A scuba diving book on Indonesia I picked up at the Jakarta airport on my way out last year, long before I had even contemplated the idea of taking it up, had this paragraph on diving at Tulamben in Bali, something about knowing you had done the right thing after dumping the air from your BCD (buoyancy control device, the thing wot makes you float when you jump in the water with tons of lead and other junk strapped to you and after you come up from a dive – that’s diving, strap lead to you and a floating tube, why not just leave it all off!!!) and getting to the bottom. And so it was, as we slowly sank down suddenly all these brilliantly coloured twelve inch plus size fish were swirling around us within touching distance, smooth silky bodies floating by, obviously looking for food but I saw them as a welcoming committee, and welcome is how I felt. They looked translucent, as if someone had carved them out of some bright plastic type material, what an amazing place. The coup de grace though was the troop of huge bumphead parrotfish floating around just above the bottom, in slow motion cruise control, regal, they were the emperors of the bottom. They slowly turned away from you, nothing was going to rush them. That, and the welcoming committee, is what is burned into my mind when I think about Tulamben, and the black volcano rock and sandy bottom, and the amazing wreck with its huge columns you can float through, and the huge brooding volcano that watches over all this, and, and……just too very special.

Tulamben is Bali to me, not mazes of lush green little rice paddies nor the rush of sometimes aggressive vendors that can bug you constantly in the more populated areas nor lines and lines of little shops and narrow streets and shrine upon shrine upon temple all over the place. It’s totally impossible to escape the spiritual world in Bali as every house has a little shrine dedicated to the spirits. Perhaps this is what puts people into Bali mode, that laxidasical laid back I’ve-fallen-off-the-edge-of-the-planet type feeling. We flew into the main town, Denpasar, were collected by the dive company, Aquamarine, who did a superb job throughout the trip of arranging all our accommodation, travel and dives, and then drove up to Tulamben, about two and a half hours away. As we drove through Denpasar I though ‘Huh, nice civilization’, comforting, as it’s a nice town. Then as we edged farther away it grew more and more rural. When we crossed a green ridge abeam Mount Agung and dropped down into a valley it was as if someone had switched the scenery prop on a movie set, suddenly it was dry and grey and looking very ‘volcanic’. This is Tulamben, on the dry side of the mountain, very dry, bleached white vegetation, the type we have in winter on the South African highveld after a month’s worth of cold morning frosts. Tulamben is small, all of not even a kilometer’s worth of little shops and houses and accommodation places on both sides of the main road in this desolate place. The reason for all of this is only apparent after you have pulled on your rubber gear, stumbled a few hundred yards across fist sized black volcanic rock, collected your tank and BCD from the game little local porters (who balance the whole lot on their heads), gotten yourself over the rocks waddling like a drunken duck into the sea and sunk beneath the surface.

The Liberty wreck comes with the complements of the Japanese and Americans and Word War II, something good can come out of these catastrophes, it seems. The ship was torpedoed by the Japanese and the Americans towed it up onto the beach and Mount Agung then obliged and blew it into the see when it blew it’s top in 1963 and destroyed the whole area, including taking thousands of lives. There seem to be thousands of huge rocks lying all over the place from this eruption and the coral wall that’s also a lovely dive is courteousy of a lava flow. This other-wordly violent nature of the Indonesian countryside is quite scary, flying back we cruised past a number of volcanoes, some belching angry looking smoke. We visited Mount Batur which also blew up catastrophically 40,000 years ago and left this huge crater that’s kilometres across with a large lake on the one side. The fact that the edge of the crater is festooned with little shops and restaurants and vendors crawling around in it like fleas on a camel bugging and biting everything that resembles a tourist does not distract from it’s beauty, or does it? The drive along the crater and then down the mountain was spectacular.

We stayed in a very charming little hotel, Mimpi, right on the beach at Tulamben. The restaurant is open air under a roof facing over their pool and the small bay, very very beautiful sight. The main activity here is pulling on your diving/snorkeling gear and heading for the sea. The wreck can be seen from the surface as well and is a great snorkel. We spent three nights here and then moved to Candi Dasa further south and much more in the civilization. Our first walk up the main road made me miss the isolation of Tulamben. Again the hotel, The Watergarden, was really nice and cosy. We dived from Padangbai, a short drive away. Padangbai is a quaint little harbour town and owes much of it’s existence, like a lot of business on Bali, to the scuba dive trade, little bustling dive operators and boats everywhere, very charming and disarming g place. We geared up in one of the restaurants and they were so ever friendly. The dives entailed going out on the boat, Done` included with her snorkeling gear and doing two or three dives with about an hour’s break in between, so each time nearly a day on the water. It was extremely charming, lovely scenery, just great being so close to the ocean for a long period of time, bobbing up and down just offshore. We saw huge amounts of cuttlefish, a turtle, lot’s of white tipped sharks, some swimming around in an underwater cave as we watched warily from the mouth and others sleeping on the sandy bottom. My guide, Made, was particularly adept at picking out microscopic sized creatures that I missed as I was sans my spectacles, ghost pipe fish, various small shrimps, nudibranches, etc.

We are back in Jakarta. Stuff we have been getting up to includes going for a braai, South African barbeque, at this huge house of a South African friend I met on a dive trip to watch a game rugby on his satellite TV from South Africa. We had a lovely massage at the new Ritz Carlton Spa for $25 US last Saturday. Culinary wise we had huge steamed crab Singapore style at the Mulia hotel with some Indo friends, had buffet style meals at the Mulia and Gran Melia Hotels, had Pad Thai at a place across the road, lots of Nasi Goreng (fried rice) at various places, lovely Thai food at a stunning place in the city,  Korean Galbi at another place across the road (including some Kimchi which is unusual for me, time to get out of Asia, I’m starting to like the stuff), etc. We also have made our own Sop Buntut, Indo oxtail soup, with steamed rice. The Indonesian buffet places at the fancy hotels are something to behold, average price around $15 US with huge ranges of suchi, sachimi, salads, various forms of food including Indonesian, Thai, Chinese with the obligatory Peking Duck, various Western dishes and divine range of desserts.

Indonesia is so huge with so much variety, a world in one country. There are so many islands and different areas, so many amazing natural varieties. So much hardship and suffering too, as if it’s fiery volcanic earthly origins have scorched it’s peoples too.

But I already miss some diving, time to head for the water again. Done` goes home next Wednesday so perhaps the weekend after that I will head for the islands again. Having said that I miss the Korean winter too, the cold and above all the skiing.