Our trip to Indonesia was arranged on short notice. As of July 29 we did not have any plan to go to Indonesia this year. But since the "good months" to visit are our Summer months - and we have other plans for next Summer - we decided to see whether it would be feasible to go this year. Over the period of 1 day we found that we could have 10 days at the Wakatobi resort and a week on the Star Clipper. So we made plans to leave about 3 weeks after that day. The trip was fully booked within 3 days. During those 3 days a 7.0 earthquake struck Lombok, the island immediately East of Bali where we had to make all of our connections. We checked to see whether the trip was still feasible. It was, but with a revised itinerary for the Star Clipper.We decided to go to Wakatobi first. From our research our hopes were that we would find a huge variety of both fish and coral that had not been bleached by warming seas. Wakatobi is a 2 1/2 hour flight from Bali (Denpasar airport) on a turboprop that flies to the resort only on Mondays and Fridays. The resort is on one of four islands that are South and a little east of the Southeast corner of the Sulawesi Island. It is very remote. The resort caters primarily to divers but also supports kiteboarding and snorkeling. (The late September quake and tsunami - which occore after we returned home - hit the NW corner of Sulawesi which is about 300 to 400 miles away.)
We scuba dived 3 days, snorkeled with guides at divesites on 2 days, and snorkeled independently on the house reef on other days. Since this is not a cruise boat destination and most visitors are divers the reefs have not been damaged by excessive tourism. The coral was magnificant. Snorkeling was at least as fantastic as the diving - if not better.
Since we booked so near the date of our arrival our chosen accommodation - a beach bungalow - was fully booked during the weekend in the middle of our stay - so we had to spend the weekend in a luxury villa. Poor us!
In the photos and videos that follow you can see that some of the photos are much more colorful than the others. Typically that is a result of depth. The closer the shots are to the surface, the more colorful they are. From this, you can understand why we enjoy snorkeling at and within 15 feet of the surface where it is more visually rewarding than scuba diving. However, there are different things to see at depth that are not near the surface. To see those - you need to scuba dive - or freedive. (The deepest I have gone with breath-holding was 55 feet. But if I want to take the time to see anything I don't go deeper than about 20 feet.)
Here are some photos and videos of what we saw at Wakatobi. To enlarge a picture click on it. To return to this album click on the X in the upper right corner of the enlarged view. To see all of the photos in the enlarged size, click on the thumbnails at the bottom of the enlarged view without returning to the album view - or just keep hitting the ">" right-arrow-key.
Fish at Wakatobi
Various kinds of Anemone fish
(Nemo)
Puffer fish
Groups of Fish at Wakatobi
Creatures that are neither fish nor coral
Coral at Wakatobi Sept 2018
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Star Clipper
After our ten days at Wakatobi we flew back to Denpasar, stayed overnight at a Bali destination resort where people seemed to be content just to soak up the sun. We boarded the Star Clipper the following afternoon. The revised itinerary for the week had been re-revised back to the original one. From that itinerary we made several changes during the week as a result of strong currents that reduced our speed. One night we were only able to advance about 1 mile per hour because the current against us was so strong. Instead of five scheduled opportunities to snorkel we had only three. Snorkeling on those occasions made us appreciate the undamaged coral and clear water we had experienced at Wakatobi. But we were able to see things that we had not ever seen anywhere else. Here is our ship. The passenger load was approximately 120.
Here are some underwater photos from our week on the Star Clipper:
I had never seen the rotating orange (eye) or the
5-arm star on an urchin before
An unusually long, thin sea cucumber
Komodo Island
The easternmost point of our cruise was Komodo Island where, of course, we expected to see Komodo Dragons. Our guides carried sticks that were about 5 feet long. The sticks had forks on the ends. We did not find out how these would be used to protect us from the lizards. Fortunately, we did not have occasion to find out. Our group of about a dozen people from the ship had 3 guides. One in front of the group; one behind, and one who wandered among us. We saw one Dragon a short distance from the end of the pier near tents that were used in use as gift shops. He was walking away from us through an area that was strewn with pop cans and litter.
We also saw two in the wild.
A smaller one, about five feet long, that was about 10 feet off the trail and only about a 10 minute walk from the pier. The guide at the back of our group spotted him after the first two guides and most of our group had walked by him. He was laying motionless between twigs on the ground. After he was pointed out to me it probably took me ten seconds to see him because he blended so well. He was not even partially covered. He was right out in the open.
The much larger one was at a waterhole. Including his tail he was probably 12 feet long. He did not provide much action for our group (probably a good thing) so we had our photo taken with him. We heard that someone in a different group got the lizard's attention by moving too quickly to get to where he could position himself for his photo. The Dragon responded and the guide emphatically told everyone to "freeze". Fortunately, the dragon calmed down without causing any injuries.
We were told that the Komodo Dragons do not have venom, but that people who are bitten by them stand a good chance of dying from bacterial infection.
We also saw several of the large deer on the island as well as eagles and a pair of a Guinea Fowl type birds.
During the last few days on the ship we were hearing about Super Typhoon Mangkhut hitting Philippines. It was expected to hit Hong Kong on September 16. Our return tickets on Cathay Pacific were to return through Hong Kong, also on September 16. So when we left the ship on Saturday the 15th we went straight to the Cathay Pacific office to be rerouted. Cathay Pacific got us onto China Airline (still in the premium economy section, but not seated together) which had its connection in Taipai. It turns out that it left from Bali (Denpasar) at the same time as our original flight and arrived in SanFrancisco 2 hours earlier than our Cathay flight would have. That made our overnight layover long enough to get a decent night's sleep at a hotel - after we changed our SFO to PDX flight from 6 AM to 10 AM at the SFO airport.
The other change to our flights was at the start of our trip. We were to catch a 9 PM flight from PDX to SFO on August 24. We were packed and planning on a leisurely trip to the airport by about 4:30 when an Alaska Airlines person called us and asked whether we could catch the 7 PM flight. This was a Friday afternoon and we needed to get to the airport in an hour and fifteen minutes from Beaverton in rush hour traffic. We went for it. We took surface streets and arrived at 5:45 as requested so we caught the earlier flight.
So out of six flights, four were changed - all were improvements over the original scheduled flights that we had purchased.
This was our best water-focused trip ever. Wakatobi, in particular was fantastic.
Great pictures! Makes us want to get back to snorkeling again. I'll get back and read all the narrative soon .
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