A short but sweet trip report...Manado and Lembeh Straits!!!
By now the first of our trip participants should be getting home! I'm in Vegas for our annual industry tradeshow DEMA and 2 divers stayed a bit longer in Indonesia, one went to Vietnam and one hung out a few days with friends in Singapore.
Liz stopped off to see her daughter before heading home to Canada and so probably only Debbie and Kate have reached home.
I know the reports and pictures will start flowing soon but here is a quick recap!
We started our journey many from the East Coast meeting up in SFO and then to Seoul, Korea and onto Singapore arriving about 1am where we over-nighted for about 8 hrs in the Singapore Airport. Early the next morning we headed to Manado where we were picked up by our hotel and whisked off to our first resort Santika. It was a very nice resort with wicked cool massages and an extremely long jetty to the ocean. (A great way to burn off calories from too much eating.) Meals were buffet and offered something for most everyone including several Asian offerings. We met a lovely man and lady from Australia who usually joined us for meals while we were there but we were basically the only Americans. All in all it set the stage for a great trip! The dive shop manager Simone managed to score us nitrox and we had brand new tanks with valves that had never been used before...what a treat. Nitrox is not normally offered since some of the dive sites can have down currents similar to Cozumel and other places. We were fortunate in not encountering any serious ones although part of our group did feel one and several found themselves about 30ft deeper in about 30 seconds. Startled but no incidents from the experience all were able to stop any further descent by getting close or even holding the reef. Fortunately all the rest of our dives were without incident and the stuff vacations are made of.
After 5 nites and 4 days of diving in Manado where we saw BEAUTIFUL reefs, HUGE turtles, and hundreds of fish we headed to the 'critter capital' of the world...Lembeh Straits for some muck diving. Now Lembeh is a channel that sits between 2 mountains and then drops off on either side into the abyss. Over the years the run off from volcanic activity has filled the bottom with fine volcanic silt and ash. The critters that survive are either very fast or very camouflaged. They blend into the environment and exist no where else in the world but here. And while Lembeh has some beautiful reef structure and amazing marine life that inhabits it...its claim to fame are the one of a kind critters that exist in the black sands and silt of the straits. One unexpected surprise is the amount of trash that you see floating around and that has become part of the marinescape. The Lembeh straits are between this part of the world's major shipping lines and if you travel to one end or the other of the straits you will see dozens if not more, shipping vessels. These vessels and the townspeople contribute to the garbage dumping that occurs. And the affects of millions of people using plastic in every conceivable shape and manner possible seems to end up in the water you dive in. The trash is very tide dependent meaning it will ebb and flow with the tides but efforts by some of the resorts to pick up trash as they dive is starting to make a difference.
Due to an honest scheduling mistake part of our reservation at KBR was for 2011 and the mistake was not identified until after we were in transit as our consolidator was verifying final rooming etc. An all out effort was mounted to find us accommodations on the island and SingleDivers.com is now known to every operator in Lembeh as every resort was almost at capacity for most of the time we were there. Thanks to many involved we ended up doing some of our package at KBR and some at Kasawari and two of us got to dive with a 3rd operator on the island Eco-Divers who has recently struck out on their own and are working with the newest dive accommodations in the area aka Lembeh Cottages. While some of the group was touring the market and monkey forest, some of us checked out the cottages and enjoyed a lovely meal from their renown chefs. (In fact we just missed seeing Ned and Anna Deloach who stayed for 3 weeks while taking pictures for their next underwater critter identification book.) A special thanks to our hostess Linda at KBR for being the glue that held everything together and for the complementary Mandarin Fish dives, single rooms and massages we received to apologize for the booking snag.
We had an amazing time in Lembeh and for most fell in love with the muck diving and nudibrancs it offers. I have pictures and video of critters I am not sure what they are. In fact so many that I will be hosting a contest on the site for our members to help identify them.
Sadly our week in Lembeh ended to soon and while several stayed at KBR for add'l diving...most of us had to start the long but satisfying journey home. On the return leg home we had a 16 hr layover in Singapore so got some much needed retail therapy and souvenir shopping in, a few StarBuck's fixes and some needed rest in the transit hotel.
We will be posting pictures soon...and hearing more of our great saga I'm sure! I'm off to get ready for DEMA and will check in as I can! Kamala
Can't wait to hear more about your adventures.
I know people took cameras on the trip....
