A Journey to the Lembeh Strait - Sulawesi
On September 26 I left for Sulawesi along with Scott Michael and Larry
Jackson. This was my first trip to the Indo-Pacific region, so I was very
excited to be going. Scott had gone on and on about this dive trip and the
area we were visiting, so I had a good idea what I was getting myself into!
There are many travel logs on lembeh to read, so I won't bore you with a blow by blow dive account. I would highly recommend this trip to people looking for something different. We went diving with a skin diver writer who had said he had been to over 40 countries in the Indo-Pacific region. We went to hairball which is a great dive site. I came up to the boat and got out. This was my 3rd dive at this site and I thought it was a good but not great dive (the 2nd dive there was the best). This veteran gets out of the water just gushing about how incredible it was. He had never seen such a wide variety of oddball animals. I figure if a guy who has seen it all sees something different, it must be a great dive destination.
The trip back seemed even longer! If you have a layover in Singapore (which you will), take the free 2 hour tour of the city. They take you in a nice tour bus to downtown. There you get to walk around and take a boat ride up and down the river.The city is really neat, and it is a good way to kill 2 hours. Overall I had a great time. Hopefully this won't be my "once in a lifetime" trip, and I will get to do this again. It has changed my views on how to keep many of these creatures alive and happy in my aquariums.
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Map of Northern 
The rooms were very nice. I shared a cottage with Larry. It was a two
bedroom, large bathroom and a small living room/sun room. We were steps
from the beach and from the dive boats. The rooms were cleaned twice a day,
so I barely had time to mess up the room. The restaurant was also nice.
They had a variety food from local dishes to mexican! Most of what we ate
was grilled fish and various rice and noodle dishes. I am usually a very
picky eater, but I found many things that I enjoyed. The package deal we
got included meals which was very nice. I didn't have to worry about
spending to much or ordering something different that I might not like. It
was just one less thing to worry about.
The staff was very friendly and most spoke good english. We could
usually get them to laugh with all of our stupid antics, so at least we
thought we were funny. Larry and Denise Tackket were the dive masters at
this time. They were filling in since the resort was between divemasters.
They have done over 1500 dives in the straits, so they knew the spots well.
During the briefing they would tell us what to expect, and usually that is
what we got. The dive guides were very adept at finding the weird and wacky
creatures that we wanted to see. At times I had no idea how they could spot
some of the things they did. Some of the smallest creatures to some of the
most well camouflaged, they found it all. We regularly saw pygmy seahorses,
ghost pipefish, frogfish, leafish, cuttles, stingrays, pipefish, symbiotic
crabs and shrimps, devilfish, scorpions and all sorts of other things.
Being a coral guy, it was amazing to see the variety, size and quantity of
different corals. I have kept many of the coral species in aquariums
before, but to see a coral that at home is the size of my fist, and here it
is 7x7 ft colony is breathtaking! I was blown away when I would see
thousands of leather corals and colonies of hammer coral that was the size
of a small house!
Besides diving, I did take a trip to the rain forest. If you do go,
prepare yourself! It is a 2 hours bumpy ride to the forest, a hot sweaty 2
hour hike, then a dark bumpy 2 hour ride home. And in case you didn't know,
the rainforest is hot and humid! I didn't think I could sweat that much.
After all that effort we saw 2 kinds of monkeys, a bat, a lizard and
hornbills. I told these arrogant non-divers (who told me of their disdain
for divers) that for a six hour journey in which I nearly collapsed from
exhaustion, I saw a piddley 5 different animals. I told them that in one 45
minute dive I could see over 70 species of fish and over 30 different
species of corals and have energy afterwards. Now you tell me which is
better!
