Macro diving on happy island - Bunaken, Indonesia
Bunaken, Indonesia
Where I stayed
Novita homestay
My flight took me to Surabaya, NE of Java then another one to Manado, a port city at the extreme North of Sulawesi. Sulawesi, formerly known as Celebes, is surrounded by Borneo to
the West and by the Philippines to the North. The first Europeans to discover the island were Portuguese in the 16th century, then the Dutch occupied it during the following 4 centuries. The center part of the island has been plagued by Muslim-Christian violence in recent years.
At the airport I took a few mikrolets (little collective vans) to reach the port. There, I had time to eat at a stand as the first public boat to Bunaken would leave not before 3pm as it was low tide.
The boat, loaded with locals, cans, fruits, vegetable and all kind of stuffs made it to the island in 1 hour. I did not have much expectations about Bunaken apart from the fact it was a diving mecca. I discovered some very warm islanders enjoying a simple happy life: smiling, singing, joking all the time. And to my surprise the island was mostly christian! A remnant from Dutch occupation time.
I decided to stay in the village and not in one of the resorts (they have bungalows and offer diving facilities but you're away from the locals). The homestay called "Novita" is owned by a woman of the same name and with character who lives here with her family and for 100,000R (8E) you get a room and 3 home-cooked meals!
Life in Bunaken
This was the perfect break after the rough Rinjani trek. During the 1st days I got a haircut, my laundry sorted, some good nights of sleep. I got back in shape too with quantity of exquisite local seafood. Then I explored the island a bit, did some snorkeling, got to know the islanders.
Then it was about time to go back underwater.
As I wanted to fine tune my position in the water I got a PADI certification in buoyancy with a girl called Lucy from "Two Fish" dive shop - very professional, then signed up for more dives with "Bunaken divers". Professional too, but cheaper.
The waters of Bunaken National Marine Park are extremely deep (1,566m in Manado Bay), very clear (up to 35-40m visibility) and harbor some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world. It's a paradise for macro life lovers. I met one of them, Francois, a nice French pharmacist in vacation here and who's passion is macro-photographing underwater. He obviously does it very well (see some of the pics below). You get to see mini seahorses (1 to 2cm long), various colorful nudibranches, scorpion fish, tropical shrimps, etc. We also saw some big stuff like giant clams, a few green turtles, white and black tip reef sharks. And Yussef the Belgium (this lucky bstd! - from my homestay) even saw the rare dugong (a kind of cross between a white dolphin and a walrus or sea-cow) as we were snorkeling one day. It just passed a few meters from me - I was looking at a turtle in the opposite direction.. :((
All that you see along a huge wall which goes down a few hundreds meters and is swept by strong currents. Impressive.
When you see these welcoming and warm islanders having a simple and happy life like that, you start thinking about the modern standards of a so called 'sophisticated' or even worse: 'successful' life: and you start thinking... Do you really need a Mac, an iPhone, a wardrobe with Boss or Armani-type shirts, a 100-inch TV, 400 virtual "friends" on facebook, a big fancy flat or car ...???