Indonesia 2009

[sorvju-f]

Originally Posted by David White

After missing the connection to Manado and spending a couple of very expensive days in Singapore I finally arrived in Manado and then on to Lembeh. It is good to be back again. I have been diving with Natalie...sort of. We are on the same boat and each of us have our own personal divemaster, she is with Anders and I am with Paulus. This is civilized. Natalie has been completely spoiled though with sightings of the blue-ringed octopus, the mimic octopus and two different wonderpus. There have also been dual sightings of hairy frogfish and ambon scorpionfish plus all the requisite nudibranchs, lionfish, waspfish, ghost pipefish etc. etc. etc. It is the rainy season and every afternoon it pours which dramatically affects the available light for shooting. However, I have seen things in the past two days that I did not see when we were here two years ago.

Pierre's luggage arrived this afternoon and he was able to get wet and the smile has returned to his face. I have been trying to get Natalie to post some pictures but she is too busy downloading them to her computer. She is filling up memory cards at an alarming pace, probably taking in excess of 1000 shots each day. Thank goodness for digital cameras.

Great to hear that Pierre is now in real action...

The list of creatures is impressive...is there any reason to continue to RAJA

Dont even say that Natalie is taking 1000 pics per day and no posts...

What is the VIZ compared to your last trip?

Jukka

[scubagirl]

I'll try to post some photos this weekend when we're in Manado, when I have some downtime. We're doing 4 dives every day, so what's left of the evening after we show up late for dinner is spent downloading photos from the memory cards, looking at a few and then backing them up on another drive. It's taking much longer than I'd like. Anders is the best guide you could have; he has found so much cool stuff. In addition to what David mentioned, on my first day we saw the Denise pygmy seahorse and a pair of pipefish that look like a blade of grass, plus a pair of incredibly tiny pipehorses (think of the diameter of a thread and an inch long). I don't know how they spot these things but I'm happy they do! I've also seen a couple of coconut octopus, a white octopus and a hairy octopus. Today I was bitten by a large clownfish and it actually drew blood. Who knew these harmless looking fish could be so vicious?

Pierre is very happy this evening after getting his luggage and going for a dive!

[Jonathan Bird]

I'm very happy to hear that Pierre is back in action.

Sorry about the weather. We chose this time of the year because of more favorable conditions in Raja Ampat.

I am jealous. I'm still sitting here in my office finishing up work and wishing like hell I was with you in Lembeh, one of my favorite places. I remember being so exhausted after a day of diving in Lembeh--it was all I could do to prep my cameras for the next day, so I don't blame Natalie for not having the energy to post pics. But do not fear, they will come I'm sure!

I leave tomorrow afternoon for Manado--see you guys in a couple days!

[David White]

In order to maintain the pace of 4 dives a day and prepare for Raja Ampat I thought it prudent to check out a little current today. Anders took us out beyond the confines of the Lembeh Strait to a site that made the currents in Galapagos seem like a walk in the park in comparison. Ripping is not even a fair adjective. I very nearly lost a fin, just barely managed to grab a hold of my divemaster, Paulus, and after 20 minutes of clinging to the same spot on the wall decided to abort the dive. Within seconds we were whisked around to the other side of the island completely out of sight. There is something just a little disturbing about floating in open ocean hoping that the boat will eventually find you before you end up in another time zone.

But we enjoyed sunny skies today, shot some coral reef at California Dreaming, a couple of flamboyant cuttlefish on our third dive and finished up at nudi retreat to capture footage of two separate species of pygmy seahorses before the day's diving was complete. Tomorrow promises more of the same, only different.

[scubagirl]

My first dive today wasn't as bad as David's, but still had enough current for the first 5 minutes. Here are a few photos from the last couple of days; I haven't had time to do much post-processing so far. Hairy frogfish, flamboyant cuttlefish, coconut octopus and ? octopus.

[sorvju-f]

Originally Posted by scubagirl

My first dive today wasn't as bad as David's, but still had enough current for the first 5 minutes. Here are a few photos from the last couple of days; I haven't had time to do much post-processing so far. Hairy frogfish, flamboyant cuttlefish, coconut octopus and ? octopus.

Nice set...giving Lembeh feeling...flamboyant is very special creature and it is posing nicely to you.

Hairy frogfish is of coarse must to see in Lembeh.

Thanks for posting middle of everything!

Jukka

[sorvju-f]

Originally Posted by David White

In order to maintain the pace of 4 dives a day and prepare for Raja Ampat I thought it prudent to check out a little current today. Anders took us out beyond the confines of the Lembeh Strait to a site that made the currents in Galapagos seem like a walk in the park in comparison. Ripping is not even a fair adjective. I very nearly lost a fin, just barely managed to grab a hold of my divemaster, Paulus, and after 20 minutes of clinging to the same spot on the wall decided to abort the dive. Within seconds we were whisked around to the other side of the island completely out of sight. There is something just a little disturbing about floating in open ocean hoping that the boat will eventually find you before you end up in another time zone.

But we enjoyed sunny skies today, shot some coral reef at California Dreaming, a couple of flamboyant cuttlefish on our third dive and finished up at nudi retreat to capture footage of two separate species of pygmy seahorses before the day's diving was complete. Tomorrow promises more of the same, only different.

Hi David!

Hi hope you have reef hook with you...if not do one yourself or try to buy one...sometimes in Raja I had current that no possibilities to use camera at all then I didn,t have this hook...now it would be first thing to pack.

It is not meaning that all the sites are same...current varies like everywhere, but it can be very strong. Strongest currents in my dive history I have had in Raja Ampat.

Jukka

[seafan]

Now you all have me really getting excited about my trip there in December. This will be my first time in Lembeh... staying, of course at Divers Lodge!

Since the person I'm heading there with hasn't joined this site... which dive guide should I try to get!

I'm trying to compose a list of everything I want them to find for me and think I will just have to wind up asking them to show me everything they can while I"m there... will be there for christmas and new year's eve.

This will be my first trip shooting with my Inon S-2000 and 10x subsee (Keri said it should ship out sometime next week)...

Keep posting reports... and pics!

[Jonathan Bird]

Hey Gang,
Bob and I finally made it to Manado. I'm in the room with Pierre's stuff but no Pierre. I guess he is still out sightseeing.

My trip from Boston to Manado was not very fun. My flight from Boston to Heathrow on Virgin Atlantic on Thursday was fine, although Virgin now has some new rules on being very strict about only one carry-on. I had to plead and explain that my cameras were very important and they finally let me slide so I could take my camera backpack and my video camera pelican--my standard two carry ons. The good news was that Virgin allows an extra piece of checked baggage for scuba gear, so I could take three check-ins with NO FEE! Of course, starting Nov 29, they go down to only one piece of check-in allowed, so the extra piece for scuba gear only gets you back to two. So, I got to Heathrow with no issue on Friday morning. BUT.....due to an air traffic control radar being out of commission in Germany, (I couldn't make stuff this up) we could not leave Heathrow on time. Apparently they can't fly through the airspace unless the radars are working. Two hours later, we finally left Heathrow. Since I had a two hour layover in Singapore, I was pretty sure I was going to miss the connection. Bob was on the flight with me, so we were both pretty much screwed.

To Singapore airline's credit, when we arrived in Singapore on Saturday, there were two agents waiting to meet us at the gate (I mean, there were two agents waiting specifically for me and Bob!), who explained our options. The next flight to Manado from Singapore was in two days, which would cause us to miss our flight to Sorong on Monday. If we could get to Manado the next day (Sunday) we would be OK to make our early Monday morning flight to Sorong. So they figured out that they could send us to Jakarta Saturday afternoon, we would spend the night in Jakarta, then head to Manado on Sunday morning from Jakarta on Garuda Airlines. They re-routed our baggage and we flew to Jakarta on Singapore Air. Again, the efficiency of Singapore air was impressive....when we stepped off the plane in Jakarta, an agent from Singapore airlines met us, helped us get our gear, guided us through customs, and got us in a cab to the hotel with vouchers for meals, taxis, hotel, everything. The hotel was fine, nothing special but not bad at all. We had dinner and hit the sack. Now at this point, Bob and I had been awake for 48 hours straight with only a couple nodding off naps on the plane.

The next morning we had to get up at 4 AM for a 7 AM flight because we needed to be there 90 minutes early and we had a 45 minute ride to the airport. We got to the airport 2 hours in advance, went to the counter and once again Singapore air had a guy to meet us! This is because they had to transfer us to Garuda Airlines to get us to Manado, and the Singapore rep was supposed to make it happen smoothly. I'm pretty impressed with how far Singapore Air had gone to help us at this point. The guy from Garuda Air explained that I didn't actually have a confirmed seat on the flight to Manado....only Bob did. So we couldn't check in until 6:30 when the flight check-in closed and they knew if they had an extra seat. We had some breakfast and waited. At 6:30, they came over and said they had a seat, and started weighing our luggage. Then the guy announced we were incredibly overweight on luggage and explained we had to pay a fee. (Of course, I was expecting this and asked the people at Singapore Air to make sure we didn't have to pay a fee, but they told me it wouldn't be a problem because the bags were already supposed to be tagged to Manado. Yeah right!)

I can't blame Garuda for wanting to get paid for the excess....they were helping out Singapore Air by taking us to Manado. So I explained that we were on Garuda because Singapore Air screwed up, my bags were already tagged to Manado and I shouldn't have to pay the fee--Singapore Air should. The guy agreed and so did the rep from Singapore Air. Only problem was that someone up higher in the organization had to approve it. While we waited for approval...the plane left!

Fortunately, there was another flight at 11. Our LAST chance to get to Manado. But again, we had no confirmed seats and the flight was full. We had to wait until 10 to find out if we could get on. But they tagged the bags and approved having Singapore Air pay for it. We waited three more hours in the airport. At 10 we had tickets, loaded the bags to the counter, and headed for the gate.

Just after we got though security, the agent from Singapore air came running up with 80,000 rupiah (about $8) saying that Singapore Air wanted to reimburse our airport tax too! Wow.

So we got on the plane and flew to Manado. We got off a couple hours ago in Manado. A day late, but still in time to make our connection to Sorong with the rest of the group tomorrow morning. Bob and I both have our luggage. And interestingly, neither of us has paid a cent in excess baggage so far. That will end tomorrow morning!

All I can say is that Singapore Air rocks! Incredible customer service, wonderful airplanes! In fact, the service and virtually everything about the flight in economy class was better than business class on American Airlines. The only thing business class on American had on Singapore Economy class was a bigger seat. Every single seat in Economy class on the Singapore Air A380 aircraft had a 10" (yes TEN inch) LCD display with on-demand entertainment system and 20+ movies. WOW! Hot towels to wipe your face, free alcohol, excellent meals, even socks to wear. Honestly, the level of service on most international airlines makes the American domestic airlines look like amateur operations.

So I am here in the lovely Swiss Bel-hotel in Manado, awaiting my next adventure, and boy am I tired!!

Jonathan

[sorvju-f]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Bird

Hey Gang,


Jonathan

Sounds like normal trip to Manado...as I had couple of years ago. I dont wan't to paint more problems, but you are not yet in Sorong...we had two cancellations and one extra night in Manado.

That excellent news that you have all the gears with you!

To eastern flights I have always used Singapore airlines...the quality rocks...only thing negative is that they can really be tight is excess fees and they can be really high.

Hope no more problems and enjoyable rest of the trip.

Jukka