Thursday May 26 and Friday May 27-Bali

Wednesday May 25

Today was our first day of diving. The first dive was on the Liberty wreck, which is the most famous dive in Bali. This was a supply ship that was torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese during World War 2. It is over 140 feet long, and very broken up and easily penetrable. It is also virtually COVERED with corals and sea life. We had to walk on top of sea walls along the shore for 10 mins or so to get to the site. We just carried our masks, fins, and weights, and our scuba kits were carried by porters: usually older women who carried 2 tanks ON THEIR HEADS. They often walked the same narrow, bumpy path we did. Just amazing. The Liberty wreck is famous for its fish life, and it really lived up to its reputation. The first thing you see is a large school of silver fish that seem to inhabit the area permanently. Everywhere you look there are fish, too many varieties to count.

We walked back, then after an hour or so surface interval, we dove the Tulamben Drop Off, which is a wall dive. It goes around a prominatory, with several changes in current. We saw a large white tip reef shark. Also lots of fish and life. I saw my clown triggerfish! Awesome looking.

All these are shore dives, with moderately difficult entries. The beach is black sand that quickly gives way to rocks and then large rocks, with surf around 1-2 feet high. It's tricky but I didn't have any problems today; our divemaster Ketuk was really good with helping me.

A very good first day diving! We are eating all meals here at the resort. Breakfast and dinner are included. For breakfast this morning we both had banana pancakes. They were amazing: their bananas are definitely local and very ripe. I'm going to try pineapple pancakes tomorrow. We had club sandwiches for lunch (I only had a half so I would be good and hungry for dinner).

For dinner, we both decided to try some of the house indonesian specialties. We both had the soup, Jim had what I did last night, which was very good. I had a hot and spicy soup, which was pretty ridiculously hot. I felt like I burned my throat! For our entrees Jim got an Indonesian-style chicken, and I got satay meats. These were both excellent. Dessert was banana fritters; again with the incredible local bananas. Oh, we also ordered an absolutely dreadful rose wine. They only had 2 bottles on the menu, and this was the cheap one. Now we know why!

Thursday May 26

Happy Birthday Jim!! And we both got a really good night's sleep! We both took an Ambien last night, and got a solid good night's sleep. It really feels great. This morning at breakfast, I tried the pineapple pancakes. Not nearly as good as banana. I'm going back to banana tomorrow.

Our first dive today was at the Liberty again. This time it was even better. I think mostly because we were both feeling better and comfortable in the water again. We stayed down well over an hour. Just an amazing amount of fish on this wreck. We had fun going into and through the wreck too. I LOVE this dive.

The second dive was right in front of Mimpi (their house reef). There was a lot of current and we had to start out with it and swim back against it, but other than that it was a terrific dive. I really wanted to see a blue ribbon eel and we saw two and a lot of other eels too (including a really pretty black one). We came across one section that had four different anenomes next to each other and each one had it's own family of anenome fish living in it: 3 false clown fish and 1 pink anenome fish. It's really fun to watch them, they are always moving, and very protective of their territory and family. We also saw a leaf scorpionfish, (Jim saw two more later when I was too far away to come back against the current).

I had more trouble getting out on this dive. I had both Jim on one side of me and Nyoman on the other, helping me. The waves were pretty high and it was very rocky. I was very grateful for their help.

So that finishes the diving at Mimpi Tulamben. Very worth coming here. I wasn't sure how good the Liberty was going to be; given all the hype about it. It greatly exceeded my expectations. In fact, everything about this place has. It's been VERY nice. And Menganjan is supposed to be even better! Tomorrow we go there.

For our last dinner here and to celebrate Jim's birthday, we ordered an expensive bottle of Australian chardonnay. I don't know if Australian wine has a higher alcohol content, or if we were just especially tired, but we were only able to drink half the bottle for fear of getting smashed!