Continued from Part I- Nusa Lembongan, Part II Ubud, and Part III Pemuteran…
Amed has a certain feel to it. It was touristy but it was the laid back kind of touristy. Peace, love, earth village, singing on the beach sharing a cigarette, kind of touristy. We don’t smoke but we loved it.
We reached Amed in the late afternoon and went straight to Lipah beach for snorkeling. Besides titan tiggerfish, parrot fish, angel fish, damsel fish, ribbon fish, and many more fish whose names I don’t know, guess what we saw there- a snorkel turtle! He casually hung out with us for quite some time. Damn about losing the underwater camera!
Besides amazing marine life, there was also a LOT of plastic bags in the sea there. For the first 30 min, I kept stuffing the side of my swimming suit with all the plastic I could retrieve to throw it back on land. But the plastic just didn’t stop coming! So after about 30 min, we had to abandon our ocean cleaning activity. Interestingly, there were some fish who were hanging out around the plastic bags and most probably eating leftover food from it. Most probably they were also eating the plastic. 😟
Plastic is a common problem around Bali. 😦 This picture was taken in Sanur later.
Day 11 and 12: diving in Tulamben
Tulamben, a little town next door to Amed is a diver’s paradise! They have a ship wreck 25 meters from the shore – the USAT Liberty!
Now, the USAT Liberty shipwreck has a very interesting story. It used to be an American cargo ship, which was destroyed by some baddies during World war II. It was beached in Tulamben for ~20 years when an earthquake dragged the ship back into the sea. Now, it is replete with SO MUCH MARINE life.
Here, we hired a camera. Too many things had been left undocumented. Like these beauties.
The pictures are from our dive master, Yoko, who did a fantastic job at it.
We did a wreck dive at sunrise as well when one can see the bullhead parrotfish, who come to rest at the wreck every night, but are rudely woken up by hyperexcited divers with their shiny Go Pros very early every morning.
Very groggy bullheads. The largest ones were much bigger than me. Nudibranches (below) were Yoko’s particular favourite. They were tiny!
Below are some more fantastic beasts of the sea near Tulamben.
We did 3 of our dives at the wreck but we could do it 20 times more. We later found out USAT Liberty is in the top 50 diving spots of the world!
We made one very peculiar observation about the fish around the wreck – they were coming really close to us. It was just unreal. Either they are conditioned to not fear divers anymore or the minerals coming from ship wreck are making them blind. Oh, such an exciting hypothesis.
And already in the water I started dreaming that somebody (for e.g. BBC) is going to pay me to test my hypothesis. There will be a camera crew. And I will be speaking underwater in the equipment they use these days and sound like Darth Vader. Sooor blurpp blurpp blurpp… I hope someone from the BBC is reading this and drafting a contract right now.
Back out and back in, we did one dive at the drop off point and one dive at the coral garden. They were very unexciting other than the temples of the gods and the hunting SHARK! Yeah! Obviously, we didn’t have a camera again.
Back in Amed, we went snorkelling again, this time to the Japanese ship wreck, where we saw a sting ray and many other fish. It was better than snorkeling at USAT Liberty, where we had mostly played with the bubbles coming from the divers below (but that was very beautiful too, so many bubbles).
In the evening, quiet predictably, we found a spectacular sunset point. There is a cafe called Sunset cafe at the edge of a cliff, overlooking the bay and Mt. Agung. There is a little path just below the cafe, if you want to avoid the strange Spanish mix of American pop songs played at the cafe.
Day 13: We snorkeled at Lipah again. And then transfered to Sanur.
We stopped on our way at Tirtha Ganga which was pretty nice. But Sanur was like a big bazaar, and loud, and touristy. For dinner, we saw the moon rise and reflect off the waves but we couldn’t get a nice picture.
Since Sanur is on the west coast of Bali, this time we chased the sunrise! And boy, we got one. Here is a time lapse video.
Overall, Bali was quite an experience. It is beautiful on the surface, but far more beautiful below. The fish come from the Indian ocean. The fish come from the Pacific. They live together in Bali. They co-exist, as is the spirit of all of Bali.
The Balinese lead their own lives, like many other generations before them, and let the tourists be. They hold on to their tradition and nature, because they know that’s what the tourists want. Bali is a hallmark of organized tourism, a model others could follow.
Bali had several worlds within it, as if it is made of several threads, none of which changes the course of another.
Here is a painting I still haven’t finished. Each block represents a pattern on a fish out there.
bunnygoespoppoppop 
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