And the fun continues...

Apologies for not posting more often, but the internet is spotty here at best. And by spotty, I mean occasionally it goes offline for days. Oh well, SE Asia.

Day 2 found us going diving off an island east of Bali called Nusa Penida. We had 3 dives planned for the day - the first being our best chance of seeing Manta Rays since it's a known cleaning station for them. The boat ride over was pretty fun - it's basically a big speedboat on the open ocean so we're just flying over the swells and getting some decent airtime in the boat. Got to the first divesite and were hoping for some calm water to quell the seasickness that we were developing, but no luck. So we quickly strapped on our gear, dropped overboard and hoped that underwater would be better. Again, no luck... the swelling kept rocking us back and forth underwater and when we hit the surface Alan and I both lost our lunch in the ocean. I managed to boot & rally pretty quick, but Alan had to skip out on the 2nd dive and lie in the boat to try to settle things down.

But that aside, the dives were awesome. We did in fact see a bunch of manta rays. Those things are HUGE - probably have a 10 - 12 foot wingspan, and super graceful underwater. They would just swim by doing their thing and we got to hang out with them for a while. The 2nd dive was a super fun drift dive - just drop off the boat, and basically float at about 20M deep and watch the world go by. We probably drifed 1/2 mile in 1/2 hour. The third dive was full of more fun sealife - it's kind of funny to see a bunch of fish that I recognize from Finding Nemo. And we had a really croweded day again - there was alan, me, our guide, and Chaz, a fellow from Wales who was in Bali for a few months getting his divemasters degree. So it was another rough day (well, the seasickness seemed to take a bit of alan, but he eventually recovered, so all's good). The evening was pretty quiet - just had some expensive dinner a few Bintangs and we were done

Day 3 we went diving off a placed called Padang Bai. It was bout an hours drive from Sanur and then 10 - 15 minutes on these little boats that are dugouts with outriggers. Bit tricky to dive off such a small boat, but still lots of fun. Did another drift dive, and then on our 2nd dive we saw 2 white tip reef sharks. One was just swimming aound and the other was just chilling under some coral. They were probably 5 or 6 feet long. Pretty scary looking things, but so very rad to see them in the wild.

After diving we packed all our stuff up and got a ride over to the other side of the island to Kuta beach. This area is way more packed and lively. So we went for a walk about town, bought some souvenirs (yes Stu, I have your Bintang tank top), signed up for some surf lessons and then found ourselves drinking in a pool bar as the sunset. We made friends with a couple of Aussies who are here for the week and the 4 of us made our way around to some of the various pubs and bars and had a few more beers. Alan even made friends with a nice young Indo girl who was working the hostess table at a completely dead bar we went by.

Now it's 10:30, we've had our breakfast, bought some more sunscreen (the tan is coming along nicely) and we've just got to kill some time until our surf at 2:30. Then its' drinks with the boys, and Alan has himself a dinner date with a local. Life is tough.

Happy Endings!