Many people have asked us why they should buy our book if they can read our blog for free. Just like Part 1, the book is very different from the blog. Here are a few of the differences between the two:

• Prologue: Picks up where the Prologue of Part 1 left off. It focuses primarily on the research we did as we planned for our journey and addresses the majority of the questions we were most frequently asked.
• Several new stories from the journey – And there are some really good ones!
• Many details have been added that were best left undisclosed while we were still on the journey (sometimes we didn’t want our parents worrying about us; sometimes we didn’t want to incriminate ourselves!)
• In Retrospect sections with great insights — so you can see the situation through the eyes of a newbie as we learn, while simultaneously seeing the same situation through the eyes of experience.
• Streamlined stories – some complained our posts were too long and detailed, the book is a condensed version they will enjoy more.
• Formatting is first person, through Christi’s eyes – Some complained they didn’t like the third person format, so they will enjoy the book more.
• Actual dates on each post. On the blog, the dates are not real time, which is a significant piece of information for anyone hoping to follow in our footsteps.
• All profits will go to our cruising fund. The more books we sell, the sooner you can start reading about our next journey! So, buy one and get all your friends to buy one, too!

People have also asked us why we broke the series up into four books instead of only three. We had very different experiences in each of the four world regions, so it was best for each region to have its own volume.

• In the South Pacific, Part 1, we spent most of our time in sparsely populated areas communing with nature. And we did a lot of rough sea time, learning about boating the hard way.
•  In Asia, Part 2, we were mostly in densely populated areas building cultural bridges. Our sea experiences were also different from the Pacific, with both our best and worst passages occurring in this region.

• West Timor Island, Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia
  10° 9S by 123° 34E
  Dec 27 – 31, 2007 & Jan 2 – 9, 2008
  Traditional village tour
• Flores Island, Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia
  08° 50S by 121° 30.8E
  Jan 10 – 15, 2008
  Crater Lakes
• Rinca Island, Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia
  8°39.15S by 119° 42.9E
  Jan 16 -24, 2008
  Komodo Dragons & other native wildlife
• Labuan Bajo, Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia
  08° 29.5S by 119° 52.5E
  Jan 21 -24, 2008
  SCUBA Diving
• Bali, Indonesia
  08° 44.5S by 115° 12.7E
  Jan 25 – Feb 8, 2008
  UN conference, island tour, whitewater rafting, SCUBA Diving, Monkey Forest, traditional show
• Karimata, Indonesia
  01°40.7S by 108° 54.2E
  Feb 12 – 14, 2008
  Medical assistance to islander
• Sentosa Island, Singapore
  01°14N by 103° 50E
  Feb 12 – Mar 08, 2008
  Side trip to Hong Kong, Museums, Rides
• Port Dickson, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia
  02° 31N by 101° 48E
  Mar 8- 18, 2008
  Side trip to Malacca
• Langkawi Island, Kedah, Malaysia
  06° 21N by 099° 40E
  Mar 20 – Mar 28, 2008
  Sky ride, Geoforest Park, waterfall hike, extravagent gift museum
• Ko Muk Island, Trang Province, Thailand
  07°23N by 099°17E
  Mar 28 – Apr 2, 2008
  Emerald Hawng
• Phi Phi Islands, Krabi Province, Thailand
  Don: 07°43N by 098°46E
  Li: 07°40N by 098°46E
  Apr 2 – 4, 2008
• Phuket Island, Phuket Province, Thailand
  Ao Chalong: 07° 49N by 098° 21E
  Nai Harn: 07° 46N by 098° 17E
  Apr 4 – 17, 2008
  Traditional dancing, Elephant ride, Hawng tour, Fantasea show
• Port Blair, Andaman Islands, India
  11° 40N by 092° 42E
  Apr 17 – 23 & 29, 2008
  Visit to Ross Island
• Havelock Island, Andaman Islands, India
  11° 59N by 092° 56E
  Apr 23 – 29, 2008
  SCUBA diving, Elephant training camp
• Male, Maldives
  04° 13.0N by 073° 32.0E
  May 02 – 18, 2008
  SCUBA diving
• Port Salalah, Dhofar, Sultanate of Oman
  16° 56.2N by 054° 0.2E
  May 21 – Jun 02, 2008
  SCUBA diving, Guided Tour Dhofar
• Port Ghalib, Marsa Alam, Egypt
  25°31N by 34°38E
  Jun 13 – 17 & Jun 23 – Jul 05, 2008
  SCUBA diving, Trip to Luxor to see Temples & Burial Tombs

Sea conditions are still identical as reported for the last 6 days — absolutely miserable. We try to be grateful for the fact that conditions are not hellacious, like the first three days we were at sea, but it is hard. The good news is that our bodies have finally adjusted. We can read and watch movies again. This definitely helps make the time go by faster, though even with entertainment, the days still drag on painfully slow. It is still very difficult to walk around the boat, and yes, we still need to hold on with two hands at every moment to stay steady. Being in the bathroom is the worst. It takes two hands to pull your pants up, and in the two seconds it takes to pull, you are inevitably slammed against the wall. You also are not holding onto the boat when you wash your hands, and once again you are invariably slammed hard against the wall. And we won’t even get into the creative use of elbows for leverage while you are on the pot. Showers in and of themselves aren’t too bad, thanks to the seat in the shower. But toweling off is precarious and spending a lot of time in the bathroom encourages seasickness.

We had only expected to be at sea for 8 days and now we are at day 12. Last night we ran out of all of our heat and serve (whether oven or microwave) meals in the fridge and freezer. Don’t panic — we aren’t starving. But we have been reduced to eating canned foods, which isn’t our favorite. We’re also eating up our precious stores of Clif and Lara bars and other meal replacement foods that we normally save for day trips where we are not 100% sure of restaurant availability.

And time for answers to a couple of blog questions:

Q: What is the name of the corrupt president you wrote about in Welcome to Kupang, Indonesia?
A: The corrupt president is named Suharto (we have also seen it spelled Soeharto). During his years as president, he and his family and close business associates acquired huge business empires, supported with prime government contracts. Examples are Suharto’s children won construction contracts where millions were skimmed off the top and school children were required to wear shoes manufactured by a company Suharto’s grandson owns. They also controlled many monopolies. They are still prominent and powerful today.

Q: You didn’t mention East Timor is Catholic in Welcome to Kupang.
A: In a later post, we briefly mentioned that both the islands of Timor and Flores were originally colonies of Portugal before the Dutch seized control of Flores and the western half of Timor. The Portuguese made huge missionary efforts and as a result, the largest percentage of the population of all the islands they occupied are Catholic. The Dutch never tried to disguise their greed with piousness, and they made absolutely no missionary efforts until shortly before WWII. They succeeded in converting a smattering of people throughout Indonesia to Protestantism before losing the territory to Japan. The western islands had active trade with India from the beginning of the trade days, and many islands converted to Hinduism early on. With the rise of Islam in India, many Indonesian islands again converted to Islam, though not all, such as Bali. The many Chinese who have moved to Indonesia have held on to their Buddhist roots. And many islands in Eastern Indonesia have never converted from their original animist religion practiced prior to the introduction of other religions in the area. As you can see, Indonesia is incredibly diverse religiously. The islands with the densest population centers, such as Java, are all Muslim, so there is a huge concentration of Muslims in a relatively small geographical area.

In the late morning a fishing boat came by. Due to the language barrier, it took us a while to realize that someone was hurt and they wanted our help. One of the younger men, named Weren (sp) spoke English the best and became the interpreter. We decided that Eric should go to shore with the first aid kit and Christi should stay at the boat monitoring the radio. Eric hopped in their boat and they headed toward the structures we could see from Kosmos.

The small village had a lovely beach. There is a dock, and just as the fishermen yesterday told us, the water is much calmer in front of the village. Upon arriving to shore, Eric was taken to a hut where a man had a big gaping wound on the left side of his forehead. They had already put a cloth or bandage on it to stop the bleeding. Eric tried to clean around the wound with antiseptic. He was afraid to remove the bandage for fear it would bleed too much. Eric had him take some ibuprofen, and then gave him gauze bandages, butterfly bandages, antiseptic wipes and everything else in the kit that may have been useful to treat his wound. He showed the villagers what to do with each item. By this time there was a crowd of at least 20 people in the hut.

Eric radioed to Christi for any instructions regarding head wounds. Christi was standing by with medical books and relayed some instructions. Eric checked the patient’s eyes to make sure they responded to light. They did, but it seemed likely this fellow had a concussion. So Eric told them to keep his head cool for a few days. The villagers seemed very grateful for the medical supplies and help. They took Eric back to Kosmos. We sent them back with a few liters of clean drinking water, ice for his head, a few Tylenol with codeine pills to take the edge off the pain, a bottle of Tylenol, and a treatment of antibiotics. We very much hope we did the right thing. We need to take more first aid classes. Eric wished he could have stitched the guy up, but we read not to try unless you have some experience. A head wound did not seem like a good place to start.

While Eric was gone, Christi went to work on the squid. Though calamari is one of our favorite foods, she had never cooked it before and had no clue what to do with the squid. She found instructions in her “Cruising Chef” cookbook. She took a deep breath and pulled the first squid out of the bag. It smelled really bad. Black inky stuff was oozing out and spreading all over the place. The very long tentacles kind of wrapped themselves around her hand. She stared in confusion at the directions, wondering which spots exactly to cut into and which things exactly needed to be removed. “If I can do fish, I can do this, too” she told herself over and over as she chopped off the head and tentacles and wrestled with getting the intestines and bone out. The second one was easier than the first. By the fourth, she was a pro. Squid is actually easier to clean than fish, though messier with the ink. She cooked up some of the calamari for lunch. It was delicious.

After lunch, the fishermen were back with another medical problem. They kept saying “no hospital”. From the start we made it clear we were not doctors. Yet we wanted to help if we could. Eric went back to shore, and they seemed disappointed Christi wasn’t coming along.

There was a crowd waiting to ask Eric questions, but after not too long Eric realized there was no medical emergency. They did convey issues with infections, itching, and malaria. After a brief visit he had the fishermen bring him back. A whole bunch of villagers loaded into the boat, wanting to see Kosmos and meet Christi. We gave them some malaria medicine, neosporine, hydrocortisone cream and more band aids, all things they were desperately in need of. We then said our goodbyes. The villagers were clearly hoping we would stay and were sad to see us go. If anyone reading this is a doctor/nurse who is looking for a place to do some good will work, this village (and probably the rest of the villages on the island) could definitely use your services.

This area rarely sees foreigners. This village is certainly a place we would have enjoyed hanging out in for a few days. There was no one around who seemed to be an official of any sort, so chances were if we stayed another day or two and came to shore that we wouldn’t get into any trouble. However, the monsoon season was only going to get worse and we really needed to keep moving north.

We set out to sea right at 1600, as planned. Conditions are exactly the same as they were for the three days on the passage from Bawean to Singapore — absolutely miserable. And they aren’t supposed to get any better, either. We are definitely able to handle the seas a little better now that we have had a break, but we know with the beating we are getting it won’t take long before we are tired and edgy again.

As we reflect on our situation we realize we made a bit of a timing mistake. When we planned our route four years ago we intended to leave in mid to late March. At the time we knew the schedule was tight and that it was important to leave on time and keep to the plan in order to hit good weather all the way through. We actually left at the end of April, a month to six weeks late. Timing is crucial for avoiding hurricanes. But also for something else: the Asian monsoons. We needed to make it to Singapore before the change in winds, and by leaving in March we would be cutting it close. So you guessed it, we fighting constant head winds and seas. Had we pushed our way through the South Pacific and Australia a little faster, we wouldn’t be in the predicament we are in right now.

We arrived to the south east side of Karimata at 1600 (4:00 pm) after three and a half very long and miserable days. We were just going to pull in anywhere and anchor. A fishing boat flagged us down and told us to follow them to an anchorage. We did for a bit, but they were heading towards the windward side of the island, so we quit following them and continued inching closer to the shore. The depth was only 22 feet. The reef was clearly marked, but Christi still stood on the bow staring into the water in search of any unmarked coral heads in our path. We went as close to shore as we were comfortable with and dropped anchor.

The anchorage is certainly not calm, but it isn’t too bad. Christi made a quick spaghetti dinner. We were happy to be eating something other than a microwave dinner. Eric did a quick damage inspection and reported that all had held together just fine.

Some more fisherman came by, encouraging us to move to a near by anchorage where it would be much calmer. We could see they were pointing to an area that had a few small structures on it, so we are assuming it is a village. It was tempting to move, but we decided that we were too tired and this spot was good enough. The fishermen gave us a huge fish that will make at least three meals and enough squid to fill one and a half gallon size ziplock bags. We were surprised at their generosity. Eric gave them a hat as a thank you.

Since we brought up this topic back in Kupang, we figured we’d finish it up. Between Kupang and Bawean, we saw 3 to 7 bugs per week inside the boat. Some were alive and some were dead. Except for the four little flying things already mentioned in Kupang, we only ever saw one of each variety, so no sign of infestation. Most of the bugs were weird things we had never seen before. To our horror, we saw a brown roach like the ones that came from the bananas and it was alive. Even more to our horror, we saw two big, fat water cockroaches that you get from the docks, one alive and one dead. At the sighting of each roach, Christi went on a boric acid frenzy, hitting every little nook and cranny she could find. She is hoping that the dead roach means all the rest will die soon, too. We still have no clue where all the bugs came from in the first place.

We also wanted to comment that we are really glad we don’t have a flying bridge. The additional wind resistance and rocking would have made this passage even slower and rockier.

Yesterday we spent the day getting Kosmos all fixed up. We are pleased to report that pretty much everything was easily fixed. Eric was able to use a mallet to push the antenna support back into shape. We secured the kayaks and dinghy, and Eric put a towel under the dinghy cover to stop the chaffing. Eric secured the boom and paravane chains. He put a coating of gel coat where it had been chipped by the locker door. Eric washed the propane sensor and now it works fine. He tightened the screws on the hatch that leaked. The wind is still strong and making big waves in the bay, so it is still uncomfortable here.

Yesterday we also contacted the weather router we sometimes use, OMNI. We hadn’t contacted him before leaving Bali because the report seemed pretty straightforward. He told us that the reason the weather was so much worse than was predicted because there is a cyclone in Australia that is affecting the weather patterns up here. He told us that conditions were going to be bad no matter when we left and told us that leaving today would give us our best overall run. He advised us to take a more northerly route than southern for better winds.

Part of us was dreading going back to sea knowing it would be bad. Part of us was ready to get out of the rolly anchorage, feeling like if we were going to be rocking we may as well be at sea. We were braced for conditions to be just as hellacious as they were coming in. Had we been going more east there would have been several places we could stop and hide if we couldn’t handle the seas, but going north the hidey hole options were limited. The closest potential stop was Karimata, an island off the coast of Kalimantan (the Indonesian half of Borneo), which was 300+ miles away. The plan was to stop there to take a break there for as long as we needed to in order to regroup.

This morning, when we brought up the anchor, Eric secured a small fender to the anchor to keep it from banging around. We were pleasantly surprised to find that conditions were better than expected, being merely “miserable” instead of “hellacious”. The wind is 21 – 25 on the nose, with gusts up to 30 from time to time. The waves are much smaller at 6 – 10 feet, but still steep and still hitting at incredibly rapid intervals, so we are bucking like mad crazy. Almost all the waves throw water spray over the bow of the boat still, but now the windows are sprayed by the waves, as opposed to smacked by them. We have to hold on to the boat with two hands at all times when upright. When lying down, your whole body rocks back and forth with the motion of the boat. When you try to drink anything, the rocking of the boat makes the opening you are drinking from move, so half the time you miss your mouth and spill all over yourself. It is not fun, but like we said, it is so much better than the last run that it doesn’t seem that bad.

Literally, the minute we were out in the big waves, Eric’s sea sickness returned. As the night wore on the wind and seas again got bigger. By Thursday morning the wind was at 34 with gusts up to 40 and the waves were 12 – 14 feet right on our nose (head seas). Surprisingly, Christi physically felt OK, but emotionally she was starting to fall apart. She was worried about Eric, who hadn’t held down more than a couple mouthfuls of liquid in over 24 hours. She was exhausted from lack of sleep and long watches. She was back to only eating crackers and grouchy from lack of food. She couldn’t take the stuffiness and she was sick of being tossed around by the waves. But most of all, she couldn’t bear staring at the clock and odometer and seeing how painfully slow the miles ticked by. We were doing half our normal speed, and knowing we were in such miserable conditions and not going anywhere was killing her.

It was time for Eric to take tablets of compazine, which is a strong prescription drug for Motion Sickness. It worked amazingly well. He should have taken it sooner. At around 1700 (5:00 pm) on Thursday, Eric drank a liter of water and actually kept it down. This was a huge relief, since he was now up to 36 hours with virtually no liquids. He was still feeling absolutely miserable. Christi had a nervous breakdown around 22:00 (10:00 pm), complete with hysterical screaming and crying. She fell asleep after, and when she woke up four hours later, she was feeling better. We reached our island destination at 03:00 on Friday morning, but as has been the case several times here in Indonesia, the charts were off, and without accurate charts it was too dangerous to enter the bay in the dark. We did circles in the calmer water of the lee of the island until daybreak.

At 06:15, we entered the bay, chose a spot and began to drop the anchor. But the windlass (machine that lifts anchor and chain up and down) wouldn’t move. We peered into the anchor locker (area under the windlass where all the chain is stored) and saw the anchor chain had managed to knot itself up into a ball. While out there dealing with the chain, Eric noticed that part of our anchor support had fallen off. It is a little gadget that keeps the anchor from banging around when we are out at sea. He was able to save most of it, so in a way it is good the chain got stuck. Had we dropped anchor, the whole support would have been lost for good. Fortunately, with a little finessing of the windlass, we managed to get chain unraveled and successfully anchored.

The anchorage is very rolly and uncomfortable, even with the paravanes out. The current is swift and there are whitecaps everywhere. It also provides very little shelter from the wind. Being here is certainly better than the alternative, so we are not complaining.

After we anchored and got Kosmos settled, Eric began assessing the damage. Our kayaks came loose, and had they been small enough to fit through the railing, would have gone overboard. The dinghy was loose and the cover is chaffing. The VHF antenna holder is bent. The clevis pin for a boom line fell out, and caused the boom to swing. There is a small area on the boom where the paint is gone, chaffed off by the paravane chain rubbing against it as a result of the pin. The back locker that has our propane tanks had come open, and water got inside. Now the propane system sensor is not working. There was a small gash in the gel coat from where the locker door had smashed into it. The forward hatch leaked, but since it is over the bathroom, it was easy to clean up with no damage. All in all, not too bad. The damage certainly could have been much worse. We are thankful Kosmos is like an armored tank. Waves were hitting us quite hard. It was a torrent of water on our front windows pretty much the whole time.

We were both feeling like total zombies and simply were not up to dealing with all these issues. Since we couldn’t go to shore, we spent the day watching movies and trying to recuperate. We were both very sad about not being able to get off the rocking boat and enjoy terra firma for a while. We were also sad about not being able to get a big meal in a restaurant, especially since neither of us was up for cooking anything. And boy, could we have used a big meal!

Tuesday morning we were planning to leave at 1100, trying to time it so we were on an outgoing current. Everyone had warned us it would be a very rough ride all the way to Singapore since we were going against the seasonal monsoon winds. We looked at the weather report. Wind on our nose and head seas (waves coming at us from the front). While we have been in much bigger wind and waves than what was forecast, we’d never been in head seas before, so we weren’t sure what the ride was going to be like. We have heard that head seas are much harder to take coming from the front.

The ride from south to north Bali was uneventful. We were flying along at 8 knots, which was fun. As soon as we came out from the protection of the island, things became quite uncomfortable. We had 25 knots of wind on our front port beam (wind hitting us on the front left corner of the boat), with occasional gusts up to 34. The waves were about 8 feet and hitting at rapid intervals. Most of the waves were head on, but once in a while we’d get one of those nasty side rollers. Most of the waves were coming over the bow and smacking into the windshield. It was definitely much worse than the forecast for today. Our speed immediately slowed down to 5 knots.

Like the passage from Suwarrow to Niue, it was too rough to do anything at all. No reading, no watching movies – nothing but staring at the clock, willing the minutes to go by faster. It was raining intermittently, so we had everything closed up. Once it became unbearably stuffy, we started the generator and turned on the air conditioning. As is typical in rough seas, only the salon air conditioner worked and the other two wouldn’t stay on.

Through the night, the wind and waves both picked up, going to 30 knots of wind with gusts up to 36, and 10 foot seas. The waves were very steep. We slowed to 2.5 to 4.5 knots, averaging about 3. The rocking and wave crashing was more forceful than ever. We literally had to hold on for dear life with both hands to move around. We know we used this analogy already, but it is certainly more appropriate here than when we used it before. Kosmos was bucking like a rodeo bull. Sitting in your chair you would get tossed about just like sitting on a bull. There were plenty of times our stomachs would drop to our knees as we slid down a wave, literally feeling like we were on a roller coaster ride. There were plenty of waves that crashed on us very hard.

At 0500 Wednesday morning Christi woke Eric up for his watch. He immediately became violently ill. He has never been so sick. He spent the entire day on the couch, and every time he tried to move, eat or drink, he would start another round of vomiting. Christi was feeling pretty nauseous, as well, though never actually threw up. She nibbled on crackers all day and drank little. She would do watch for as long as she could, take a nap for 1 – 2 hours, then resume watch, since Eric really was too sick to be doing watch. Normally, she takes 2 to 4 hour naps between watches.

To be continued…

Christi had a hard time equalizing, as usual, but eventually got down with no problems. Eric had no issues during the dive. Once the dive was over, we went to a small restaurant on the beach, and lunch was included in the dive package. The food was OK.

The next site was maybe a third of a mile down the same stretch of beach. It is a wall dive. The wall was created from lava flow from a volcanic eruption. When we first entered, it was all black sand. We saw several little nudibranchs in the sand. Usually, we have a hard time seeing these little creatures, but against the dark soil they looked almost neon in color. We saw at least four varieties. There were green and white ones like the black and white one pictured in a previous post (don’t ask us which post). There was a blue and black with a pattern like one we had seen before. There were white ones we had never seen before. There was also a weird big species with a tuft sticking out on top that had never seen before.

It was a short distance to the wall. Just like the wreck, the wall is completely covered in a diverse amount of coral and sea life. We saw a lot of varieties of starfish, including pincushion starfish in white and pillow starfish in white. We saw several green 6 pointed starfish. We saw several 5 pointed skinny starfish in green and light blue like the royal blue ones we have posted pictures of in the past. There were also a lot of the spider looking starfish.

Most of the fish were the same as what we had seen at the wreck, but we did see a couple of colorful puffer fish, one spotted, one striped. There were also a ton of fish at this spot. Overall it was a spectacular day of diving between the two locations.

Christi again had a hard time equalizing. This time Eric had a most bizarre problem occur. Eric had the exact same amount of weight as he had on the earlier dive, yet about 2/3 of the way through the dive he began floating away. He grabbed a big rock and carried it with him the rest of the dive. Even with the rock, he was still struggling to stay down. Some air must have been in the BC that would not get out despite trying all the escape values. Oh well.

As great as the diving had been, as beautiful as the drive up and back had been, we have to say that the most fascinating part of the day was conversing with the dive master, Abdullah Saheem. He is originally from the Maldives and lived in several countries before settling in Bali. He is a brilliant guy, well versed on a huge variety of topics. Lately it seems that most of the conversations we have with others are get to you know kind of small talk. It was nice to have such in depth conversation. He provided a lot of insight on politics, government and general life in Indonesia, the Maldives, as well as other countries in the world. He is also an environmental activist. While the climate change conference was going on, we had read that Bali is suffering from serious erosion problems on its beaches, which we had asked him about. Interestingly enough, he had just completed a survey of the coral around the entire island of Bali and found that 90% of it had been destroyed. With nature’s protective barrier gone, it is no wonder the beaches are eroding. He is planning on doing a similar coral survey this year going from Malaysia down to Indonesia. You can check out http://www.boilingearth.org for info on both trips. Also, divers, you may want to contact him about diving on some new sites he found while doing the survey, including wrecks and a shark breeding ground.

Just like our last Mexican meal in Australia, we ordered fajitas and enchiladas. Much to our surprise, the food was actually pretty good. Granted, our standards are lower these days, but they got all the basics right. The enchiladas had the smallest smattering of enchilada sauce, but there was plenty of salsa on the plate to compensate. The fajita meat didn’t have grilled onions and bell peppers in it, but there were chopped onions on the side, and plenty of salsa, guacamole, and sour cream. Even though the food was not bad, we dreamed of the subtle things that make Mexican food so good, like poblano chiles and cilantro.

Today we went diving. We originally wanted to go to the little islands directly east of Benoa Harbor. They all are supposed have some of the best diving around Bali. The dive shop told us that normally the diving is spectacular there, but for some unknown reason the water clarity had gotten bad over the last couple of weeks. She said the clarity was better in the north of the island and advised us to go to the part of town called Tulamben.

We were picked up from the marina at 0730 and drove to the north east end of Bali, which took about an hour and a half. We took a different road, one that ran near the shoreline, and from time to time there were pretty views of the ocean. We even got a nice view of the island we had originally wanted to dive at. There was a visible point where the tourist area ended. The number of buildings thinned out and the quality of the buildings became more spotty. Few of the buildings were shops, and the ones that were shops were selling goods geared at locals, not the tourists. Signs were in Indonesian or Balinese, not in English. The landscape became mostly farmland, and we got to see acre upon acre of terraced rice fields flooded with water and glistening in the sun. As we got farther north, the car climbed up and down some large hills, with lots of untouched forest surrounding the farms. The north is definitely more our speed than the south. We like low key, mellow, and not touristy. We are traveling to see how the locals live, and in the south it is all touristville. It’s too bad we didn’t make it up here sooner. We would have liked to have spent more time up here.

We pulled into a parking lot, grabbed our gear, and made the short walk to the shoreline. The shoreline is black volcanic rock, and difficult to walk in holding the gear. Fortunately, it was a short walk. Getting into the gear on the unstable ground was tricky! The first dive was on the American freighter ship USAT Liberty, torpedoed by the Japanese on January 11, 1942, during World War II, while carrying rubber and railway parts from Australia to the Philippines. After being hit, the crew landed the rapidly sinking ship at the shore of Tulamben. The ship is 120 meters long (360 feet). It now sits only 30 meters (90 feet) from the shoreline, on its side, parallel to the shore. It is broken in two pieces. The top of the wreck is only 8 feet deep, so it is a good snorkel site, as well as dive site. The lowest part of the wreck is 90 feet deep.

This ship looks like what we had expected the Coolidge to look like. Every inch of metal is completely covered in coral, and there are loads of fish swimming around the coral garden. The boat was pretty well stripped of everything by the locals, so there weren’t any hazards to be wary of. Many upper sections of the boat have collapsed from age, earthquakes and volcanic activity, creating huge, open, well lit areas to swim through. You can get somewhat of a sense of what the interior of this or that area probably once looked like, but it is certainly not like the Coolidge where you know for sure you are swimming through a cargo hold or a dining room. There might still be some scary dark passages to swim through somewhere on the boat, but we didn’t go into any. We stayed either on the exterior or in the open interior areas and enjoyed the pretty coral and the fish. It was pretty to look up from the bottom and see the graceful wall of the ship with tons of fish swimming about.

The water clarity was…

To be continued…