Five and half years ago I was somehow convinced by Jim to take the scuba diving certification course. At the time, everyone thought I was crazy as I'm not a fan of the water and I really don't know how to swim..... I somehow passed and since then we have been fortunate to dive in some of the most beautiful places including Wakatobi, Indonesia.
Getting to Wakatobi is quite the adventure! We met up with the rest of our dive group at the Bali airport to jump on the chartered flight to Wakatobi. This flight included flying over the many atolls of Indonesia, which was breath taking.
We landed on a very small airstrip in Tomia, Southeast Sulawesi.
We loaded up into cars with our gear and drove through the village to catch a water taxi to meet the Wakatobi boat. Due to low tide, we loaded onto yet another small boat to get us closer to the resort.
The accommodations are beautiful, the staff are friendly and the reef is untouched by man so it's extremely healthy and beautiful. I was fearful of what the food would be like as we were so remote and food was brought in weekly. The chef at the resort put together some of the most amazing meals.
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| Our cute bungalow right on the beach! |
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| One of the great staff - Jack and Jami sporting our Team Cocktail gear! |
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| The best bartender - who not only made awesome drinks but also kept the sea snakes away at night! |
The trip included three dives for ten days - so a lot of diving. The schedule usually looked like this:
- Up at 6AM - eat breakfast, gather the gear
- On the boat by 7:25AM
- Dive #1 - typically 70 minutes
- Depending on where dive #2 was we would either hang out on the boat or make a quick stop back at the resort
- Dive #2 - 70 minutes
- Back to the resort arriving between 12:30-1PM for lunch and if we were lucky a little downtime
- Back on the boat by 2:30PM
- Dive #3 - 70 minutes
- Back to the resort usually between 4:30-5PM
- Clean up and hit the jetty for the beautiful sunset
- Dinner sometime around 7:30-8PM
- Bed by 9:30PM
I never realized how much energy you burn scuba diving! The water was a little colder than I anticipated so I was working even harder just to stay warm which meant I could enjoy even more of the amazing meals!
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| Dive boat |
This was a trip of a lifetime and one I will never forget. I'll leave you with some of the pictures I snapped while diving - nothing worth publishing as I'm still in training :)
