Wow, this was an awesome diving trip! I had been to Sulawesi, Indonesia before. I had been there in 2002, with my sister Colette. We spent 4 or 5 days in the Togean islands.
This time, I was back with Craig, to visit the famous Bunaken Marine Park, off the Northern tip of Sulawesi. We stayed in the Bunaken park for 4 days. The best diving was done off the walls right in front of the village. These walls go down well below what we can see, although visibility could be 20-25 meters on a good day. The coral is in fabulous condition. I was expecting more damage; this place is visited by so many divers, it was bound to show some strain. Well, I guess I was wrong.
We had a fabulous night dive on day 2. I saw some spieces of crabs and crustacians that I had never seen before and reefs really come alive at night. The colors were fabulous. Sadly, I had set my camera to a setting that wasn't optimum, so I don't have many good pictures from Bunaken.
I had heard so much about the diving in Lembeh Strait. It is becoming the "capital of muck diving of the world". I had no clue what muck diving was. It didn't sound too interesting but I thought we should check it out. Also, we couldn't find anywhere to see the tarsius (smallest primate in the world). Anybody that knows me well knows about my fascination with primates, monkeys and apes. I just had to see them and I heard that they had a national park close to Lembeh where you could find the tarsius. Craig is always up for anything, so it wasn't too hard to convince him.
We had 3 days in Lembeh. The hotel/resort was still in construction and they sent half of the staff from Bunaken to follow us in Lembeh. The rooms were better and service was very personalized!
During the first 5 minutes of the first 2 dives in Lembeh, I thought we had made a major mistake by switching over from Bunaken. Where was the beautiful coral? There was NONE!!! It was just black sand everywhere, just muck!! Yeah, I know, I should have expected this if it's called muck diving, duh! but after the initial 5 minutes, I was able to see creatures I had never seen before. We saw 2 different kinds of octopus on our first dive. We saw a sea horse and all sorts of weird things on each ones of our dives. We were even able to find the smallest sea horse: the pygmy seahorse (about 1.5 cm in height). I was even able to spot them without the help of the diving guide. I had never seen a frog fish (or angler fish, in certain books), but I saw at least one on every dive. I saw a stargazer (had never heard of those before). These fish dig themselves into the sand and only keep their heads out of the sand. Their eyes are on the top of their flat-ish heads and look like they're staring at the stars (hence the name). When the guide pointed the head out, I thought to myself : "cool, a fossilized fish". How is this possible? He wiggled his hand over it to dust some sand off to further expose it. No movement (why would a fossil move???). When I was done with my photos, he took a stick and dug it into the sand to lift it out. The thing started swimming away!!! I had no clue this thing was alive! I gasped and swam slowly after it to take another picture. OK, here are the two pics of the stargazer and a seahorse (the pygmy shots are not clear enough==they're so small!).
