The start of our trip had our group coming from all over – 5 of us has already been travelling Indonesia before the start of the official club trip, indulging in cocktails and massages while enjoying the absolutely perfect weather. Of the three people who had to come to Kuta from the airport, two couldn’t find their driver for ages and of course we had to play phone tag trying to track them down and the other arrived in the middle of the night before our 5.30am start the next morning. Good fun. Anyone who has been to Kuta recently knows that it is an absolute hellhole – too many people, all of them drunk, too much traffic – it’s just a lot. And matters were made more intense by it also being Indonesian Independence Day, fireworks late into the evening, parties and loud music, normal revelry that I would normally love if we weren’t waking up at 5am…. Unfortunately, we were.

Luckily, we were travelling in style with two big vans for just the 8 of us and there was room to spread out and take naps while we drove 4 hours Northwest towards Menjangan Island. The drive was lovely (we even saw lots of monkeys along the side of the road) and my inner sense of peace was restored with each kilometre further we made it from Kuta. It is incredibly peaceful up in the Northwest of Bali and while we’d enjoyed the sights, I think everyone was keen to get in the water. Our first dive sites were around Menjangan and were greeted with cruisy dives, minimal currents, and a HUGE barracuda who made sure we all saw every single one of his giant teeth.  The sense of deep contentment was heightened when we made it to our first resort of the trip – the Mimpi. I cannot even begin to describe how fantastic this resort was. We had access to natural hot springs throughout the resort of different temperature, a restaurant with incredible sunset views overlooking the island, classic Balinese outdoor showers, spacious rooms with fantastic room service, and great food. It was quiet and peaceful and a delight.

We were then on the move to Tulamben for next three day stay! For the first three days of the trip we had been discussing the accessibility of the USAT Liberty Shipwreck for our scheduled night dive on day four. It turns out we should have been worried about Pura Jati. Of the 10 people who got in the water at this dive site, 6 of them at some point fell right on their asses in the mud. Was there waves? No. Was there surge? Also no. Just some slippery ass mud. And after telling everyone for days on end that we didn’t need to be worried about low tide for accessing the wreck that evening, I, myself managed to be the only person who tripped and while I did it with the pure grace and coordination that I am known for – I also managed to slide across a rock on my bum and tear my tights. Blissfully we had the wreck completely to ourselves to explore for over 20 minutes before every diver on the planet also got in the water – and simultaneously got to view my exposed ass cheek.

We woke up nice and early to do a sunrise dive over the wreck the next day and were rewarded with absolutely stunning visibility – over 40 meters and so clear it was ridiculous. We then did some excellent shore diving right from in front of our resort. The diving on this trip somehow just kept getting better and better and the next day was the cherry on top. My personal favourite day saw up doing some shore, drift, surge, muck diving. This is a skill set I had not yet developed, but it made for an exciting dive experience. Everything on the muck wishlist was seen this day – ornate & robust ghost pipefish, crocodile fish (that may have been a stargazer), cuttlefish, octopus, harlequin shrimps, electric clams, gigantic mantis shrimp, rhinopias, pipefish, hairy frogfish (not by me, because Rochelle is a bad dive buddy),  juvenile harlequin sweetlips, juvenile emperor angelfish, juvenile ribbon eels, snake eels, crocodile eels, massive garden eels, waspfish, sea moths… I could go on but honestly, I got so overwhelmed on these dives that I couldn’t actually process how much cool stuff we were seeing. And just like RIGHT THERE. We just walked right off the beach for these dives.

On land, Jannemieke had gained three grandchildren while Jo learned how to make offerings with a local woman and practiced her Balinese. And we all got to take a fun ride in the back of a ute tray in our wetsuits as our transfer between dive sites. The service level these boys from Aquamarine went to for us was next level and this was a prime example of that. They didn’t even have us walk between dive sites. We all learned that it’s not polite to stroke your cock in public – regardless of how good it is at fighting. And then we turned in for an early night, which was immediately disrupted by a group of Bucks having a Barbie Girl sing-a-long in their room into the wee hours. And the wee hours for me at this point of the trip were anything after 9pm.

The next morning we took off for our final hotel of the trip – and luckily Rochelle asked if everyone had their passports. Because someone… (cough Michael)… had left his and J’s in the safe. We made our way to Amed for our morning dives, and I could only call this the snorkel capital of Bali. I have never in my days seen this many snorkellers in one place before and hope to never see that many ever again. We were dropped off quite a ways from the crowd, but the currents had us drifting right to them and made for a very interesting pick up experience. We were towed along holding onto the sides of the boat while we went for the second group and then the boat got roped around a different boat and almost ripped in half. Our final dive of the day was luckily an absolute delight. Named Ghost Bay for the number of ghosts in the area, we renamed in Ghost Pipefish Bay for the insane variety and sheer amount of ghost pipefish around.

After our three dives we finally were able to check into our hotel and get some food after a very long day. Unfortunately, this turned into a bit of a debacle with some orders getting lost, food coming out at random times, missing drinks, and an extremely loud and bright musical performance with young children. Because this restaurant did not have free water or refill stations we had chosen to drink beers. And normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but because of all the mishaps, dinner ended up being a three-hour endeavour for some of us. Two in particular may have had a few too many beers and not been able to turn off the lights in their room. They may have then had to call reception to send a maintenance guy to come help them turn those lights off. Those people may have been me and Rochelle… And the poor young man they sent to assist us was not prepared for the laughing mess he encountered. With the lights finally turned off on this exhausting day we went to sleep, preparing for our final day of diving. When we would finally be on the hunt for the elusive mola mola!