Another early start for our 08:00 departure to Gili Selang. Breakfast was mostly a repeat of yesterday. Our divemaster and driver appeared sometime after our arranged 08:00 and we left for Gili Selang.
At Lipah Bay we embarked a dukung, a Balinese fishing boat, and set sail to Gili Selang, the small island of Gili. We had heard warnings about very strong currents at Gili Selang and frankly I was worried. I needn't have been. The hardest part was donning our equipment at the surface! The visibility was terrific and the corals were amazing, in pristine condition. I did, however, see a plastic bag floating above me which was silhouetted by the light. The dive was beautiful, possibly the most beautiful of my dives. It was a real coral garden. We had the added bonus of seeing many fish, species that we haven't seen before and the usual presence of angelfish , moorish idols, bannerfish, scorpionfish, a sleepting white tip reef shark, a red fire goby, tiny, tiny anemonefish and also big anemonefish. Ian had attracted the attention of a remora which followed Ian in his shadow for over 30 minutes. He must have considered Ian to be a shark for he latched on to him and we had to keep waving our fingers at him to tell him 'no' and indicate our mild irritance. Ian, completely oblivious to the fact that this guy was mostly swimming under his crotch or thigh, twitched spontaneously when he felt the remora latch on to him or 'bite' him, which caused me innumerable floodings of my mask and had me in uncontrollable laughter until we surfaced! The little fellow ascended with Ian from about 25 metres and was still hanging around after we had removed our equipment at the surface! It was highly entertaining.
After inelegantly clambering back into the dukung we returned to where the car was parked in Lipah Bay. We had our surface interval then broke through the surf at Lipah Bay for our second dive. There was a Japanese wreck greeting us as we commenced our dive and then we went searching for small creatures.s We found batfish, angelfish, a stingray, another sleeping white tip reef shark, damsels, a lionfish, titan triggerfish, orange lined triggerfish, clown triggerfish, pufferfish, mimic filefish, flutemouth, nudibranch, flatworms and a huge crustacean! The thermoclines were amazing and I got cold towards the end of our 65 minute dive. The dive was made special by the two anemonefish that I had dancing directly in front of my mask, they were wonderful!
After settling our account with Eco Dive we returned to the swimming pool at the bungalows, then had cold showers and lunch and made our leave, driving across the northern part of the island to Taman Sari Bali Cottages in Singaraja. Ian secured us a room for the night, we arranged some diving to Menjangen Island for tomorrow and then we retired to the pool.
We enjoyed a beer whilst writing our journals then ate dinner listening to the sound of drums and singing from the village, relaxing in the lush green surrounds right by the beach. We were lucky to see an 8 inch gecko appear in the rafters above our table and witnessed him preying on his dinner. He captured his feast in a matter of seconds with such style and grace.
We were joined by an English man and his German wife while finishing off our journals and stayed up until midnight talking about our travels and diving experiences.
Our Balinese bungalow has a beautiful four poster bed with a mosquito net draped over it from the four corners, it's delightful.
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.