We shall defend our island...
- Winston Churchill, UK
It's close to three weekends and it's still one heck of an experience. We finally came down to normality of laundry rounds, a still empty refrigerator, throwing out two living-room-sized carpets (thanks to Tommy), entertaining friends, sharing regaling stories of the Neptunic discoveries, and missed the healthily charged water and air.
The journey began with a smooth flight to Sulawesi, and a bohemian looking captain of the boat welcome from a particular Mr. Yaakob (former Finland, complete Finnish to the "finishing" line... no pun!) and the unveiling of a marshland lagoon, to the howling welcome of Viiru, Prinsi, Viivi, and Vaisii, the resident moggies. The place was quite common with small chalets (hammock was complimentary) and a bathroom with appalling water pressure. But the whole point was to spend the whole day outside in the sea and only crashed out in a lusciously simple bed with an ingenious design of four bamboo tied together to form the frame for the mosquito net. Imagine warm balmy nights with the ringing white noise crickets and geckos, gentle rain in the middle of the night and a lasting memory of a full moon, lighting the ripples of the not-too-far-away Manado mainland.
We are open water certified, we are glad that we made the full use of our time and can't wait to go for the advanced upgrade to take on night and wreck dives. But boy were we totally astounded by the diversity and wealth of flora and fauna brimming from the surface of the sea!
On our first dive day, we were being escorted by a school of tunas, thrashing violently upon the surface at breathtaking speed. In between the "usuals" of white-mouthed moray, fusilliers, clown triggerfish, a barra here and there, green turtles and thousands of gorgonian fans, corals and little Nemo, we were humbled by the experience of being up front with the wildness of floating effortlessly in the midst of a blue suspension, encircled by too many a fish to count, all too busy forming information highways in the undersea world, every move analysed and digested, spat and taken as a piece of communication between man and beast, the environment and where we were, what we were, and how we were doing in the blue planet's greatest gift - its water playground.
I gained a whole different perspective of humility of my own smallness yet when I looked at a shrimp, a razor fish, a ghost pipe fish, even tried to ride out the current with a baby lion fish, danced amongst the unicorn fish, respected the boundaries of the scorpion fish and came eye-to-eye with a pink baby (unclassified) jellyfish... I felt a kind of greatness in my heart that I felt only for the first time. I think it was the marvelous feeling of being one with one of the most fascinating "final frontiers" broken by humankind.
I shall put out more photographs that I have collected from other divers and our own inclusive, as time progresses (there is just still too much for us to sort out before our next trip which is this coming Wednesday to Perth!) but I'm leaving at this note at this particular point in time, in return for more stories of the beautiful time and the most warm people I have met in Indonesia in a long time. To Elrow, Jun and the lot, we had so much fun singing, getting "inspirasi" from the bucket, and learning about your culture (especially the intrinsic relationship between Sulawesians and the rest of the Javanese cousins) and politics, the good words and secrets, and also meeting other divers from all over the world - from the Germans in China to the "beruangs" in Thailand (honey, you know who I'm talking about) and the Finnish... I'll just pause from here (ok, I have held back from the Finnish joke, ok?).
