had good diving practice and knew their own limitation and preference.

Tom the crazy one went with the local villagers to climb a volcano after he skipped a day of diving. Speaking barely few words of Indonesian, didn’t know what to expect, after Thomas told him there was a possibility of him meeting cannibal tribe (Thomas never bluff, I believe him) he was gone for three days and went back safely. When we asked him how was his trip, his eyes lit up and he told us he had perfect and wonderful experience, the local brought him up the volcano and stayed a night, then he went to remote beach that has the remain of 40 meter whale skeleton that was beached long time ago, he said he had the most amazing time. I asked him if he had been to Rinjani since he loves trekking. He said yes, he went there few years ago and he had great climb. Wow, Rinjani is such a far destination for him, means his passion for trekking was really really huge. If foreigners can appreciate the beauty of Indonesia that much, why won’t we? Of course not everyone would fancy Rinjani but we had so much other things to offer. I think it’s much cooler for me when someone is going Roti, or Waingapu for holiday instead of Europe or America. And we are not that far. And we speak their language. And we understand the money. And we are used to the food. Aroooooo?!

Anyway, when Tom was not back on the second day, the rest only joked that he was probably had made into soup by locals. For adventure s spirit, I have to give it to Angmoh. I don’t think I’m that comfortable to go to foreign country and wandering alone, especially those that doesn’t have very good safe reputation and just immersed themselves with the locals and get lost somewhere they don’t even know. Fascinating. Anyway, Tom is probably the smiliest person we had ever met. We never, for a second, see the smile left his face. He smiled when he was stung by something. He smiled when his camera was almost drown. He smiled when he helped picking everyone fins when he didn’t dive. Hubby said he looks like Chandler Bing, with more smiles and happy face. I want to always be that happy too.

Oliver is a big guy and he was actually very funny and always cracking jokes when we happened to have dinner on their last day in the town. They invited us to join them in suckling pig party, arranged by Thomas. We were the only outsiders invited, after spending two weeks with them, even with very limited conversation, we grew comfortable with each other. So we finally got to joke and talk with everyone in dinner setting, eating the delicious but too much too many suckling pig. Oliver likes to dive in current apparently, but Carlyn his wife hates it. Oliver like pelagic diving, Carlyn prefer macro diving. So we scratched our head about where we could recommend the good dive destination for them. Maybe Sipadan? He also commented that he was impressed with my diving; staying very close to the reef without touching it, maneuver every single moment correctly. Shameless to type it in, but it was a compliment that I appreciate a lot. He he he he he he he he he

They also commented that before they knew about macro, they were confused about why we always grazing on the seabed or corals instead of like them, looking for big fish in the blue. Now they knew. No wonder we didn’t really look impressed when one of them bothered to show us crocodile fish. : )

Oliver's comment about local alcohol (tuak, I think it was Thomas who brought it in mineral water bottle for them) cracked us up. He said it looked just like Hausriff water. (Hausriff is house reef, it's on of the dive site where the water was murky as it's near the pier and there were a lot of rubbish on the surface. Muck-diving style).

We bonded with Ramona, who is newlywed, wife of Piers, because apparently she is new to their group and she couldn’t communicate well with them. She is from France, while they were all from Germany. They could speak English but not too well while Ramona doesn’t understand German well. She asked us suggestions about where they could go next, being interested with Menado. We told them what we knew with recommendation of other diving places we had been. There was one dive when three of us happened to sit together, side by side, and Thomas had forgotten that there were three non-Germans there. He called out his one, two, three, go in German when we were supposed to do back roll. We knew what he was doing, but not certain when he started counting. So on what seemed like a count of three, everyone was out of the boat, three of us looked at each other for a split seconds and quickly joined them. It was quite funny. No? Huh..

Ully was also a happy person, we didn’t have much chance to talk to him compared to the rest. But we knew he lost his underwear on the boat. On their last day on boat he was prancing around like confused spider looking for something. So we asked Andreas who was helping him what he was missing, maybe we could help too. Andreas shook his head, grinned, sighed and said ‘underwear’.

Some of these angmohs actually bother to change into their swimsuit before diving and changed back after every dives. For us, we didn’t even bother to take off the wetsuit.

Andreas was another macro enthusiast and he really did a good job arranging the trip for all of them. Been there and I know it’s not always fun arranging trips, even for friends especially ungrateful ones. He actually had quite impressive diving experiences, having been to Lembeh, some part of Philippine etc. Remember, Lembeh and Alor for them are probably some other ulu European villages for us. It’s damn far.

Everyday, all of us except Ramona who always sat in front, were cramped in the back of the open pick-up, just like a group of animals going to slaughter house. I don’t say it was comfortable, but it was fun. The five minute rides to and from hotel was no way smooth, the roads were irregular and Tom put it best when he adviced us not to sit at the edge of the lorry.”Thomas is not very sensible driver.”

So half of the angmohs would stand up, holding on to the lorry’s front, the rest would squat around trying not to fall down. The standing ones would need to duck their heads one in a while to avoid hitting tree branches along the way. As the result, we, who also squatted or sat in the back area, were treated to row of backside’s scenery during the ride. Every time we passed by the terminal and market, the kids would shout,”Hey mister! Hey mister!” upon seeing the Germans.

Nice companions.

Oliver told us, in German, they believe that they would meet someone at least twice in their life. So we wish each other well and probably we would meet someday, in good place, good time, hopefully another great diving trips. Nice meeting you. Same here.

Ramona and Piers even said we will be welcomed in their house should we visit Europe one day. They have beautiful old house near the boundary of Germany and France. It’s really really very nice of them. We exchanged contact and we’ll be glad to connect them to any dive operator we know if anytime they want to come back to Indonesia for diving, which they plan to do for at least few years to come.

So long great companions. Wish you all great life and great dives. And I hope the German’s belief is true.

THE BOAT & FISHING

Upon boarding, I was liking the boat instantly.

We had the diving deck behind with all the tanks neatly arranged in the middle, sides for back-rolled entry to the sea, three steps up to the middle area that is empty and neat for lounging around and to put our stuff, with nice side sittings between railing where you can swing your legs and enjoying the view of the sea (which I did 80% of my time on the boat), wooden staircase (that become shelves when not in use) that lead to rooftop, our favorite place to be when we came back from whole day diving to enjoy sunset, a kitchen, quite a proper kitchen where Sukono prepared coffee, teas, mango and watermelon for us, quite a proper toilet overlooking the sea with tinted window, captain area where they have mini library and day bed, and front area where I can sit facing the sea and the edge where I can freely dangled both of my legs and played ‘I’m the king of the world’ while scanning the surface for big stuffs. I will go as far as saying it’s the best dive boat that I’ve ever been, of course discounting those that had the facility for full liveonboard like Tarata and Kaleebso. My portable water container was useless in this trip, because I could just rinse in the toilet after every dives. Great.

Anyway, one thing that I observe, from fellow mild OCD to another mild OCD, Thomas seemed to go every extend to ensure that the boat was always neat. Nothing is scattered around, every equipment set was kept neatly, one basket for each set. Every night it would be stored inside the machine room and every morning Sukono would take it out.

The rooftop was a very nice place where we could lay out and enjoyed the peace. Late afternoon, when the sun had soften and the sky was bathed in orange, many of us would either sit and lay down in silence, enjoying the breeze and every minute of the journey back to the bay. Miss that already.

The boat

Middle deck

Innovative wetsuit hangers

Middle deck with hidden entrance to machine room at the corner


Middle deck


the dinghy.. I know the right edge was cut. I compromised the shot because the camera with casing was too heavy to carry around and be fussy.




ladder/shelves leading to the rooftop

The diving & fishing deck

Beside diving, Thomas also conducted fishing trip. Even when we were diving, every morning Sukono would take out a fishing pole and they will just leave it. The fishing was quite successful. While we were there, they caught big trevally, some Spanish mackerel and king mackerel.

I have not been a fan of fishing since forever. However, I also can’t be a hypocrite because I still eat fish. As best as I could, I would stay far away when we caught fish.

So the fishing pole would bend, Sukono or Thomas would shout for the captain to stop, then they quickly put in the protector and waist holder for the fishing pole, while reeling in the line. When the fish was in the surface, one of them would use a long pole with metal hook at its end, to ‘tchaczk’, stab the fish and at the same time pulled it up to the lower deck. Most of the time the fish would die fast, but on other times, it would flap in agony all over the floor with blood. It was scary sight and sound for me. One time we caught two big mackerel in one day, five minutes between each other. The second one happened just before we were about to go down for a dive. So want it or not, when I finally had to go to the lower deck I had to see the fish quivered rapidly for the last time. Hiks.

That day, after many good fishing day, it was apparently too much for Thomas’s fridge. Even too much for Sukono and Captain’s fridge, I think. So Thomas brought it to the restaurant and asked them to cook for us. He paid them some money and the fish dish was free for us. Anyway, normally for mackerel, it would be cut horizontally so there were nice sections of the fish to be fried. That’s what we thought. No, as mentioned previously, about the gigantic portion they tend to give, the restaurant actually cut the fish in half, one part with the head and another with the tail. The one with the tail was sliced into two symmetrical halves and served for two of us. Two of us got half of the 1.2 meter fish. For one meal. Two of us. One meal. Half of 1.2 meter fish.

THE DIVES

We had heard many things about Alor, it was recommended as macro diving site when we went to Komodo and from what we had read, it has world class diving.

Whether it really has world class diving, it’s subjectively up to the diver’s preference.

We have met divers who had travelled to best dive sites around the world but doesn’t care or appreciate macro stuff. When he tagged along with our boat to Lembeh, his expression was,”The fishes don’t come out.” Nothing wrong with that, he merely more impressed in seeing colorful reef and big fishes and they actually make up to very big percentage of divers. For macro lover, they can related to shallow, sandy, rocky, exciting hunt for the critters and ‘grazing’ on the sea floor.Some of the Germans described us as grazer and they were wondering why we looked down during diving while most of them busy looking at the reef or at the blue finding big fish.

For macro heaven, we found it less impressive than Lembeh and some parts of Bali (like Seraya Secret, Puri Jati on glorious past and Secret Bay). Either because the water was cooler or it’s simply not the season. During our diving period, while we could visit same destination in different time and different year, underwater life is always unpredictable. We could find plethora of ghost pipe fish in one trip to Menado, and found almost none of those in another trip. I guess Thomas put it best, the sea is not aquarium. It’s never the same. I totally agree with it.

But if I were to compare it to Derawan (also has macro reputation), Mabul (ditto, to be fair when I visited there I was not a macro freak yet), San Miguel in Philippine, Alor is better for macro. In my opinion, I still hold Alor as one of the bests in macro because I think two weeks is too short to judge, and we didn’t have macro-whisperer dive masters like we had in Bali and Menado, so we counted on ourselves to find critters. We also visit ‘non-macro site’ more, probably 60-70% percent of the dives since we had to cater to majority of divers. Those macro or even non-macro sites have a lot of potentials, looking at the terrain, water temperature, corals and critters that we did found. For near future, I would pursue my macro fix to another location or annual location (Menado and Bali) but further in the future, if I had the time and budget, I would love to come back and explore more.

For big fish or pelagic lovers, you may be better off with Sipadan, Maratua, Sangalaki or Maldives. But, there is a but, few big buts indeed. Eventhough Alor is not so impressive in term of big fish down there, at least for our two weeks testimonial, it is magnificent in term of surface encounters. If we encountered dolphin on the surface three times for our perhaps five-six time visits to Menado, we saw dolphins here almost everyday, sometimes two or three times a day. We saw blue whales, and yes, yup, yes, we saw numerous mola-mola. More on these later. Another but is that if you fancy big stuff, south of Alor is also a place to go, provided you go at the right time (check with operator), some days of the certain months affected by full moon etc, and good luck of course, you could be rewarded to dive with whales, dophins, sharks etc.

Another but, in the bay itself. Bay! bay! Not open sea. Thomas had collected pictures of whaleshark, dugong and hammerhead sharks, manta rays. These are probably some of our must-see-underwater in our lifetime, although we can cross all of them except for dugong, I will not miss another opportunity of seeing them again if I have the privileges.

For the coral reef, mark my testimonial. Alor is by far has the most magnificent, beautiful, rich, diverse and pristine coral life I had ever seen all my life, it’s still relatively untouched by human. The beauty is breathtaking, and for me, I could go hours underwater and doing nothing but just to enjoy the scenery.

It’s not possible to write about every single things, so I just include memorable things about the diving:

Forgive my chicken-claw handwriting...

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FIRST DAY (WHALES & DOLPHINS!!)

First day is always memorable for me. One reason is because it is first day, Captain Obvious. Another reason it’s because I would still have the diligence to write it down therefore I remember what happen on the first day. However, on this case in this trip, the first day is magnificent by default.

After five minutes van ride, we arrived at the shore. There was a small dinghy parked at the shore and all of us, together with Sukono, the boat man who greeted us cheerfully (and we were glad to find another local but ourselves too!) walked to the dinghy and boarded it. I know the idea sounds so stupid, but for a few seconds, I actually thought that is where we would be the whole diving day. So the question in my head was not how we fitted in, not about the sun burn we were going to get, but about how on earth would I able to wear my wetsuit without knocking everyone to the sea. Luckily, my mind soon registered and I spotted a diving boat about 200-300 meters away further from the shore. They are using the Atlantis Bay (a diving island in West Malaysia) style of dumping you in the dinghy first because the shore was too shallow and there was no jetty.

Anyway, upon regapping our equipments, while everyone else was in front, or ran to the front, Thomas suddenly appeared and told us “Ada paus di depan.” There is a whale in front. We thought he was joking. He looked like he was seriously joking, hubby thought as far as he was making a joke of big sized Germans who probably sunbathing in front. But he was not. One thing that we learned, he didn’t joke. He hardly joke, and he never joked when he was speaking about things we see.

So both of us ran to the front and there we saw it, a blue whale flipping and relaxing on the surface in front. We were merely fifteen minutes away from when we started, still far inside the bay, and there was this magnificent creature. We stood there with jaw dropped, the captain shut down the engine and no one said a word. All of us were enjoying the view in silence for a good ten minutes until the whale disappeared. While we still scanning the horizon, we heard what sounded like an amplified regulator sound from the side, all of us turned and found one baby whale on the right side near the shore blowing water like those in cartoon. It was ‘wow’, indescribable feeling. I was wondering how loud it was for people on the shore because it sounded pretty loud for us whose boat was a distance away. This is the kind of surprise that make it worth to travel to the end of the world, and lucky for us, still in our country.

As if wanting to impress us on the first day, not long after that we saw a big school of dolphin. I would spray water to your face if I was drinking for this welcome even before we reached the first dive site.

Another great first day thing, after all those fright, our first dive testing with empty casing proved that our casings were fine. It’s great news. We also found that we adapted much more easily than ever even after not diving for over a year. Normally hubby would need longer equalize time for first few dives, but this time, and overall for this trip, he would blub blub blub and sink faster that I did, a very much reverse because normally I would reach the bottom first. To think that both of us were unwell days before the trip, it’s great news too. I didn’t know how painful it is to dive after just or not totally recoved from a flu until I experienced it myself. It’s agonizing to equalize and I would never want to go through it again.

THE CAPSIZE

Diving day three was the first time we met the whole German group, so there were seven Germans + Thomas Indo-German + two of us + Sukono in the tiny dinghy, total 11 person. (Those Germans are not small built. If I’m quite big sized Asian woman, at least on height and hmm..probably width, I was ‘tiny’ among them). On the first dinghy trip to the boat with that much load, we were fine.

Today was special because we were going to drop by to local village, since the Germans wanted to buy hand-made traditional cloth after the first dive. Since taking out and putting in wetsuit are always tedious for us, we decided to keep our wetsuit on, hands tied on the waist and put in a T-shirt (hubby even wore his booties) while everyone else changed into short and T-shirt. We boarded the dinghy and I had very good feeling that we had at least 75% probability of sinking. Nope. We were safe. Lurking around the island, this was probably the time when I felt like exhibit in the zoo the most. The locals, probably the whole village were surrounding and following us. Luckily, those Germans were certainly more an exhibit than us. I would just grin when they were whispering around of whether we were Korean or Japanese. If we were in Bali or Menado I would have frown a bit but in Alor, we really look different, so fair enough. Sukono told us a bit of story about the village and at least everyone then know these fishy smelling and weird looking creatures are Indonesians too.

After those Germans were done with their shopping, we boarded the dinghy. I sit at the extreme right on first tier and hubby sat on extreme left on the last tier. Sukono started to run the engine, the surf was big. Probably few minutes battling the wave, I saw it coming. The dinghy was obviously heavy, it was manageable as proven before but the surfs were certainly a big factor that made it rocky and unbalanced. I reached down to my croc and put the straps behind so I wouldn’t lose the shoe when it capsized. After I finished putting the strap slowly, sure enough the right side of the boat started to tilt up. (means right side was lighter, and I was on the right : ))) I thought of jumping but didn’t want to get caught in the middle of flipping boat, one leg out and one leg in. So I just went with the flow and was under the boat when it capsized, avoiding the rush of human sardine of three Germans on my left. There were some bruises on my hand because I was protecting my head from the boat edge, everything else was fine.

After the boat was capsized, I quickly pulled myself under, then went to the surface outside the capsized boat and human range and looked for hubby. He was calling me and we exchanged okays and grins, then I was busy catching floating shoes of the Germans that passed in front of me. Everyone was okay, and indeed, almost everyone except Sukono, Thomas and Carlyn, were enjoying it. It was bloody hot day, so dipping was refreshing, and it was not a serious capsize. Eventhough we couldn’t reach the seabed, it was not far deep. We were also only like 200 meters away from the shore, and we are divers that shouldn’t be afraid of water by now. In fact, knock knock first, when you know everyone is safe and have nothing to worry about, it was kind of fun highlight of the day for me. Remind me of those old days when we practiced flipping and recovered flipping various type of boats in my outdoor adventure university organization.

Everyone started doing water treading and we cracked up looking at Tom who was holding his camera up in the air and grinning. He was the most cheerful of all, I am really impressed that he managed to save his camera and looked like he enjoyed every minutes of it.

Hubby, Thomas and Sukono with help of some others were working on flipping back the dinghy, and they managed to do it. I busted out laughing when I looked back at the kampong and we saw probably close to one hundred of kampong kids had already jumped to the ocean, screaming, laughing happily and swimming to join us. I bet it was hilarious sight for them.

A local fisherman paddled his boat quickly to us and asked us to hold on to his boat, then he jumped to the sea, went up our dinghy and started help scooping the water out. That is the spirit of helpful Indonesian villagers that I admire from time to time, meeting them through my difficult and limited facility trips, while they don’t hesitate for a second to lead a helping hands, even put our needs below theirs, which is amazing.

I didn’t see where it was coming from, another much higher and bigger wooden boat full of locals was suddenly near to us. They were passing by and came to help. One by one, we were pulled to the boat. It was so high, that it’s damn difficult to climb up and probably impossible for me to do without help. The guys pulled me up. It’s a very unique boat where the middle part is much lower with high railings surround it, so everyone was standing. Too bad I couldn’t take a picture.

The boat unloaded us to our big boat, except Thomas and Sukono who were still struggling to get the dinghy working. They couldn’t, the engine was spoilt, then the helpful villager and Sukono paddled it back to the big boat. Much to my amazement, after the dinghy reached the boat, Thomas and Sukono boarded the big boat, that guy jumped back to the ocean with his paddles without saying a word. He then swam back to his boat that was still in the location where we capsized. Wow, bless his kindness and genuine effort. How do you reply this kind of selfless help? And he was really great swimmer. The distance was not that near and the sea was not calm.

For many of us, eventhough there was a bit regret when we were in the kampong but didn’t have camera with us, it was a real bless. Such a coincidence, everyone who left the camera behind all had DSLR and the only two who brought it with them to the island were using compact. Tom’s was safe but Ramona’s was totally spoilt because her bag was completely dipped under water and it was not waterproofed or dry bag.

That’s the capsize. For the journey home, we still board the same dinghy with the same amount of people, plus three big underwater camera (those are damn heavy) because the sea was calm. The only way to go was using paddle (only one!) since the engine was broken. Poor Sukono, the few German guys tried to help with their hands. What is normally took five minutes, took us probably more than twenty minutes to reach.

BULLET: THE FAILED DIVE & SUCCESSFUL SURFACE TIME (MOLA-MOLAAAAA)

What the hell does the title even mean?

On the last diving days of the German, which was our last fourth diving day (3 day left after this, understandable?), we decided to do just two day dives + one last night dive. We always did three day dives but special for today, only two. Because we thought we wouldn’t miss anything, and it’s nice to relax in the morning, and also, since their itinerary today was two dives, we followed them this time. (Since the boat transfer to dive sites were not near, we couldn’t go back to hotel in between dives. If one party wants to dive three times, the rest has to follow and board the boat as early as us. Unbeknownst to us, many of them always given in to us.)

So, we only left the hotel at 10am instead of usual 7.30am. When we reached the first dive site, Bullet, around Kepa Island, it was already midday at the very least or around 12.30. (Feel free to correct me, as I don’t have any official knowledge to back it up, mid day is the most drastic time for tide changing. From our observation in Kalimantan divetrip by lounging above the stilt cottage, doing nothing but waiting to dive, everyday for two weeks, on mid day water level was at the lowest. And if I remember correctly, the nastiest dive in Komodo back then, when the currents were most fierce, was on second dive that was around mid day).

For the briefing, we were going to do typical pelagic hunting dive. So we would decent and reach certain point, from there we would anchor ourselves against the current and looked out for the blue to see if we were lucky for any big visitors.

So we were all prepared, sitting on the side on the boat ready for back-roll entry. All eight of us except Tom who was probably wandering around the volcano that day and Carlyn who decided to sit out because she didn’t like possibility of current.

(Note: I am not a fan of this mass back-rolled entry. Back roll is fine, but not when you are so close to each other and all go at the same time. Because you will kick, and be kicked and it gets very messy for the good first 10 seconds. You really have to hold on to the mask and regulator. I would rather do what we normally did, roll when we are ready. Therefore we got time to swim away from the next one, at the same time adjusting ourselves, checking camera etc. And if we have to do it together, do giant stride from the edge of the boat, less entanglement and more control. I guess the reason why Thomas uses this method is because the current in Alor can be unpredictable and if we didn’t go down together, some might be carried away. It’s also not really possible to do giant stride from that boat. If anything, today was the day I found that his reason is more valid than ever.)

On the count of three, all of us rolled to the water, like 80% of the dives (some because the boat didn’t come to full stop?), we ended up quite a distance from the boat after we surfaced. I swam back to fetch my camera, I was the only one bringing it down on the first dive, the other two with camera including hubby decided to leave it in the boat after briefing. When he surfaced, Andreas was saying that his mask dropped. I ducked underwater and saw it few meters away from the surface, sinking. Piers dived in and picked it up nicely, handed it back to Andreas, we were all waiting at the surface. From what was probably less than three minutes incident, we were apparently had been drifted far away from the reef, so Thomas signaled to the boat to come back. According to Carlyn, it was a very difficult effort for the boat to fight the current and it took awhile before finally reached our position. So, one by one took out fins and climbed back. Again, sat at the edge of the boat while It was navigating back to the previous starting point.

The second time we jumped to the water, I believe probably 15-20 minutes difference, we were surprised by the icy cold water once our backsides touch the sea. It was freaking cold. Ferikiiiing cold, I had never encounter water that cold except from my fridge, with ice. Everyone was making a lot of sounds, including those Germans who were much more accustomed to cold water. Even my camera instantly started to fog.

Thomas said no, we better not dive here. He called the boat back with help from my storm whistle. Shivering, while hanging in the surface, I realized we were turned around in a circle. It was not rapid in the surface but we were at the washing machine current. The boat picked us up, once again we went up, this time with a lot of effort because we needed to fight the rough surface. When the boat was near, when some had climbed up, few of us who were left in the water had to fin vigorously to catch the rope thrown by Sukono. Even when we were already holding the rope, we were moving. I felt my hand was almost pulled out of its socket; five more second and I might have to let go, my other hand was holding camera. Beside the ripping current, I think the boat’s engine was on too. After much effort, we finally up and jumped around because we were colllllldddddd. Then it started to rain. This time I thought I would follow the guy’s footprint to leave the camera in the boat because I worried to see it fogged.

(Again, sidenote: I think it’s very dangerous that the boat machine was on during climbing up after diving. I didn’t confirm it by asking but I think there was more than one occasion that it happened. Once, I was the last on the water, after passing the camera, before I took off my fins, the boat was moving, so instead of trying to take it off or climbing up, I thought what the hell and just let it dragged me for a while. Manual wakeboarding lesson everyone. I didn’t care; there was no way you expected me to try to climb up that way. It would be too dangerous if I attempted to do anything, one, I would probably lost my grip to the boat and drifted by current, second, I might dropped my fins. I was kind of pissed, but I think I understand why they turned on the engine and moved because if not, we might get trapped in the surface current. But, I guess, they could have told me, how if I got panic? Or maybe they know I wouldn’t? Sure enough, once we got out from the current, the boat slowed to stop and I could climb up. To give a credit, Thomas was standing on the ladder during the whole time, to make sure I’m okay. Man of few words he is, and I guess I was, because I didn’t say a thing also eventhough I had an assorted arrangement of cursing for a moment when I thought they forgot I was still in the water before coming into conclusion that they might had difficulty staying still in the current with engine off. See, I can be patient too.

When the rain got heavier, the surrounding fogged too. Everyone was walking around in wetsuit and upper body wrapped with towel. Thomas decided to head to another dive site nearby, but the weather didn’t look good although the rain subsided. We were hungry and cold, luckily, we bought our ginger tea in this trip and had handed it to Sukono yesterday. It was the best drink at that moment. While we were enjoying that, suddenly we heard some commotion ‘Mola-mola!’

We ran to the side of the boat and, and, and, a big Mola2 swam by, almost sideway to the surface, just a mere half a meter from the port, slowly glided along the boat. My jaw dropped and my eyes popped. I thought we would never see Mola2 in the wild. Since we are not a fan of diving in Bali in the popular dive site during mola2 season. Since I thought Thomas briefing that sometimes included the word Mola-mola would never happen. I didn’t believe we would see it here, in Alor, of all places. I have never heard these two words, Alor and Mola2, been associated before.

But it all added up, with the water temperature on the second attempt to dive, which Piers logged as 19 degree, ON THE SURFACE, I’m sure there were some Mola-mola down there. They thrive in cold water.

After the first mola-mola, we were all excited especially we saw another one nearby. First we saw the fin appearing on the surface, the it glided by. And another one. And another one. And another one. They certainly enjoyed the cold water there. Not long after, we were also greeted by big school of dolphins, it had become daily sightings, but everyone always stopped to admire.

Speaking of cold water, again. It’s not like water temperature I had experienced before. Of course Asian divers are not comparable with Westerners, in term of what kind of water temperature they get used to. I had some cold dives in Komodo, where I had to ditch my 0.5mm suit and switch to 3mm, I was fine after that. But maybe because I was younger, haha… since my 0.5mm wetsuit was torn (fixed!) and I managed to find 3mm with zip, I had been using the 3mm since. I experienced termoclines in Derawan and Bali but only lasted for awhile, I felt cold occasionally when diving in Lembeh and Bali Secret Bay, but it was bearable. Here, it was feriking feriking cold.It’s very unpredictable. Earlier I wrote about how much difference in twenty minute on the same spot. It was okay on the first attempt, of course it’s not warm Jacuzzi temperature, it’s also not so tropical, but it was bearable, I guessed around 25-26 degree. On second attempt, only when we touched the water, everyone was shivering and cursing and it was 19 degree.

As comparison to how unpredictable it is, on the first diving day, we went down and the water felt warm, probably 28-29 degree. It was our testing day and I was thinking of ditching my 3mm suit and just use 0.5mm tomorrow, it’s much easier to put and more comfortable to wear. Luckily, I tried another day, and on the second dive, the water turned very cold that we literally saw everything in pixel mode, like as if it was photoshopped.

I don't have relevant picture, it’s difficult to explain, so let me try to do some computer manipulation here:

You know when you are entering the boundary of a rain? One part you are good and dry, suddenly you are in the downpour. For this, upon seeing this pixilated water, we knew what was coming and we were suddenly entered bloody cold water. The pixilation probably can be explained similarly with why we see the road further in front as wet in very very hot day. Probably. What do I know. If only I know. I wish. I really wish. So that everyone can give up on damn Chicken and Egg question or why Chicken cross the road. In all seriousness, I really want to learn everything if I’m able to.

Back to the story,

Too bad the current was still too strong, weather still not good and cold water might not be suitable for everyone that day, Thomas decided we turned around and went to bay area, Comet bay.

I like Comet bay, it was never too cold in there and we could find quite a lot of stuffs including special looking pink robust ghost pipefish and many types of nudibranch.

It was also the only dive site where we met other divers. Which is another big plus diving in Alor. For two weeks, we only met other divers one time below, and one time on the surface, both in Comet bay. The rest we were basically the only diving boat around. It’s the exclusiveness that Papua put in their advertisement. Maybe that’s why the coral is so pristine.

We saw some mola-molas again the day after, and the last day. One dive just before we jumped, one swam by, we quickly went down, hoping to find them, but we were not lucky. The water temperature was probably too warm for them as we clocked 29 degree that very dive.

(P.S: Thomas told us that he encountered diving in 10 degree water before in one of the dive sites we visited. He also showed us the original picture of pixilated cold water effect, and a picture of an area full of dead fish at one time when the water was too cold).

MACRO DIVES & 'BUAYA' DIVE

As I mentioned previously, I still believe that Alor has much to offer. Historically, there is no same dive. Every time we went down it was different. There is probability that you don’t get same good dives on the same spot. So even for our trip this time, we didn’t find abundant macro lives as we expected to, the dives was not bad at all. We can certainly see the potential; there are a lot of hidden gems to be found in there. Again, to be fair, eventhough we were there two weeks, we only did around 13-14 dives in ‘macro’ dive sites.

Beside different factors like colder water (we were entering the rainy season), one of the biggest factor was, we didn’t have a macro dive master. The Indonesian dive masters especially in Menado and Bali are extremely talented in finding small stuffs, they know where they hide, how to locate the habitat and how to find the creatures. We learned from them a lot but unfortunately we are yet as good as them. So this was the big factor that we missed the most during the two weeks. Anyway, Thomas’s style was completely different with local dive master. He sort of dive companion, you are basically on your own. With so many people, could be up to 1:10 so we certainly couldn’t count on him for anything. (For scuba diving practice in Indonesia, ideally the proportion would be 1:4, can be less can be more. The most was 6 and that was rare occurrence although it also depends on location, difficulty level and skills). Thomas just showed you the way, and you take care of yourself. That’s why we prefer local guide. Haha…

However, I am not complaining. He was actually do the correct practice, and always tried to accommodate us the best he could. He never said no when we probably the only two who requested for three dives a day, he certainly understand when we told him we liked to dive slowly and long. He basically let us did what we wanted as long as we were responsible. In fact, I felt like we were being spoilt. We almost always dived longer than other guests. Beside the German divers, for the last three days we had other companions, just one or two guys. Around 50 minutes, he would signal them to go up while we were free to play ourselves as long as we wished. It could be because of air consumption too. It felt like they were the step guests and we were not.. haha.. I think one of the guy was a little bit jealous and was peeking at us from the surface. He would later go down again to snorkel around until we surfaced.

We found macro critters too in non-muck diving dive sites, we found Frogfish in a dive site called No Man’s land, a lot of nudibranch in Shark’s Galore and there was a dive site where we could find mandarin fish on day dives. I forgot to write it down but I think it’s in School’s Out? This dive site has field of staghorns and thousands of turquoise colored tiny fish. It’s sparkling as far as you could see. Staghorn is favorite hide out for mandarinfish. Too bad that day the current was medium strong that we couldn’t stay still to wait for them. They are such shy and picky creatures that we had to wait silently, motionless until they decided to come out. We could see them hidden there and playing peek-a-boo. Once they appear, slowly lift the camera (or stand by looking through viewfinder) or use the split seconds to snap, because they will mostly hide again. I feel that it’s easier to get their pictures while still using compact camera because the working distance is further. Now, it’s very very difficult, especially on the dusk dive when they normally come out. Back then in Derawan, we could use 45 minutes waiting on the same spot every night just to try to get their pictures.

So, with current, we could only see them hiding here and there, but it was quite a surprise that they were as active as night time.

Other macro dive site like mini wall, was a nice small wall with colorful critters, we found mushroom coral pipe fish, the white color pipefish we didn’t get chance to see, but it’s abundant in Alor. Pink Forest, where they have pink coral that shaped like mini tree, that’s where the name from. Too bad the lens couldn’t capture the overall corals. Pink forest is also the place where we found very active seasnake hunting. Normally when we saw sea snakes, they would be kind of shy or didn’t move so much. But the one we saw in Alor was oblivious to us, didn’t give any attention. In Comet Bay, I also found a bloody long sea snake hunting. I was following and trying to take video or pictures of it for a good fifteen minutes. It went in and out holes, probably looking for moray eels, its preferred prey. The macro lens focus point was so near I needed to get close to get the sharp video, it was difficult because it kept moving and I was hovering. There was one point that it went up directly to the camera after retracting its head from the hole in the coral below me before slid to another piece of coral under my face. I have to admit that my heart dropped for a split second. Eventhough they are not aggressive with divers and this one totally ignored me, they still have the cool reputation of being the most venomous snake, ten times more venomous than deadliest land snake, taipan. Few milligrams of its venom are enough to kill probably 1000 adults.

I knew it was a big snake when I followed it that day, but when I was watching my video (unworthy to post..sob…sob..) it was actually much longer than I thought. I captured it went inside a hole under the coral, my camera stayed still there while meters and meters of its body went in. Before I even saw the tail, I move the camera to the other hole where it came out, and there was the snake, in many2 folding of its length (I don’t know if my way of description makes sense) before finally found its head. Wow.. I guess it is at least three meters if that’s possible.

We had a dive site called Pertamina Pier, it’s shallow and had abundant of macro life. But who knew that day the current decided to visit that very area, it’s ripping and we needed to hang on the pier’s structures that weren’t overgrown by corals. We saw devil scorpionfish, pipefish, a lot of blennies but combined with cold water and strong current, we really couldn’t explore much. Half an hour into the dives, our dive companions were all disappeared because the visibility was limited. We explored the are further on the right side of the pier but finally gave in to the cold water just before the bottom time strike sixty minutes.

The Japan Wreck I dive site, the wreck was already unrecognizable and overgrown with corals. It’s also murky that upon descending, Thomas etc couldn’t be found already. We had not even reached the wreck. We stayed at 4-5 meter mark (the depth where the wreck should be) and kept looking out for either wreck or them. But everywhere was so shallow we hardly escaped 2 meter. I popped up my head to the surface and saw Pier’s fins and bubble. Went down again, we quickly swam to the direction and they were there, so were the wreck. The tide was so low I think the wreck merely rested in 2-3 meter. In part and pieces of the wreck, I had never seen that many Picasso Triggerfish before, this gorgeous colorful fish are unfortunately a far cry from their aggressive cousins, Titan and Yellowmargin triggerfish. They were shy and hid from us before we even approached them. Since it’s broken wrecks, some corals, there were many places to hide. They would dart inside the holes, and wedged their dorsal fins so they can’t be removed by predator. It’s super funny to see their back side poking out if the hiding place was not deep enough, or part of their moncong (snout). I admit I was being bad, I couldn’t resist when I found a medium sized Picasso hiding, too bad it was thinking like an ostrich. Only the head was hidden but half of its body was outside. Yah, I tickled it. Kuchi kuchi kuchi.. it must had played dead. So I waited there and watched. When it thought it was safe, slowly it pulled his head out, looked around, saw me, surprised, darted and ran (eh..swim) like lightning. The cutest one were the babies, like this one inside the rock below, thinking that we couldn’t see it. Awwwww…

I am miniature sucker, so tiny animals are cutest for me. Connecting to that, we saw a pair of crab eyed gobies busy playing with sand. I don’t know whether they are playing, eating or building nest, they always like to gulp mouthful of sands and disposed it through their gills. They also jumped comically while pretending to be a pair of crabs. We always found them in pair. As usual, if we are motionless, crab eyes gobies don’t mind if you come near. As a nice surprise, our eye caught another very very tiny crab eye goby nearby, it was soooo cute.

Another good macro dive site was Ampera, visited by only two of us, Thomas and Pier (told you he never sat out a dive), we found an orange warty frog fish and yellow giant frog fish. Today hubby didn’t bring his camera, after the fright in the morning that the camera couldn’t wake up, some water in the casing, we spent the morning boat journey suntanning the camera in the front of the boat. Luckily it was okay, but he left the casing in the room. I passed the camera to him to take the frog fish. I love this fish so much that we should get good pictures of them, and it’s better that he took it for the two of us. Good decision.





I also found a very weird looking scorpion fish, it was totally white (not unusual) but it was laying side way on the overhanging of an coral, defying gravity. It’s weird in every way.

The Germans were not very familiar in macro diving with the exception of Andreas, who was the only German who brought camera (in impressive set-up though). However, he also not really familiar in finding critters. All the while, we were almost diving separately from them, because it’s a big group, we always far apart from each other, so we hardly showed each other any critters that we found. Until their last diving day.

It was the day when we saw mola2, when we turned direction to Comet Bay. Since we had been there before, I basically remembered the terrain and remembered the abundance of nudibranch especially Halgerda Batangas, a species of pink spiky nudibrach. I wanted to search back the pink robust ghost pipe but couldn’t remember the exact depth last time. Instead, I found another beautiful pair of Halgerda Batangas and Andreas happened to be behind me. I showed it to him, then I found a very gorgeous (I had never seen too!) Sulawesi Glossodoris and showed it to and him. then Chromodoris Kuniei, Dusky Nembrotha and Tambja Morossa. When we surface, he was very happy,”so you are nudibranch finders, are you?”

P.S: Sorry that the pictures are very messily arranged (read: wasn't arranged). I love blogspot and all, but the picture loading and arranging function needs to be improved badly.

To see more picture, go to my photobucket, link included on top of this blog

P.S.S: I decide not to put captions on the photos here. In the photobucket I had tried to identify everything that I know if you are interested to know what they are.

(P.S.S.S: At this current moment it has past midnight, it's redundant work, I'm beat and listening to unknown instrumental that basically has very very sad melody, it feels fitting to see the pictures without being disturbed by captions)

The next dive in Secret Garden, Andreas, Piers and Carlyn were buddies. I think their strategy this time was to stick to us, or maybe because upon descending we already found critters. Hubby found Nembrotha Cristata and bunch of Dermatobranchus Semiatus. I found my favorite bi-color parrotfish juvenile, nudibranch ribbon eggs, two unidentified tiny nudibranches and harlequin ghost pipe fish. He was very happy and everytime we showed him something, we would show Carlyn and Piers too. They happened to be the three who appreciate macro. We felt the heat of the limelight and tried hard to perform. Haha..

It’s always fun to introduce fellow divers to macro world, for those who are interested, we are more than happy to do so. It’s a very rewarding feeling to see how others appreciate the unusual beauty and bizarre underwater life, like Carlos our dive master in Philippine who was not familiar with macro and grew very curious to it. Maybe that’s how Prass felt last time. Prass is our guru who introduced us to macro diving and we had never looked back since. But there are still a lot to learn, we had yet found our own Mount Rushmore of the macros; Harlequin shrimp, Boxer Crabs, Blue Ring Octopus and Pygmy Seadragon. The rest we had had some success. We did found Harlequin Shrimps and Blue Ring Octopus by ourselves, but I don’t count it, because the Harlequin Shrimps was found in Seraya where they basically almost everywhere when we were there on 2008 (good old days, right season), we found Blue Ring Octopus because we dived on the same spot every night for almost two weeks in Derawan, and they were always there although it’s freaking difficult to recognize them when they don’t show their colors. They look like just another octopus and another lump of corals.

Another impressive dive site was in Mutiara. It was an abandoned Pearl farm structure I guess. Thomas said there were many concrete frames down there, amongst and on the concrete, was where the critters hid. There were only three diver guests on the boat and the other guys was not going down for the third dive, so it was only two of us. He said he would go down with us, and stayed probably half an hour, after that we could continue and explore ourselves. The depth was merely eight meters and for some, the air could last two hours, then he looked at us and think for a moment, “but don’t stay until two hour” and grinned. We had average ninety minutes dives for macro on much deeper sites and he might have realized it’s not wise to put the idea into our heads because we might do so. Indeed, Mutiara was gorgeous and it would need hours to explore. We had seen some concrete frames in Seraya if I’m not wrong, as structure for artificial reefs. So I thought it would look like that, quite bare. We were pleasantly surprised when we were down there. The frames were scattered on the sea bed, so many of them that after ninety minutes of diving, we still didn’t get to the end of it. It was very rich and overgrown in corals, on the frames, in between, inside the frames. There were hundreds of them, no wonder it’s Thomas favorite dive site according to Oliver. It would be gorgeous to do night dive here. We found pipefish, moray eels, many scorpionfish including shortfins, many nudibranch including the bizarre Briareum Phyllodesmium. Too bad the water was quite cold for us to stay longer.

Like Pink Forest, there were also a good number of jawfish. This fish is ugly but cute, had unfriendly face but funny attitude. They would poke their head out of their nest, then look around, left, right, turn 360 degrees. Repeat.

For other macro dives, there was one great day when we had the whole boat to ourselves. When our companions had gone home and there was no other divers. On that day we requested that we just dived in the bay, all three muck diving. Thomas asked us to choose where we wanted to dive but we left it to him. He brought us to a dive site called Bus Station. He said there used to be a bus there. Before I asked how the bus got there (I’m not sure I really want to ask though, if it was a tragic story I might feel eery, but I think it’s not) he told us the bus had gone, It had been recovered and sold as scrapped metal. It could be quite cool to dive inside bus wreck, maybe sitting there and look at the window or tried being bus diver once in awhile. Upon descending, the visibility looked okay. Okay for macro site yah, not great but not bad. We moved along the seabed and granted with gorgeous Okinawa Halgerda sight which was a species of nudibranch that I have yet seen. Soon we got busy with shrimp, crab, another gigantic Okinawa and yet another Halgerda that looked very similar to Okinawa but different pattern (Apingpingaa Halgerda? Halgerda Alor?). It looked shallow, we felt shallow, but we were actually at 24 meter which is deep for macro dives, which is deep for us. We passed the time when depth excited us (come to think of it, it never did unless for special targeted dive like finding big stuffs or wrecks). For general dive and specifically macro, the best depth for us is 10-16/18 meter. This is where good stuff normally hang around, it’s not too deep that you have to watch out for the deco time constantly, it’s not too shallow that you have to worry for passing boat, surface current, jellyfish that I found occurs more in the shallow, imbalance tank, and weird eardrum sensation that I sometime experience in shallow water, and of course, shallow water normally means your dive is ending, and I don’t prefer that.

Anyho, we slowly grazed to the shallower area and found many more things to see. Second and third dive that day was also fruitful with school of cuttlefish, nudibranch, coral crabs, shrimps, shortfin lionfish, harlequin ghost pipefish, on the site that we strongly suspected has the presence of rhinopias. It has the type of corals and terrain where these guys usually hang out but we didn’t have chance to explore it enough when we stumbled to that terrain on our own at almost the end of the dive. Thomas had gone up because he gave us the freedom to dive ourselves.

He would brief us, went down with us, showed us around and then half an hour later he would tell us to explore ourselves and surfaced. Everything was briefed beforehand. It looked like he had good times when only us were around, he brought his own camera, looked for stuff and showed us too. It reminds me of when we were diving with Carlos in Philippine back then, when he literally let us do some exploration on our own, even for new dive site.

A little story, before we went down for the third dive, we actually tried to dive a new site. The area is known as Teluk Buaya he never dived before. Two three days ago, Sukono had asked us if we dared to dive with saltwater crocodiles. I told him I should be able to, think for a moment and then asked him whether it’s okay. (I mean, don’t anyhow throw us in crocodile nest without knowing it’s safe or not). He said it should be fineeee (you know those kind of dragging the end of the word like we are self-guessing ourselves about whether we believe 100% of what we said). I told him I read that crocodiles actually refrain from attacking something that are bigger than themselves, and I thought saltwater crocodiles are quite small (excuse my limited knowledge). He said haha.. the sizes are ten-footers or 3 meters. There are three types; black, white and red saltwater crocodiles and apparently there was a crazy dude who dived just for the purpose of diving with the crocodiles. Just one crazy dude so far though. I was still keen and curious; it would be new experience for us. So we told him we didn’t mind if they think it could be done safely. He said he would discuss it to Thomas and told us he didn’t anyhow bring it up actually. It’s just that he thought from his observation we are capable and never trouble them in anyway, means creating problem with irresponsible behaviors etc, which followed by his story about irresponsible divers in the past, who like to take matters in their own hands without realizing the risk. We’ve seen many of those. Jump to the water in the current without waiting or getting the clear of boat movement or other divers, racing to dive as deep as they could on single tank set-up and just common compressed air, tried to ride turtle, chasing big fish to depth out of safety range, forgetting to count air consumption, ditching buddy, poking heads inside coral crevices or holes, it’s endless.

So we didn’t actually know how it came out, whether he did talk to Thomas or whatever, we thought it’s not gonna happen, especially with other divers around. Until that only day when there were only two of us, on second dive we were told the area is called Teluk Buaya just before we went down and we also didn’t realize the ‘Buaya’ word actually mean literally buaya (crocodile). We thought it was just another name, anyway they have quite a lot of cool names for the dive sites, and this dive point was still nameless, it’s just that the land area around this place was called Teluk Buaya. Don’t worry we didn’t see any, and even if some passed by next to us, we never know. From the surface the visibility looked okay but when we descended, Thomas and hubby sunk down slightly faster than me and I couldn’t see them instantly, but the bubbles were around. The visibility was really really bad, probably half a meter to one meter. I couldn’t see the ground or even them, when I looked up, I couldn’t see the surface, just slightly brighter murky water. So I slowly sunk, following the bubbles, caught glimpse of their tanks once in a while, and suddenly I saw them already near the seabed. I joined them, looked around but the visibility was so bad, I could only see their faces when I got near. Thomas suggested thumbs up or surfaced, and both of us said okay.

Upon climbing up to the boat, we then learned that this place is one of the places we can find crocodile underwater. Sukono even went as far as to say it ‘markas buaya’ or crocodile center, or how I put it? Let’s just say it’s the base camp where the crocodile like to hang around, chit chat, drink coffee or something like that. We don’t know whether we should laugh or should drop our jaws. And isn’t it.. (again, I read before but not sure how reliable) isn’t murky water is crocodile favorite place where they are more likely to be found? Or is it only applicable for fresh water crocodile? I just can’t picture enough how would our reaction would be, when we were oblivious that we might encounter crocodile and then we actually saw them passing by our noses. We both played this scenario, and most likely we would freeze, wide eyes, and bite our regulator in trembling motion or probably nyembur nasi. Ha…