The first time we visited Bali, in 2009, Michel and I took the PADI scuba course together and had an amazing time floating around like mermaids/cosmonauts. The dive site in Tulamben is beautiful and our instructor, who moved to Bali from France 4 or 5 years ago was great.
So as a belated valentines gift (Michel always prefers to give gifts randomly / late which I dig for the element of surprise) we decided to take an impromptu advanced deep water diving course. Theo and Nunga came along too and hung out in the rustic dive hotel, which has a breathtaking panaramic view of the ocean and nearby volcano. They also enjoyed laughing at us in our wet suits and masks lugging around scuba tanks and weight belts.
On our very first dive (which was in the ocean not in this pool) we saw 4 sharks and an octopus!
We also did a night dive in the shipwrecked US Liberty which has been encased in coral and fish. Before leaving for the trip I was a little terrified of diving into twisty ship wreckedge in pitch black water with hungry sharks possibly lurking nearby but the dive turned out to be my favorite of all. the colors of fish and coral at night when you shine a light on them are stunning and its so surreal and solitary to be swimming so deep in the dark. I really loved it
After our first three dives we ate dinner in the hotel restaurant and slept better than babies, Theo was up at 6am being our natural alarm clock.
Day two we took a boat to a further reef called the drop off where we swam against swift currants went 30m underwater and were shrouded in mist and rain. Its so beautiful to see the rain hitting the ocean from below as we came up from our last dive. One of our fellow divers (there were 5 of us including the two instructors) took lots of pictures with his underwater camera so I hope I'll have those to share in a few days too.
