Posts in Category: Diving
Sailing the Whitsundays
One of the most famous spots along the east coast is Airlie Beach – but mainly because this is where the sail-boats ad catamarans leave for Hamilton and Whitsunday island which is famous for Whitehaven beach. The beach consists mainly of silica instead of common sand (the inner part of the sand grains, beneath its (iron)-oxide shell) which is of such high quality that they wanted to use it for the Hubble space telescope’s mirror.
A friend I made in Cairns suggested me to join her on the ‘WINGS’ 2D/2N sailing trip since it’s one of the few that offers diving at different sites. Due to the super-moon and the resulting 2.5m tide, the water was a little murky during my 2 dives and night-diving would’ve been even worse but we saw a wobbegong-shark! underwater-pics will follow as soon as I receive my picture DVD (the one I bought onboard turned out to be empty 🙁 ) The sailing was great and we had a lot of fun on our catamaran, as well as on the beach with the awesome crew and people. See for yourself how stunningly beautiful this beach is:
Diving east Malaysia
My last weekend trip during my internship took me to Kota Kinabalu in east Malaysia. Compared to Indonesia, Thailand and even west Malaysia, I was impressed how different the country was. Roads with markings (and they actually respected them instead of honking all the time) and mainly 2/3 story stone houses that would perfectly fit European suburban areas instead of 20+ story living complexes combined with wood/corrugated iron cabins. Additionally, the people were really nice without the “annoying salesman”-mentality “mister, come here! original, I give you good price”.
After arriving and discovering the city at night, I did 3 dives around Gaya Island in the “Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park” and rented a camera. The water was slightly blurry so I couldn’t capture the turtle that swam by around 15m from us. The colors, especially of the delicate feathery plants and the nudibranchs were amazing and even crisper than in the pictures.
Later I met some people in the hostel and (after a heavy 3h rain) we had dinner at the night market and tried all kinds of new fruits like Jackfruits (they look like giant durians but taste way better! (they’re orange inside)), Rambutans (fluffy red balls), Mangosteens or Snakeskin fruits. On sunday, I visited the Orang Utan sanctuary at Shangri-La where they rehabilitate abandoned young Orang Utans. Since the Tour was kind of boring, I’m lucky the money at least serves a good purpose to preserve our gentle, hairy relatives.
Bali: -32 to +3142m
Besides getting my advanced open water diver certificate and some further diving in Bali, I also toured around the island for 1 day, hiked the volcano at night and spend an afternoon enjoying the waves at Kuta beach.
Unfortunately the hike to the volcano wasn’t rewarded – as I expected – with the view of a beautiful sunrise. After starting the trip with 200 stairs to a temple located at 950m at 3.00 a.m., My guide and me hiked through the steep RAINforest. The high humidity and fog filled the air with water and the additional wind resulted in a blistering cold which I neither expected nor was prepared to encounter. No jacket could have possibly withstood this madness for 3 hours anyway as the other freezing figures in perfect waterproof outdoor gear on the mountaintop assured me. 😀 After googling some details, it turned out the 1600m hike from 1300m to 2900m which was told to me, was a slight underestimation. The parking lot below the temple is located at around 900m while the mountaintop rises to 3142m, resulting in 2242m of steep forest or rocky paths and climbing with a headlight in the dark. The clouds and fog didn’t allow for any good pictures 🙁 but 2200m in 3h is quite an achievement :).
I tried to capture the vast rice-fields (from a driving car) and impressive temples as well as the waves at kuta beach, but see for yourself:
The other 71%
After getting to singapore I was eager to finally have a chance to dive. To see the wonderful world below the surface. After my open water diver in Tioman Island where I caught a first glimpse of the hidden beauty while focussing on all necessary techniques and procedures, I went to Bali last weekend. The padi advanced open water diver course is an accumulation of mainly fun-dives with some additional skills and Bali’s east coast offeres interesting dive-sites. After looking through the vast amount of diving schools, I decided to join the Tulamben wreck divers for a few days. During 4.5 out of 7 dives I rented a camera and tried my luck with color distortion, parallax (floating particles that reflect any flash coming from the same direction as the camera – e.g. built in flash), little light and quick moving objects while floating by myself. Underwater photography requieres a lot of skills and perfect buoyancy – especially with a compact camera without external flash or light. (The underwater casing for my nex 5 is as expensive as the camera itself 🙁 ). Thanks to my diving instructor I had a great time and some of the pictures turned out ok, allowing you to take a glimpse at the amazing habitat between -30 and 0m. [I met a turtleee! 🙂 ]
The wreck of USAT Liberty, a US cargo ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1942, then towed to the beach and unloaded. A vulcanic eruption in 1963 made it slip into the water. It lies at 3-30m depth and has become a very famous diving site in Bali.
Weekend in Paradise
I spent the last weekend in the paradisic Tioman Island!
After a long bus ride we boarded our “jetty” and spent the night on a 6 hour ride to the northern part of Tioman Island near Pulau Sayok. After our chili-rice breakfast on saturday morning we headed off for the PADI open water dive course. Beautiful blue water, a coastline that mainly resembled untouched nature and could easily be featured in a pirate or castaway movie and many colorful fish =)