As far from relaxing as a trip can be...

After a most enjoyable diving trip to Lembeh we decided that it would be a waste to go all the way to Sulawesi and not see some of the sites above water.

We arranged to go up into the highlands to stay in the 'picturesque' town of Tomohon. Advertised as a peaceful retreat in a quaint town famed for its flowers and greenery, on the saddle of three volcanoes, a short 70 kilometre drive from the Airport.

That short 70 kilometre drive must have been as the crow flies, and seeing as 70 percent of our journey was up and along some of the windiest roads I've ever been on the 'short' journey took us a queasy 2 and a half hours. Also, when we arrived to Tomohon, we found that the 'quaint flowery town' was a sprawling and rather unattractive concrete mess.

We found all the afore mentioned flowers and greenery at the home stay we had booked in at. Set in a lush and pretty garden, it is a small home stay with only 4 'deluxe' (basic) bungalows. We even had a pond with fountain outside our room. Once upon a time our bungalow would have had volcano views, they just happened to be obscured by trees now. It seemed pretty laid back when we arrived, but after the long drive there we were happy just to kick back, relax and enjoy the peace and quiet.

I'm not sure if, in all my years of low budget traveling, bad locations and noisy generators, I have ever experienced a peaceful place that was so incredibly noisy. As soon as the sun went down the cicadas started going. They were soon to be completely drowned out by the frogs, who seemed to be in residence in our pond. Not content with all the noise, the neighbourhood dogs would also take their turn and begin howling at regular intervals. At some point they must have all quieted down enough for us to get some sleep as we were woken up at 4am by rather aggressive lecturing in Indonesian over a loud speaker. This went on, along with bouts of singing, at full blast until about 6 am. We then drifted back to sleep to be promptly woken again by oxen clattering along with rickety carts up and down the bumpy lane directly behind our bungalow.

Feeling far from fresh we weren't inspired to do much on the first day and only drummed up the enthusiasm to go for a wander late afternoon in search of some local delights for a late lunch. Within about 10 minutes we were caught in a torrential downpour and had to shelter in a plant shop on the side of the road for about 15 minutes. The rain let up enough to get a taxi van and we made it too a local supermarket (also noisy with music on so loud the staff couldn't hear you) to pick up some supplies. The rain started again so we admitted defeat and went next door to KFC for lunch. So much for sampling the local delights.

Thankfully the next night was slightly quieter, with the church preaching only going on till about 10pm and not starting again until about 7am. The next day we had arranged to hire a motorbike from the home stay and so we could do a bit of exploring. When the bike arrived we ended up with 3 different people telling us how to use the bike and deal with it's completely backward way of functioning. Of course when people are watching it always makes things harder and it took is a very frustrating 20 minutes of being told different things in different languages before we eventually got going. Due to the fact that the bike was finally started and seemed to stall when going below 20 kilometres an hour we we didn't dare stop for over an hour, by which point we'd realized the map we had been given was very inaccurate, we had forgotten to bring a camera and our bums were completely numb. Getting a bit lost was probably the best thing we could have done. We eventually found one of the big lakes we were looking for, but took a very winding route around it. We went past endless quaint, peaceful and flowery villages where it seemed that every man, woman, child and dog were in their Sunday best and either in church, on their way to church, or finished in church and on their way to the communal lunch gathering. I don't think I've ever been to a more religious place, even the smallest villages have a minimum of three churches. People seem to be praying morning, noon and night quite literally, not to mention in full voice at 4am.

Apart from the noise and the incredibly temperamental bike, the trip did end up being quite relaxing. There was a lot of time for reading, sudoku, and losing at backgammon. We never did manage to get the camera out, so the pics are from the home stay website.

Lembeh Straits

Ok, so have been really lazy recently and not been able to keep up to date with everything that’s been happening.
After what felt like an absolute age, we finally made it to the end of Semester One (no mean feat as it’s the longer of the two with less holidays). It’s been a pretty uneventful year of teaching so far, apart from having to watch one inept member of staff repeatedly perform unprecedented acts of ignorance and stupidity. Not even going to go there as he’s been ranted about more than enough. Anyway, after sitting around twiddling our thumbs for a week after the kids were allowed to go on holiday, we were finally released.

(If you’re not a fish person read no further…..!!)

Nick and I had decided to treat ourselves to a slightly more expensive dive trip as we had less time than usual for our hols. In the diving world (especially out here) you hear about Lembeh Straits a lot; it’s supposed to be the place to be for ‘muck’ diving. Now the idea of swimming around in poor visibility picking through trash and looking for things that hide in dark places, has never quite taken my fancy before. After a year of intensive wall and coral diving with 20-30m vis in Roatan we were up for something a little bit different.

We stayed in a small resort on the island of Lembeh which is off the north-east side of Sulawesi in Indonesia. The area is incredibly volcanic, with one of the nearby volcanoes having only erupted 2 months ago. 90% of the diving is done over black volcanic sand. The visibility is poor, although we were quite lucky, getting 5-10m. The water at 27 degrees, felt arctic to me. I know that I am setting myself up to be totally ridiculed for that but hey, I get cold, and my wetsuit is ancient, squished to about 1.5 mil and patchy. The worst part of it was that the dives were long and as most people know cold water creates the need to pee, as I refuse to ‘go’ in my wetsuit, it got to be quite painful at times.

Surprisingly though, although the dives were long and most of the time we were just swimming over flat expanses of dirty black sand, interspersed evenly with coral and trash, it never really got boring. Every day we’d see something new in the book and ask our guide to find it. He’d then choose the best dive site for it and would search up and down until he found it. He’d often lose us as we’d have our head in the sand but would be able to find us again then lead us back to whatever it was we were looking for without the aid of any bottom markers or compass. It makes me realize that I’ve never really needed to learn proper navigational skills for anywhere else I’ve been, you take it for granted when you have reef to follow.

While we were there, we ticked off most of our wish list. We got to see most things twice and more nudibranchs than I could have hoped for. Some of the best bits were (in photo order); a small Wonderpus trying to eat a big Wonderpus (either that or something rude), Pygmy seahorses, Mandarin fish, Ornate Ghost Pipefish, giant frogfish, Hairy frogfish, 10-15 inch nudis, mantis shrimp, flamboyant cuttlefish and Paddle-flap Scorpionfish . The best way I can describe the diving here, is that it’s like going out into the woods and turning over stones to see all the creepy crawlies underneath. Quite a lot of the time I didn’t like the way the guides interacted with the fish; moving them to be seen and shaking out hessian sacking and brambles so stuff comes out. However, I kind of understand that this is the way that they do it out there, and that they are used to having to push things out in the open long enough for everybody to get their photos. Our guide was good though and soon realized that we didn’t approve.

The diving part of the holiday went well beyond expectations, the place we stayed was beautiful; the food great, the staff accommodating. We were really lucky to be given our own guide and put on the boat with less people and smaller groups each time. They took us wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted and would do a night dive for one person without complaint even when they had already done 3 dives that day.

I would love to take credit for all these pics, but sadly my housing has died. All these photos were taken by Nick, I've never mastered the patience required anyway!!