There was some deliberation during the planning stage of our holiday to Indonesia whether during our first week on Sulawesi it would be better to stay at a dive resort on the mainland or to stay on Bunaken Island itself. Having returned I can now say that we definitely made the right decision when we opted to stay on Bunaken Island. The scenery was spectacular and diving every day with Manado Tua (which looks for all the world like a mini-volcano) as a backdrop was certainly no hardship. Most days Manado Tua was even crowned with a little puff of cloud just to complete the effect. 🙂 Continue reading “‘Turtle City’, Bunaken Island, Sulawesi – July 2013”
Bunaken Island – Sulawesi, Indonesia – July 2013
Without a shadow of a doubt 2013 has been one of the best years for diving I have had since I took up the sport seven or so years ago. I quickly totalled up the number of dives I have done since the start of the year and discovered that I have just completed number 88 with a third of it still to go! The vast majority of these have been around Scotland and I already have a sizeable backlog of blog posts to sort for these. The backlog has however just become significantly larger as I have been lucky enough to spend the past few weeks enjoying some amazing diving in the much warmer waters around the Indonesian islands of Sulawesi and Bali.
Continue reading “Bunaken Island – Sulawesi, Indonesia – July 2013”
El Cabron, Gran Canaria – December 2012
I was lucky enough to finish off my diving for the year in warmer waters than of late with some diving at El Cabron, Gran Canaria. At 20 degrees C, the water was a whole 10 degrees warmer than it was in the Clyde a couple of weeks ago when we were diving the wreck of the Akka amongst other things, but it was still good to be wearing a fairly thick wetsuit with hood!
As well as a nice little shoal of Bastard Grunt (that’s what they’re called, not a sudden bout of profanity), there was a lot of the usual life you see when diving around the Canaries. A Tiger Moray was hiding in a crevice, a cluster of Squid eggs were hanging from the underside of another and there were a pair of Cleaner Shrimps who had set up their cleaning station next to a Giant Anemone (there was no cleaning going on, possibly due to the Christmas holiday 😉 ) I also spotted a Canarian Lobster, which is a species endemic to the area but doesn’t bare too much of a resemblance to the Lobsters we are used to seeing whilst diving in the UK. Continue reading “El Cabron, Gran Canaria – December 2012”
Hin Musang “Shark Point” – Thailand 2007
Sorting through my hard drive I came across these pics of a dive at Shark Point in Thailand several years ago. I hand’t been diving for too long at the time and the dive included one of my first close up encounters with a shark. Continue reading “Hin Musang “Shark Point” – Thailand 2007″