Tulamben

Wednesday, December 1

The Village offers many excursions.  Today we went snorkeling in Tulamben, one of the most popular dive spots.  Our driver picked us up at 10:00 and drove only 30 minutes to a quiet village built around the wreck of the Liberty, a cargo vessel from WWII sunk only 50 meters offshore.  The ship is more than 100m long, but it is broken into sections, and divers like to go inside.  We were only snorkeling, so we could not get down to the wreck, but the water was very clear, and we could see all the divers and the shipwreck below us.  The main attraction for me was the fish – huge schools of fish.   Suddenly I was swimming with hundreds of grey fish – I’m guessing they were about two feet long, and I was swimming eye to eye with the fish.  They didn’t seem to mind me at all.  Then we saw at least three other schools of different kinds and colors and swam among them. 

We hung around the wreck and the fish for a while, and then our guide led us down the coast over the coral gardens.  Our guide was wonderful.  He pointed out many things that we would have missed.  We dove down to see an octopus hiding under a rock.  The most amazing thing for me was a beautiful lion fish hiding in a big coral flower.  We dove down many times to see him.  I have seen them at the Monterey Bay Acquarium, but it was really special to see one in the wild.  We dove down many times to see beautiful, huge clams.  They closed their mouth when we came close.  We also saw barracuda, large trigger fish, angelfish, and an amazing array of colors of fish and corals. 

We took a break to eat the box lunch the Village had prepared for us.  Then we made one more pass over the wreck and coral gardens and headed back to Tembok for our afternoon massage.

During dinner we were treated to a concert by three musicians from Denpasar.  They were very talented, and had quite a repertoire of songs in Spanish, English and Chinese.  When they heard we were California, they played “Hotel California.”  They asked Barbara is she had any requests.  She asked for and got Cat Stevens.