Bali.      We arrived in Bali and had arranged our accomodation at the Bali Bungalow’s on Kuta Beach, where we were to spend the next 6 nights, a small quiet hotel with a lovely pool and gardens, (right behind the club where the dreadful bomb went off),very inexpensive. We had prearranged our diving with Annabel from Aquamarine Bali, WWW.AQUAMARINEDIVING.COM we had actually met at the London dive show a few months earlier. 

Annabel had arranged our overnight dive trip to Tulumben but our first dive location was Toyapakah off Nusa Penida, we also dived the Sentinel, we found the currents here to be a little strong, not surprising as the ocean funneled these currents between Nusa Penida and mainland Bali. These were our first dives for some time so the video was left on the boat, it was on these dives that we saw for the first time a Leaf Scorpion Fish, a fascinating creature. There were also Napoleon Wrasse, Giant Trevelly, and the ever present monster "Titan Trigger Fish"……..why are these fish so aggressive ? 

The drive up to and back from Tulumben is quite a journey so it meant an overnight stay at the dive site. The dive center accomodation at Tulumben was clean but spartan, our evening consisted of sitting in the "restaurant" overlooking Tulumben bay ordering food for the two of us and feeding what appeared to be stray dogs, needles to say the dogs ate more food that evening than we did. The first dive the following morning was on the wreck "Liberty", this shore dive was reached by walking along the large beach which was made up of large pebbles, this made the walk rather hard going. The dive on the Liberty was much more relaxed, better visibility and no current, the wreck lies at about 20 to 25 metres and is only about 30 to 40 metres from the shore, the sea bed slopes down quite gently here, our afternoon dive was on the wall, this is reached again by a walk along the beach but this time off to our right hand side. 

At the dive center there were several females around 15 or 16 years old who would carry our kit along the beach to our entry point, these girls amazingly carried our kit balanced on their heads, our kit consisted of our bottle/tank, BCD, regs & gauges, the girls did not carry just one set of kit, they carried two sets at once, tank sat on tank, quite amazing. Even more amazing is the fact that quite by accident i bumped into Annabel today.