This day we were heading to Padang Bai for another day of diving with Waterworx Dive Center. This meant an extra early wake up and breakfast at 6:30 AM. I should’ve expected a bit of morning crankiness from Kris and I wasn’t disappointed. Our driver showed up at seven sharp and the short way to Padang Bai (no traffic on Sunday so it took less than an hour) was spent merrily snoozing in the car.
Our first dive of the day took us around the island of Nusa Penida. Manta Point is a small closed bay enclosed by rocky cliffs. The visibility is low due to waves and surf bringing up sediment from the bottom. Depth here is about 10 meters and there is not much interesting local sea life to see. So what exactly is the attraction of expensive diving in such a place? A cleaning station for manta rays. Sort of an underwater carwash, or rather a fishwash, where big fish come up to be cleaned by little fish. And this place is so predictable, that mantas are present on ninety per cent of the dives. When we descended below surface we just basically hung out at about 10 meters hovering over the surface or in mid water waiting for the big fish. And they didn’t disappoint! It only took about a minute before we spotted our first manta ray of the day. Not a huge one, perhaps only 2 meters across, majestically gliding over the coral, hovering while the little fish did their jobs, then swimming away into the big blue. And another, and another. During the dive we changed our position a couple of times, but stayed within the same area, perhaps the size of a big garden or so. Oh the pity we did not take our underwater camera with us, but here is a link to our dive buddies, Stefan and Nina’s, blog from last year, which contains a lot of manta ray photos from exactly this dive site.
Nina and Stefan's blog - Mantas
After forty minutes or so it was time to get back on board and change our location to Crystal Bay located between Nusa Penida and Nusa Lembongan. On arrival there we were served lunch, still slightly warm, consisting of a variety of delicious stuff: rice, shredded spicy chicken, fried tofu, samosas, fried fish, roasted coconut and two different salads. A type of Indonesian bento box. An hour surface interval and it was back into water for Kris’s most challenging dive to date. Because Crystal Bay is located between two islands and there is nothing further down until Australia, it has very strong sea currents and rather chilly water. Well… when they told us 20-22 Celsius I figured cold, but in fact my dive computer registered a temperature of 25 degrees. So not so cold after all. This is a place to go spotting for Mola Mola. Gigantic fish that look like head with fins. Unfortunately luck wasn’t with us this time, molas not being in season, and we did not see one. But the dive site is still great with lots of interesting small and medium stuff to be seen. And lucky for us, Kris got to see her first shark: a woebegone shark. Funny stuff is, she did not realize this was a shark, until I told her on the boat after the dive, and then got quite excited about checking off a sighting of another underwater species. Woebegone looks a bit like a big catfish and is very docile, so no surprising the missus didn’t think it was a shark.
We popped back on the boat and headed back to Panag Bai for our transfer. Some final formalities: logbooks, paying and we were on our merry but tired way back to Sanur. Diving here was quite expensive for me, though a fellow diver from Australia was going on how cheap it was. A package of 4 dives for two people with equipment rental and transfers cost us $440, which comes out to $55 per dive. From my experience diving $20-$35 was rather standard in a package, but apparently this is by no means the most expensive place to dive on Earth.
We were back in Sanur before 4 PM so with still some time left headed to our local beach and souvenir market. Didn’t get much sun as the shadows were already getting pretty long, only about an hour’s worth. We did do our souvenir shopping, though mostly at a store, not at the shops at the beach. There was only one tired looking guy selling jewelry who seemed to just be happy to sell anything, so we were able to bargain a good price on some trinkets. Others, perhaps due to prime location at the beach, stuck to their inflated prices and didn’t seem interested in haggling. Ten to twenty per cent was all you could haggle down with lame excuses like telling us that the price they bought the product was only 50 cents lower than the final price they were offering. Right… and the same product at the store we finally bought it had a lower opening price. Moral of the story: NEVER buy into the stories of sellers. They will try to woo you and swoon you with their said stories, at the same time trying to rip you off. From my time in Egypt I learned that you should bargain any price down at least fifty per cent (except in more regular stores). If you’re good, more. On one occasion , I bargained a lapis lazuli cat (semi precious stone) down from $100 to $7. But that’s rare.
Kite flying is a popular sport in Sanur
On the way back from the beach we stopped once again at The Cameng for some food. This place has turned out to be our regular eating spot. We didn’t even want to try anything else. Food is so nicely presented and so yummy: why would you?
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