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Diving the East Coast of Bali

Sunday May 21, 2006

Posted In: Indonesia | Comments: 10 | Written By: Kai Conragan

Clown Fish guard their home, off Nusa Penida.

We’ve spent our first week back in Bali in the quiet fishing village of Candidasa. Located on Bali’s east coast, Candidasa is a marked difference from the Bukit peninsula, with quiet seas lapping into clear bays surrounded by terraced green mountains. All things seem to be influenced by the quiet serenity of this area, including the internet, which is painfully slow and why we haven’t put more posts up as of late. We tried uploading one picture and after 30 minutes just gave up until we could find a faster connection.

Our accommodations have been at the Pandan Restaurant, which offers comfortable rooms for $70,000-$210,000 rupiah per day depending on whether or not you choose a room with air-conditioning. Julie and I have both found we much prefer a simple fan to air-conditioning as they are quieter to sleep with and, more importantly, we find it easier to acclimate to the heat when we aren’t constantly subjecting ourselves to extreme temperature differences (If you spend enough time in the tropics your body will adjust, you just have to give it the opportunity to do so). Rates at the Pandan include a complimentary breakfast of coffee or tea, fruit salad, and a main plate of either nasi goreng, soto ayam, black rice pudding, or pancakes if you prefer something a bit more western. The food at the restaurant is good but the portions are a bit smallish and the prices are a bit higher than elsewhere with dinner costing around $ 4 to $5 each.

As mentioned in our Singapore post, we returned to Candidasa with the intent of earning our PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certification. Though I’m still a bit of the opinion that the Advanced Open Water certification is just another way for PADI to make some money, the purpose of the certification is to provide more focused training in select skills necessary to become a better diver. The main reason a diver earns this certification is so that he/she is allowed to dive deeper than 18m/60ft, the maximum depth allowed for PADI Open Water Divers. The certification requires 5 dives, 2 that are chosen by PADI – Underwater Navigation and Deep Diving – and 3 chosen by the diver. For our three elective dives we chose Peak Buoyancy Performance, Wreck Diving, and Night Diving. Our last night dive, in Monterey, hadn’t gone so well as Julie had been entangled in fishing line and another diver had his tank fall off of his BCD. We both wanted a second shot at a night dive, this time hopefully with better luck. Wreck diving just seemed like a great experience, and buoyancy control is the most important skill to master in diving so we both wanted more focused training in that area.

The company we chose to dive with is named Geko Dive, a long-standing dive shop based out of Padangbai, which is a 30 minute drive west of Candidasa. Several divers who had been staying at Pandan used Geko for their dives and were extremely happy with them, especially with the lead Dive Master Sue Jarvis. Sue lives in Candidasa so we flagged her down one morning as she was walking through Pandan and signed up for the course. The cost is $250US, a bit expensive for our budget but something we both agreed we wanted to do. Many dives simply require going to greater depths than 60ft, whether to see some black coral, visit a shipwreck, or just do a simple wall dive. As we are going to be in Southeast Asia for some time – home to some of the best diving in the world – we both thought it prudent to get the certification required to visit all of the incredible dive sites we’re likely to encounter.

We began our series of dives at Tulamben, home of the USAT Liberty Glo, a United States Transport Ship torpedoed by a Japanese submarine during WWII. This wreck is often misidentified as the U.S.S. Liberty. After being hit, the Liberty Glo was able to make it to the beach at Tulamben, where it sat for nearly 20 years. On March 17, 1963 Gunung Agung erupted, the force of which pushed the ship off the beach where it sunk and still lies today, making it one of the most accessible shipwrecks to dive in the world. One only need take a few steps off the shore, plunk down in the water, and descend 10 meters to find the wreck. Our first dive was our Peak Buoyancy Control elective. We got to see the shipwreck on this dive but spent a good amount of time honing in our buoyancy through a series of tests, including a fin-pivot, which is a way of helping a diver establish neutral buoyancy. When a diver, holding a normal breath, neither ascends or descends while floating in the water, he is said to be neutrally buoyant. Once a diver has established neutral buoyancy, he can ascend a little by simply taking a breath, and descend by simply by letting the air out of his lungs. This is called a fin-pivot, an important skill to master as it is necessary when examining a reef close-up.

Colors of the reef.

On our second dive, which was the Wreck Dive elective, we got to dedicate the entire dive to exploring the shipwreck. The Liberty Glo lies parallel to the beach at Tulamben, so the deepest point of the wreck is barely at 25 meters. Because we hadn’t done our Deep Dive elective yet, we didn’t dive the deepest point of the wreck, but all of the interesting points of wreck lie in less than 18 meters anyway. It’s simply amazing how much coral and sealife has attached itself to the wreck in the past 40 years. When you get close-up to the wreck you almost forget you are in fact looking at a ship, as nearly ever square inch is covered in some sort of sealife. Coming around the corner of the deck and finding two guns, still mounted in place, quickly reminds you, however, that you are in fact looking at a warship. The sunlight overhead creates dramatic shadows around the outline of the ship, giving the whole environment a very moody ambience.

Doorway of the U.S.S. Liberty

Julie diving the shipwreck

Our divemaster Sue looking more than a little relaxed

The second day we completed our three remaining dives, starting with our required Deep Dive in the morning. We performed this dive just off the point of the bay at Padangbai. Going over our dive profile that morning, Sue informed us we would descend to about 28 meters where we would find some Pygmy Seahorses. We were both a bit nervous before the dive, as obviously neither of us had been past 18 meters. Descending from the boat we were unable to see the bottom below us, which was slightly disorientating but it was very neat to experience being completely weightless with nothing around us to give a fixed position. The dive went very smooth and Sue made us feel very relaxed. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any Pygmy Seahorses but we did see a giant Moray Eel as well as a Stingray. When we reached our maximum depth (my computer actually showed 31 meters), Sue had us perform a simple quiz to demonstrate the effects of nitrogen narcosis, which many people feel when diving in deeper water. The quiz was to have each of us write our names backwards on a tablet she had brought with her on the dive. Amazingly, Julie was actually quicker at 28 meters than she was back at sea level, though I’m not quite sure what to conclude from this. My time was pretty much the same at 28 meters as it was back on shore, so I’m happy to report neither of us are particularly sensitive to nitrogen narcosis.

Our second dive of the day was at Blue Lagoon, just east of Padangbai, a place we had snorkeled at several days before. Blue Lagoon was named so because all of the coral used to have blue tips. Sadly, rising ocean temperatures have bleached out the blue tips, but the diving is still fantastic with a lot of coral and thousands of fish to be seen. On this dive we practiced navigation exercises. Sue would have us swim out 30 or 40 meters from a fixed point and then try to find our way back to a small object she had placed on the ocean floor.

I’m not sure who wanted to eat the other more, him or me

The last dive of the day and our final dive for our certification was our Night Dive. It’s always recommended to dive a place with which you are familiar at night, so we chose Blue Lagoon again as we had just been there and it is an easy location with very little current. The dive turned out to be the best dive of our certification and indeed one of the highlights of our trip to date. Diving at night is an incredible experience but one that is difficult to describe in words. The best that I can say about night diving is that you truly feel as if you are in another world. We had excellent clarity on the dive and saw a tremendous amount of sealife including a Porcupine fish, Spanish Dancer, Boxer Crab, Lionfish, Sunflower coral, and more. At the end of our dive during our safety stop at 5 meters, Sue had us all turn off our flashlights and hold on to an ascent line that had been dropped down from the boat. At first it was pitch black, a very eery feeling. But slowly, small specks of yellow and green light began appearing all around us, almost as if stars were coming out. Soon we were surrounded by these small specks of light, which are in fact bioluminescent plankton. We moved our hands and fins and the tiny plankton swirled all around us. I had experienced bioluminescence once before when night surfing in Panama, but there it was only on the surface of the water. Here, it felt as if we were swimming in space, surrounded by millions of tiny little stars close enough to reach out and touch. We could have easily stayed the entire dive at this depth with our flashlights turned off, but as it was it was a magical finish to an extraordinary dive.

Porcupine fish, one of the many fish you see when night diving

That about sums up our dive experience in Candidasa and the main points of our past week in Bali. We’re now back on the Bukit peninsula at Bingin, which has come to feel like our home here in Bali. We brought with us a friend we met in Candidasa, Simone, a German girl our age who has been traveling on her own for the past four months, primarily in Thailand and New Zealand. She had been diving in Candidasa as well (she was on the night dive with us) but was eager to see a bit more of the island. Our timing of arrival was excellent as a brand new swell was just beginning to fill in as we arrived on Friday. I’m already nursing a few minor reef cuts from my first two sessions. The swell peaked Saturday at more than triple-overhead and it’s scheduled to hang around for the next couple of days. On May 24 we have one more dive scheduled, this time to go see the Manta Rays at a place called Manta Point, which is off the island of Nusa Penida. We’ll head back over to Candidasa for that dive. From there we are thinking about taking the ferry from Padangbai over to Lombok. Stay tuned.

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