Diving Page

20,000 Geeks Under the Sea: The Report from Manado

Will Moss, 2/21/96

Mental Health in Jeopardy
.....The self-destruction of the company on which you have labored for nearly a year and a half is always stress-inducing thing. It was in this miasma of business, politics, back-stabbing, hidden agendas, and bare-ass naked agendas that Mike MacDonald, Joe Pantuso, and I decided it was high time that we fled the surreal and collapsing world of Sembawang Media and Games Online for just a few a days, and sought solace beneath the waves. It had been over three months since our last diving trip, and four months since our last serious diving trip, which is to say a trip on which we got deeper than forty feet and actually used a boat. Stanley, our divemaster, had faxed us the itinerary of a trip to Manado that his company was planning. Feeling the need for immediate and prolonged immersion, we decided that four days in Indonesia were just what the doctor ordered. $600 Sing later our flights were booked, our reservations were made, and our trip planned. A deep sigh of relief was called for. Since swelling corporate bullshit had displaced all of the air in our offices, however, we contented ourselves with a mental sigh.

Sulawesi
.....If you were to kill a swan, pluck it, drop the carcass on its back with the head facing away from you, and then gently bend the long neck into a gentle, horizontal curve to the right, you would have a pretty good picture of the shape of the island of Sulawesi. You would also have a large, dead swan and a likely lawsuit from the SPCA, so this is suggested as a mental image only. Nestled in the gentle curve where the forehead slopes down to meet the beak would be the town of Manado. Sulawesi itself is about 1200 miles from Singapore, on the far side of Borneo (Kalimantan). It is one of the larger islands in the Indonesian archipelago, and it straddles the equator with that long, northern peninsula (the neck of the swan, if you are still fixated on that) about 100 miles north of the equator, and running parallel to it.
.....We flew Silk Air, which is the regional arm of Singapore Airlines, and, as such, is the least likely of the indigenous Southeast Asian airlines to suffer a sudden, midair disintegration or fatal navigational error. Our plane was a tiny, horrendously overpowered Fokker D-70 commuter jet that made the bound over Borneo in just a little over 3 hours. We caught a Thursday midmorning flight, which got us to Manado in the early afternoon. I suffer from 3rd world airport paranoia, so I used a fistful of plastic strip-ties to secure all of the zippers on my dive bag and I hand carried both my Nikonos and my regular camera bag. I was extremely relieved that the Nikonos, in its heavy Pelican case, fit into the overhead compartment because I really didn’t relish the idea of telling the stewardess that I would rather belt the Nikonos into my seat and sit in the luggage compartment myself than check it through.
.....I knew that we had arrived someplace different. As we were landing, I looked out the window of the airplane and saw goats and dogs foraging on the runway and small plywood and tin shanties just on the far side of the barbed-wire fence separating the airport from the adjacent agricultural land. I just love the animal life that seems to thrive on third world runways. Frankly, I’m surprised that they don’t build cow catchers onto the nosegear of airplanes that have to land at them. The only thing missing was the Mariachi soundtrack that always accompanies scenes of landings at provincial, third-world airports in the movies.
.....And the Manado airport was most certainly provincial. There were three airplanes at the airport: ours, and two wheezy-looking prop jobs that were apparently used to fly supplies of beer and banana-cream cookies to the outlying islands and isolated mountainside communities. We were ushered off the apron and into the immigration area where there were three lines. With my uncanny sixth sense for such things, I unerringly managed to place Mike and myself in the line staffed by the new guy and moving exactly half the speed of the other two lines. We finally switched to the middle line, but only when it was far too late for it to make any difference.
.....From immigration, we went to pick up our baggage. There were no carousels at the Manado airport. Instead, our luggage was piled in a hallway next to the immigration area. A troop of porters wearing orange shirts with identification numbers on them would check your baggage claim check, jog over the pile and fish your luggage out, and carry your bag back to you. It was a little like having a soccer team pick up your bags. Ironically, Manado was the only airport at which I have ever actually had to produce my luggage claim check to pick up my bags.
.....In Indonesia, they like to x-ray your bags as you enter the country. This strikes me as odd, especially with a flight coming from notoriously uptight Singapore, but if it makes them feel good I wasn’t going to stand in their way. Everything went through just fine until they ran the big, semi-airtight Pelican case that houses my Nikonos. The big, metal camera must have raised some eyebrows, because I was politely invited to open the case for inspection by a large customs official. Unfortunately, the pressure in the case had equalized during the flight, sealing the case shut. I had to open the small pressure relief valve under the handle, and there were some worried looks from the guards when a loud hissing noise emanated from my case. The Nikonos is clearly a camera, however, so within moments after I finally pried the case open with a large sucking pop, I was cheerfully waved through. (I was told somewhat later that underwater cameras are technically illegal in Indonesia, but that it is not enforced.) There were vans waiting for us, and moments later we were off on the twenty minute drive to the Nusantara Diving Centre, just outside of town.
.....The drive was interesting and a little hair raising. It was a bit reminiscent of our taxi ride on Batam on our first visit to Indonesia. The roads are narrow, and the shoulders overgrown. There are periodic obstructions such as oxcarts, children, and other vehicles, which the van drivers weave precariously close to. But a drive is a nice way to look at some of the country. It is ruggedly hilly, with low mountain ranges and volcanic peaks. The land is unbelievably green, with thick, lush vegetation, and large fields of cultivated coconut palms. Near town the houses tend to be concrete or cinder block, a symbol of prosperity in Manado, which is one of the wealthiest areas of Indonesia. Further from the town you are more likely to see tin or plywood shanties occupying small plots set back from the road. Unlike Malaysia, where the houses tend to sit on stilts, the small houses of Indonesia are set at ground level. Chickens and goats are a common sight. On the van in I met Gilbert and Lillian, a pleasant, young Singaporean couple who were also underwater photographers. We talked technology for a while. Gilbert used a Nikon F90x in a Nexus housing with dual strobes, and Lillian used a Sea & Sea Motormarine MX II, which was Gilbert’s old camera.

NDC
.....Nusantara Diving Centre (NDC) is in a rural suburb of Manado, along the coast. It is set a ways off of the narrow main road, adjacent to a hilly local neighborhood dominated by a large, white, Dutch church. In Sulawesi the main religion is Christianity, and the colonial Dutch left behind dozens of small churches and a few larger ones. NDC is not dominated by a church. It is dominated by a round driveway, at the center of which is a small pond surmounted by a towering statue of an Adonis-like skin diver fearlessly gazing into infinity. The statue was originally white, but the damp climate has streaked it a mossy green. Behind the statue was a reception area, breakfast area and small bar, as well as an outside TV viewing area. The TV viewing area had one small, ceiling mounted television that showed SCTV (the Indonesian state television service, and not the classic comedy series). Every evening, a motley group of Indonesian men would gather around and watch potboiling Indian dramas on the television set.
.....Set around the main area were a large outdoor dining area and several sets of cabins for guests. The dive shop and compressor station were around back, as were some chickens and a large wire cage holding two huge, captive, slightly miserable looking sea eagles who freaked out whenever anyone got close to their cage. There was no snorkeling or shore diving from NDC. The coastline of Manado is muddy mangrove swamp. Near the dining center, a perilously narrow stone jetty projected 100 yards into the murky water. The jetty actually submerged several inches at high tide, which made for some interesting times getting onto the ten dubious looking dive boats moored to the surrounding mangrove trees.
.....We had arrived in the mid afternoon, with three hours remaining before dinner. Once we had checked in and filled out the obligatory release forms and planned our dives for the next three days, there wasn’t much to do at NDC Jim, Joe, Mike, and I decided to take a stroll through the neighborhood. We grabbed our cameras and set off for a walk down the main road. The heat and humidity were intense, but it was nice to soak up the feeling of being someplace other than Singapore. Being in other countries in
.....Southeast Asia reinforces Singapore’s colorlessness. We enjoyed the sight of local houses and small children and a group of women sitting and chatting by the side of the road as the call to evening prayer drifted up from a local mosque. There were chickens strutting about and small houses and shops set well back from the road. Around us rose the steep, green hills. We were also buzzed repeatedly by this blue van with an annoying musical horn and a silvered windscreen. It became clear that it was some kind of taxi plying the local stretch of road, and we would see many more similar vans on our trip to downtown Manado on Sunday night.
.....As the light failed and the mosquitoes came out we returned to NDC, where we killed time with a couple of drinks until dinner rolled around. Dinner was barbecue. Korean barbecue. Every table had a gas-heated metal griddle in the center, and there was a buffet of raw meat and vegetables. Dinner was alright, although it was marred by the infliction upon us of one of the worst lounge acts ever in the history of man. Two people sat up on the small stage with a cheap keyboard on which they played back sequenced versions of popular hit songs. Then, one of them would sing while the other added improvised and frequently off-key keyboard solos. I now have a pretty good idea of what it would sound like to eat dinner in a duck slaughterhouse. Still, it couldn’t spoil our appetites. Several servings of crudely fried meat and vegetables later, and after a few servings of Coca Cola in nostalgic tall bottles, we retired for the evening. That night, the rain came, beating on the tin roofs of our shacks. It was hard and loud, and we followed the changes in intensity as the sound swelled and faded. It was actually quite nice. And it helped to obscure the thumping of the lame-ass karaoke keyboard music drifting from the dinner area.

Diving: Day One
.....We arose at 7:30 AM on Friday for our first day of diving. We had planned three dives for our first day, not wanting to overdo it. There was to be a morning dive off of the small island of Manado Tua, and then an afternoon and night dive off of the Lekuan wall near renowned Bunaken island. Mike, Joe, and I were excited, having been out of the water for a while. We pounded down a breakfast of eggs and toast while the NDC staff humped our heavy gear down onto our boat, a wobbly bilge bucket affectionately named AC-38. By 8:30, we were under way, enjoying the hour long sail to Manado Tua. The boat was covered, and many of us sat up on the roof, enjoying the view of Manado Tua and Bunaken ahead, and Manado town nestled in the curve of the bay behind us, with the tall, fog-shrouded hills rising behind it.
.....Manado Tua is a small volcanic cone. It rises a few hundred meters above sea level, with mangrove shrouded shores that give way quickly to the steep, green sides of the hill. In the morning there is nearly always a small cloud obscuring the peak. It is very picturesque, and I took several photographs of it over the course of the weekend. I could tell that we were in for something special as we coasted over the coral shallows looking for a spot to moor. The water was fabulously clear and glassy smooth, with coral formations visible below. There was a pronounced border where the shallow fringing reef dropped off suddenly, going from twenty feet precipitously down to 200 or more. The water changed from a sunlit aqua dappled by the shadows of the shallow reefs, to a deep, clear blue cut by the bright, oblique rays of the morning equatorial sun.
.....We pulled up at anchor near the drop-off, and everyone geared up. I wore only a Lycra skinsuit, along with my usual booties and gloves. Mike and I paired up while Jim and Joe buddied together. We backrolled in, and the bathwater warmth of the surface water gave way to the mild coolness of depth as we dropped towards the edge of the wall, twenty feet below. We realized right away that this was a great location. The visibility was around sixty feet, which is not as good as it gets, I am told. The reef was unspoiled, clear, and healthy. In the shallows, small blennies and butterfly fish danced around, picking tiny morsels from the coral. As we moved towards the drop-off, light became darker and bluer. The edge of the wall was spectacular, dropping away in a sheer cliff beyond the range of visibility. Following Stanley’s lead, we emptied our BCs, nosed over, and sank into the depths. On that first dive we went down to about ninety feet. Visibility stayed consistent, and we were entranced by the view into the void stretching away from the wall. I was carrying my camera and spent most of the time enjoying and photographing the corals and feather stars growing along the wall. Small ledges, overhangs, and holes played host to scorpionfish, lionfish, nudibranchs, and other animals. The colors came alive in shades of pink and orange in the spotting beam of my camera strobe.
.....In a long trench running down the wall I chanced upon a large school of batfish. They seemed curious about us, and lingered in the area, moving back and forth in stately parade. I had a wide-angle lens on, and took several shots of the school both against the blue water and looking up towards the sunburst. X Schools of Jacks zipped back and forth in the midwater opposite the wall. I could tell that it was going to be a good trip. Forty minutes later we were back on the surface. None of us was tired of the location, though, and Jim, Joe, Mike and I spent an hour snorkelling over the abyss, hovering forty or fifty feet from the edge of the wall, looking down into the darkness and free-diving to the lip of the wall.
.....We took a break for lunch, sitting on the exposed foc’sle of our dive boat and eating spicy local food brought along by our NDC divemasters. Then, for our second dive, we moved along to the Lekuan wall off of Bunaken Island. Bunaken is a low, flat island with a small village on it. The underwater topography is similar to Manado Tua, with a shallow fringing reef that drops off suddenly at a vertical wall. There are three dive sites along the Lekuan wall, ingeniously called Lekuan 1-3. Our first dive along the Lekuan wall was similar to our first dive of the day, except that I hit 105’, which was my deepest to date and which broke the 99’ bugaboo which had haunted me since my NAUI Advanced deep-qualification dive had failed to break the century mark. There was a highlight at the end, when I was taking pictures in the sunlit corals at 10-12 feet. I found four huge lionfish camped out under a coral head. They were very cooperative, and made themselves available for a number of pictures before I ran out of film.
.....After the second dive we had some time to kill before the night dive. We did more snorkelling, catching sight of some sharks emerging to feed at dusk. Then we docked briefly at the village on Bunaken, stopping by a small shop nestled in the mangroves to pick up some snacks and soft drinks. Then it was back to Lekuan for the night dive. The scenery didn’t change much from our afternoon dive, but the wildlife did. Many of the fish retired for the night, although the scorpionfish and lionfish were out feeding. The crustaceans and corals all emerged in the darkness. Scattered by the hundreds along the wall were small anemone shrimp and large, colorful, red and white banded coral shrimp. The shrimps’ eyes glowed orange in our flashlight beams, and often there were one or two dozen pairs of tiny orange globes peering back at us from the crevasses and ledges in the wall. There were also large clawless lobsters that were very shy and retiring, the occasional insectoid slipper lobster or giant crayfish, and crabs ranging from large, vibrant pink specimens to tiny, coral bound spider crabs. We also ran into another visitor on our first night dive, a medium sized white-tip reef shark who was patrolling the wall twenty feet below us in search of dinner. He swam with his belly to the wall, presumably looking for crustaceans, and didn’t stay around long once our flashlight beams found him. His big eyes glowed bright orange in the beams before he zipped back off into depths mercifully free from light-toting interlopers.
.....With the night dive over, we headed back for NDC. The jetty was awash, so they backed our boat up to the beach. We dumped our gear in our rooms, and then gorged ourselves on the local food served up for dinner. Offered among the desert selections was a big plate of mangosteens, the tropical wonder fruit. These are something that Connie, one of our artists at GOL, had introduced us to some months before. A mangosteen is a small, hard, round fruit slightly smaller than a tennis ball, with a thick, dark brown or purple rind. You squeeze them to crack the skin, and then tear the rind in half to expose five or six small, white, edible pieces shaped like orange segments. They are fabulous, intensely sweet with a subtle hint of tartness and citrus flavor. The small segments have no seeds, although the large segments can hide big pits. If you ever have the chance to try one I recommend it very highly. We ate several. We returned to our rooms at about n10:00 PM. Mike passed out immediately, although I had to do nearly an hour of camera maintenance before I could do the same. Fortunately, the distant thumping of the dinner lounge act was there to keep me awake while I worked.

Day Two
.....On our second day we were up bright and early. Our first dive was to be at a site called Batu Kapal, and it was at least a two hour sail away. Over breakfast we discussed how many dives we wanted to do that day, and settled on the lofty number of five (the practical maximum under ideal conditions). There would only be time for four, but that would be plenty.
.....The two hour steam to Batu Kapal was pretty adventurous. The confluence of tides and currents was producing an area of rather heavy swells at the mouth of the bay. "Rather heavy" is a relative term here. In a substantial, stable, well-powered boat with an experienced man at the helm the little four and five foot rollers would have been a laugh. In our top-heavy, narrow-hulled, wobbly, cow of a bilge-bucket, steered by an Indonesian kid working dual, wheezing forty HP outboards and taking his navigational cues from a buddy sitting at the bow, it was slightly nerve wracking. The outboards had an annoying habit of quitting periodically, which can be disastrous when you need to keep your nose into the swell. Also, one or two big rollers had washed over the bow, soaking the lookout and washing one of Joe’s booties overboard. Jim and Mike and I had been sitting on the roof, clutching onto the narrow, creaky guardrails for stability. I had my terrestrial camera up top, but after the second time our bow went awash, I decided that it might be a good idea to put it in the cabin. Climbing from the roof down to the deck in the pitching swells was an experience that I am not eager to repeat. I did get my camera stowed, but while I was down on the deck I was also treated to the none-too reassuring sight of one of the crew bailing the bilge by hand as fast as he could. At least no one was prone to seasickness.
.....Eventually we sailed clear of the choppy area, and back into glassy seas. Everyone relaxed. I was sorely disappointed that I had stowed my camera when, soon after emerging into the clear, a pod of small pilot whales swam right by the boat. Still, it is always nice to see dolphins and whales, and we all soaked in the sight as they swam within fifteen feet of the boat, giving us all a good look.
.....Another hour later, we were anchored at Batu Kapal. This, Stanley informed us, was a steeply sloping reef that headed towards sandy bottom at about 200 feet. We were to follow the reef down and to the right, where we would come upon a valley carved into the slope, and a large rock pinnacle. It was supposed to be a very nice dive.
.....It was amazing.
.....Mike and I had had agreed that we didn’t want to go excessively deep on this dive. That plan ended up being abandoned shortly after we hit the water. Stanley and the other dive masters lead us down the steep slope and into some of the clearest water it has ever been my luck to see. The reef stretched away from us, dropping steeply, but sunlit to its deepest extent. Stanley kept dropping, and I watched my computer as the depth gauge ticked off 70 feet, 80 feet, 90 feet, 100 feet. Then, in visibility approaching a glorious 100 feet, the vista unfolded before me. The reef all around was clear and vibrant. Stretching off to our right was a deep valley, carved into the wall and stretching back to the shallows. I could see everything from the surface to the bottom of the valley, 170 feet or deeper. Stretching away from the far wall of the coral lined valley was a narrow, curving rim, at the end of which was a massive, towering pinnacle of rock. Huge schools of jack and banana fish swept by, foraging in the invisible midwater and gliding past the pinnacle. Napoleon wrasse a meter long probed among the coral, keeping a wary eye on the dozen intruders to their realm. In the valley, sea fans waved gently in the current, as schools of fish traced the bottom like a highway. It was, as I described it later, like Neptune’s Magic Kingdom. It was a storybook underwater world of unparalleled beauty.
.....Into this blue fantasy Stanley kept descending. My computer continued to tick over depth, 120, 130, 140… At about 130 feet I began to get the slight buzz in my head that I recognized as the onset of Nitrogen narcosis. Not wanting to tempt fate, and seeing that my computer was now allowing me only three minutes bottom time, I pulled up. 149 feet. I had surpassed my previous depth mark by 44 feet! And yet the water was still clear and sunlit and warm. I could feel that my concentration was affected by the mild narcosis, and I decided to ascend immediately rather than playing out my bottom time. I was still thinking straight, so I set my camera exposures and took two shots of the pinnacle with the wide angle lens I had mounted for this dive. Then, followed by Mike, my buddy, I began a slow ascent up the valley, watching my bottom time expand as I rose past 120, 110, 100, 90, and 80.
.....The time at extreme depth had burned a good amount of my air. Mike and I took our time ascending the valley, but we stopped only so that I could take photos of some spectacular gorgonians growing from the wall. Then we followed the wall all the way back up to the shallows at 30 feet, where we relaxed and poked around until our air ran low. The dive was only 28 minutes long, and only 5 minutes of that were spent at great depth. Yet it was still the best dive I have ever been on, and the best underwater vista I have yet encountered. When conditions are good I would recommend that location to anyone comfortable at 120 to 130 feet.
.....Our other dives that day were nice, but nothing like that first dive. Wary of the residual nitrogen we were carrying from the first dive, none of our other dives that day were deeper than 65 feet. We kept things shallow and light, and did general sightseeing on the walls and in the shallow reef areas where parrot fish and butterfly fish abound. We saw morays and stingrays and other interesting sights, but the memory of that first dive lingered. We made another night dive that evening, and once again there were some great photo opportunities. But what we talked about on the ride back to NDC and over dinner was that spectacular first dive of the day. Batu Kapal.

Day Three
.....Our third day at Manado was our last day of diving, and the plan was to take it pretty lightly. We had to fly out the next day, and we needed enough time to outgas nitrogen before flying. So we planned three dives, with the first one to be at a wreck right in the bay, only a ten minute boat ride from NDC. Mike had wanted to dive on a wreck since getting certified, and this was his first chance, so he was very excited. I had only dived on one wreck myself, and that had been a buoy tender in only 70 feet of water during my certification on St. John. This wreck was a Dutch freighter, sunk during World War 2 in about 130 feet of water. No one knew the name of the ship. Stanley thought that it had been torpedoed, but Mike’s considered opinion, after examining the largely intact hull, was that it had been scuttled by the Dutch when Holland fell to the Nazis. It seemed like a very reasonable theory.
.....Another NDC boat was already anchored at the wreck when we arrived, so we tied up behind them. I had been using a 50mm macro lens for most of my dives, but, wanting to be able to capture some of the structure and shape of the wreck, I switched to 28mm wide angle for this dive. Mike and I followed the anchor line down towards the ship. We were still in the bay, and visibility was much worse than at the islands, perhaps only 20 or 25 feet. There were a lot of particles in the water, which did not make photography easy. Nonetheless, the ship was clearly visible as we sank to 80 feet or so, looming from the murky, green water, shaded and mysterious. The boat was upright, and lying on a slight incline with the shallowest part of the bow at 80 feet and the stern near 130. Mike and I swam to the middle of the main deck over the large, square hatches that led down into the hold. As I probed around for photo opportunities, Mike went down into the open hold, making a lazy circuit with his light. (He had already ascertained that the structure was sound and that there were vents for exhaled air to escape.) I followed him into the hold but stayed in the center, underneath the openings. Apparently, a six foot grouper makes his home in the hold, but he appeared to be out on errands when we came calling.
.....After exploring the hold, Mike and I drifted towards the stern and the pilothouse. A large school of elegant Moorish idols cruised by and orbited as we explored. The boat had been down a long time and it was well overgrown with corals, although many features were still recognizable. We passed the funnel, portholes, and lifeboat davits before we came to the pilothouse. Coming around from behind the superstructure, we poked our heads into the pilothouse and surprised a school of banana fish that were making their home inside. Then we coasted down by the fantail and the rudder. We were at 113 feet at this point, and my computer, having tracked my dives of the last two days, was only allowing three minutes bottom time. Air was running short as well, so we headed back up towards the bow. There, Stanley pointed out a lionfish that was making its home near one of the anchor chain ports, and I snapped a coral growing in a porthole. Running low on air, Mike and I began our slow ascent up the anchor line. By the time we made our safety stop and emerged at the surface I had less than 100 PSI of air left. It was a good dive, but both Mike and I wished that we’d had more time to explore. In the best tradition of wreck diving, it was an eerie and exciting experience, laden with history and the ghosts of past events. We resolved to visit the wreck on an earlier dive on our next trip to Manado, so that we could squeeze every second of bottom time out.
.....We made two more dives that day. On the second dive we started deep, at 88 feet, but spent most of our time in the shallows around 35 feet. One of our goony local guides caught a small sea snake with his bare hands and tried to get me to take a picture of him holding it. I don’t encourage people to bother wildlife for pictures, especially when that wildlife can deliver a potentially lethally venomous bite (sea snakes are related to cobras, and have powerful, neurotoxic venom), but when divers are around other divers with cameras, they tend to do silly things. I should stencil a message on my tank that says "I will not photograph you harassing the wildlife." I persuaded the guide to release the sea snake, who predictably thought that the BC of his antagonist would be a good place to hide. The guide was forced to bat the poor snake away with his bare hands before it retreated beneath a rock.
.....On the next dive I was able to get some much more satisfying sea snake shots. That was our final dive of the trip, and we worked the shallows, hitting 50 feet but staying mostly around 30 feet. There were some excellent photo opportunities, including a fabulously colorful nudibranch, and a cuttlefish the size of a rugby ball who seemed to bask in the attention of the photographers among us. It allowed us to approach to within a foot, posing with his tentacles and gently shifting colors as we snapped. It had huge, fascinating eyes and that ethereal, alien quality that all squids, octopus, and cuttlefish seem to have. I took about ten exposures of the cuttlefish before it grew bored of us and cruised away smoothly. Later, in only five feet of water, I found a large sea snake foraging in the corals for shrimp and small fish. It seemed oblivious of me as it went along its rounds. I tagged along just a foot behind it, shooting it underwater and on the surface when it came up to breathe. It was nice being able to get some great exposures of a sea snake without hassling it. I was able to observe it going about it’s routine for five or eight minutes before I ran out of film and retreated back to 20 feet of depth to rejoin Mike. Just as we were running low on air, Mike pointed out a stately pair of huge lionfish, and I kicked myself for not having saved an exposure as the two of them posed together, practically inviting me to take their portrait. Still, it was a wonderful thing to see, and a great way to end our 70 minute long final dive. Moments later, we were back on the boat, savoring the memories of ten good dives, and two great ones.

Into Town
.....Having wrapped the diving early that day, we decided to take a run into town and have dinner. The drawback to using diving as an excuse for traveling is that you do not always get to see a lot of what the land has to offer. When not on boats, we hadn’t left the NDC compound during our visit except for our brief stroll the first day. So we all piled into two vans and took the half-hour ride into town.
.....Manado is unlike much of Indonesia. It is relatively prosperous, and there is little extreme poverty visible. The area is largely Protestant, and large, white churches are visible here and there, tucked incongruously into coconut groves. The drive into town was interesting. In the early evening, social activities were beginning to pick up and many people were gathered in groups on stoops and by the roadside. Many small shops opened onto the street, and pushcarts selling food, cigarettes, and other amenities were common.
.....Manado was in a flurry of weekend evening activity. There was a lot of traffic moving in the chaotic and slightly random fashion typical of Indonesia and Malaysia. There were three kinds of motor vehicle visible in Manado. There were motorcycles and scooters, there were some jeeps, and there was an overwhelming number of blue vans that serve as a combination of taxis and busses. The sheer number of these blue vans was staggering. They seem to be the only form of public motorized transportation in Manado, and there were dozens visible at any given moment. As far as I can tell, the companies that run the blue vans are the single largest employers in the Manado area. Some of the vans looked like they were owned and operated by individuals, having been tricked out to some degree. A common, and slightly chilling affectation was to silver up all of the windshield but a small, horizontal slit running at eye level. Considering the lethal traffic and driving habits, I was quite happy that none of the vans I rode in had that particular feature.
.....We were dropped at the waterfront, which was the social center of town. Large groups of young people clustered on the sidewalk and seawall that ran between the main waterfront road and the bay. A long line of jeeps and blue vans was parked along the road, and there were street vendors at regular intervals. There was a slightly squalid feel to the area, with some ugly looking shanties and large, open gutters and drains, but it was fairly pleasant overall. Standing out clearly from the rather drab looking commercial buildings lining the waterfront was the very slick Novotel Manado, where I presume businessmen stay when they visit Manado.
.....The first order of business was dinner. Stanley steered us at a hawker center, but when we asked if he was going to eat there he gave us a look of disbelief. He explained that there was a local restaurant where he liked to eat, but he didn’t know if it would suit our tastes. We dared him to try us, and ended up at a very pleasant Indonesian restaurant where we enjoyed satays, sweet and sour fish, fried squid, chicken, soup, and some other local delights.
.....Whenever we are in exotic foreign lands, Joe and I like to investigate the local culture by immersing ourselves in the environments that we think are the best and truest barometer of any society: supermarkets and department stores. So we spent an hour wandering around this large Indonesian department store called Mata Hari, and the attached supermarket. The supermarket was nice, although you wouldn’t believe some of the things available in the butchery department. Suffice to say that no part of any animal is wasted. The department store was depressingly like any K-Mart you could find on the outskirts of Boca Raton. For some reason we were treated like royalty. Either they don’t get many foreigners or, because we all have long or longish hair, they thought that we were some kind of rock music act.
.....And so we returned to NDC for one last night’s rest before getting on the plane. We didn’t go straight to bed, choosing instead to retire to the bar where Bobi, one of the NDC divemasters, regaled us with tails of some of the hair raising accidents they have had there, including the German who got drunk, dived 300 feet, and then panicked and ascended too rapidly, killing himself with an air embolism and sending one of the divemasters who tried to rescue him to a decompression chamber. Bobi also told us of standing off a nine foot hammerhead shark on the sandy bottom at the foot of one of the walls. An interesting place, NDC.
.....Mike had become fixated on bottled Coca Cola. In Indonesia, many of the Coke bottlers still use tall glass bottles, like they did in the old days in the States. Mike and I both agree that Coke tastes best out of a tall glass bottle, and we had enjoyed many a soda at the restaurant and bar at NDC. Mike took his fascination with bottled Coke to pathological levels, however, when he decided that he was going to bring a case back to Singapore with him. He told the people at NDC that he wanted twenty-four bottles of coke. They were happy to oblige, although they told him that he would have to pay some extra to cover the bottle deposit. Unfortunately there was a bit of a misunderstanding, and they brought Mike twenty-four empty bottles, assuming that he just wanted the bottles themselves. A short while later the misunderstanding was cleared up, and Mike’s small shoulder bag was filled with 24 eight ounce glass bottles of Coke (they didn’t sell the more desirable 12 ounce bottles at NDC, although we did get some at the airport on our way out).
.....The next day we packed all our sodden and smelly gear back into our dive bags and headed back to the airport for our flight out. We arrived early, and so had some time to kill at the airport once we completed check-in. Of course there was a small delay at check-in when Mike put his shoulder bag full of Coke bottles through the x-ray machine. The guards gave us a good dose of that "crazy ang moh" expression, but accepted Mike’s somewhat dubious (although true) explanation and let us through. We wandered around a bit, looking for someplace comfortable to sit. Unfortunately, the main waiting area was both un-airconditioned, and a smoking area, which was an intolerable combination. We were interested to see that there was a Moslem prayer room right next to the bathroom at the airport. It was odd to see one of those green and yellow airport signs with the semiotic symbols for people who don’t speak English or the local language, listing the bathrooms, restaurant, gates, and prayer room. While we watched, two security guards walked up to the door, took their shoes off, and walked into the prayer room to make their afternoon prayers (Islam requires its adherents to pray several times a day). On a related note, somewhere in every Malaysian hotel room (and, I would presume, in most Indonesian ones) is a discrete marker painted on a closet floor or on a door that points the way to Mecca, towards which Moslems must face when they pray).
.....Soon thereafter we were waved to our gate, and it wasn’t long before we were in the air again, on our way back to drab Singapore. But I foresee more trips to the fabulous reefs of Manado in our future.

-Will Moss

2/21/97