Location: Lombok, Indonesia
My day started at 4:00 AM to Amanda D. waking me up for my solo hour long shift on anchor watch supervising the position of the boat in our bay here in Lombok. We were given a debrief from Tomer and a new shift wheel last night explaining the task. My watch was accompanied by three different towns’ calls to prayer echoing across the bay under the full moon and the glassy ocean. After being replaced by Kiley at 5 I caught a few more hours of sleep. We all awoke for breakfast at 7:30 followed soon after by the uncertified scubadivers first dive of the day. We went to a different part of the bay for our second round of shallow water “confined” dives in an attempt to avoid the zero visibility conditions we found ourselves in yesterday. The plan succeeded, and the visibility was incredible. My dive group made up of Ava and Hannah with Philip as the “baby dive master” and Ben as our instructor got in the water around 8:15 having set up our gear the night before. The second group, headed by Gabe, was made up of Juliette, Travis, Kiley, and Ainsley, with support from Will.
With our scuba diving expectations set to the lowest of lows after yesterday, today blew our minds!! Indonesia has some of the best reefs left in the world, and I now understand why. Our first dive in 10 feet of water was surrounded by zombies of branching coral and colorful fish decorating their branches dotting the white sand bottom, and I’m told it’s only going to get better! We knelt in the sand and practiced safety skills like filling our masks with water and emptying them by blowing from our noses with our heads tilted back. We practiced controlling our buoyancy, dealing with malfunctioning equipment, and sharing our air with our dive buddies. After a quick lunch and a refill of our tanks, we were right back in the water for another few hours. Our next two dives were our first in open water, which allowed us to go down to 30 feet. The second half of the day was, without a doubt, the coolest combined 45 minutes of my life in the water to date. We swam face to face with beautiful fish, the deepest many of us have gone underwater, communicating with big grins, hand signals, and Ava and Hannahs’s newly invented sign language to cover the areas PADI left out, like turtles, starfish, mermaids, and of course dance party! While the uncertified dove, those with more experience went ashore in the morning, walked along the beach, and Charles picked me up some peanuts from a local vendor. In the afternoon, they checked dives under the boat to work towards higher scuba qualifications.
During our sea shower before dinner, we all talked about our dives and the beauty of the underwater world right up until people started getting stung by invisible jellyfish… Our dinner was accompanied by yet another beautiful sunset behind the volcano in Bali, in the West. The food today was so delicious, courtesy of Captain Tomer and the Sous-Chefs. All the meals were healthy, very good, and masterfully presented with unique colors, formats, and names worthy of a few Michelin Stars. My squeeze question of the day was, “What is your earliest memory?” and my appreciation of the day was extended to the little family of black and white clownfish my group swam past, living in a stand-alone anemone made up of a mom and dad, two little children and a clutch of eggs that the parents very bravely protected from us. Huge shout out to Meg and the others who helped fill up our tanks between dives! We thank our instructors and divemasters for being so cool and keeping us safe!
I’m writing this blog next to Tomer as we plan our passage for tomorrow on our way to see some Whalesharks! We’re all so excited and grateful to be living such full days on the magnificent Argo, in a stunning part of our planet.
Signing off for now,
Love you, Mom and Pop!
Wishing you all the very best!
-Bodhi