Tulamben, Bali (21-22 Aug)

I had a shuttle organized to drive me from Kuta to Tulamben where the famous USS Liberty is just 50m off the beach. The vessel was torpedoed in WWII and then was put on the beach to retrieve the valuable cargo. After some years a volcano erupted and pushed the ship to its current location. That is also why you got black sand on the beach which is quite a nice sight. On the first day I organized my dives for the next day and befriended some fellow divers just two doors from my bungalow and the locals. Once again I have established my dislike of cheap Oakley copies and T-shirts, the Balinese are really friendly and want to get to know you better. The receptionist’s English was surprisingly fluent and so the conversation exceeded the normal small talk.

my bungalow in Tulamben

I booked a package including two nights in a bungalow with breakfast, two normal dives at the USS Liberty and one night dive for 90 Euros. It probably cant get any cheaper than that. The room does not have air conditioning but having stayed more than a month in Cairns I got used to the heat and humidity by now. As long as I have my own bungalow with a working toilet and a cold shower I don’t care if things are old, broken, the ceiling fan not working or if there are ants in my sink or bugs in the shower. Actually this bungalow doesn’t even have a sink so brushing one’s teeth is wee challenging ;-)

my room, also you can see my backpack I bought in Townsville

In the afternoon I did some snorkelling at the wreck. It is located at a depth varying between 5 and 30 meters and on most of the metal parts you have corals attracting the usual fish. I saw surgeon fish, bat fish and huge schools. There is an east-west current and so you can swim to the ship’s bow and drift to the other end without moving a muscle.

Having not updated my blog for a while I spend this evening with my netbook on my lap looking at lizards climbing the wall next to me.

Side note: Today is the general election in Australia. Will it be Gillard or Abbot?

view from my porch

Next day I finally got to dive the USS Liberty. We went down to 28 meters on the first dive and it was truly amazing. The entire ship is covered with corals attracting a myriad of fish. Apart from the usual reef fish we saw some massive cods and also some camouflaged fish that the guide had to point out cos we wouldn’t have spotted them otherwise. The fish differ quite a lot from the ones at the GBR. I still suck at naming the fish so I need to do something about that. Having used only a short wet suit I figured there would not be a much buoyancy as with a long suit and so I took less led with me. Basically a fatal error.

At the second dive (with more weights) we went around the other side and also got to swim inside the ship where we found some big bat fish sitting in the shade.

In the afternoon I tried to organize my shuttle to go to Ubud. It had to go to at least 5 different places before I was fine with the price. Coming from Kuta was relatively easy because of the competition there. Going back now in that direction proves to be a bit more challenging. The first guy wanted 450K and by the time I finished talking to the last bloke the price decreased to 250K. I still think this is too much but there weren’t any further opportunities to bargain. And I got the ride at 7:00h which is also an advantage since the other guys only wanted to go at 9:00h or later.

At 18:30h I had my third night dive ever. This time we entered the water on a different spot on the beach to see something new and I was really glad I didn’t have some cheap fins but rather some with shoes included as the beach is quite spikey.

As mentioned before there was a volcano eruption some time ago and so the beach is covered with black sand/stones.

Although most animals are asleep after sunset, night diving still fascinates me. Going into that dark liquid puts me into an excited vibe. Right at the beginning we saw some huge fish with that cut off nose and I still don’t know the name. That was mighty impressive. I think this time I was a bit overweighted since I was always drawn into an upright position. Visibility deteriorated to 4-5 meters but that was fine. We also experienced a medium current and that quite nice since you didn’t have to swim. On the other hand you could easily get drifted onto the vessel.

This was just a short trip with few dives but still very impressive.