The last two days at Ankermis are spent diving the entire day! A fisherman from a village 30 minutes away comes with his own boat to take us to 2 different dive sites. It not very modern compared to most diving boats that you can see in other countries in Asia, but it is practical and gives work to local fishermen.
Uven and the boatmen load the oxygen tanks for the 5 of us and all our equipment on board while we have our breakfast. We are ready to go at 8h00. It will take us 1h30 to reach the first dive site. Today we will descend to 18m, the maximum depth for a PADI diver. We are now slowly getting used to equalizing as we go down and it does not take as long anymore at the first days. We begin to feel more and more at ease with each dive. I am practising on taking longer breaths and not paddling as much…
As the boat leaves Ankermis we can slowly see the hilly background of their place. In the distance we can also see the mobile phone towers. Even the poorest fisherman in Flores has his own mobile phone today. Soon we are surrounded by beautiful turquoise water…
We see a few villages situated on the islands that we pass that are built right to edge of the water. This was a serious problem during the December 2004 Tsunami… The village of Bugis, close to our first dive site today was strongly afftected. The total population of 1’000 was reduced to 600 after the tsunami. In each family at least one person perished… After the tsunammi the government moved the villagers to the mainland setting them up in new housing. But since all of them live from fishing they have slowly, but surely moved back to the original village. They have rebuilt their houses only a few meters further back from the beach than before. Our boat driver and assistant have both lost their sons in the tsuanmi. They are both very kind and attentive to us, but somehow I can feel after spending 2 days with them that they seem to harbour a certain sadness inside...
The first dive goes very well. There is a pretty coral garden with lots of colorful, fish like anemone, clown fish, shrimp, etc. After 1 ½ hours we come up and take off all our equipment and rest for a while drinking tea with a light snack. We are supposed to rest for 1-2 hours between each dive, to let the residue nitrogen slowly leave our body before we begin a second dive.
The second dive is located by a long crack about 50 cm wide from the 1992 earthquake. It was the largest and deadliest earthquake that year with a magnitude of 7.8, killling 1'500 in Maumere and 700 on Babi island... It is pretty impressive seeing the length and size of the crack from the boat (see photo above). The couple that have come diving with us have planned to go down into it! We just follow Claudia along the crack and let ourselves be slowly transported by a mild current that we experience for the first time. We see lots of tiny creatures living in the corals along the wall.
Today we are able to see blue spotted stingray, moray, nudibranch, gorgonian sea fans, crabs, lionfish, etc. I will have to learn to control my depth gauge as well… Being very fixed on how much air I have left, I totally forget to monitor my depth. As we are diving down at 18 meters, I am a bit a head of the others searching for big fish and accidently go down to 22 meters… You really do not feel that you are descending a bit more at that depth. The dives today have been a fun experience and we feel more relaxed now after having finished our skills.
I admit to be a bit dissapointed though after two full days of diving and not seeing any big fish…. But I know, even here it is a question of luck to see a wild animal in its natural habitat.
On our second to last day we complete the final written test and have now earned both earned our PADI dive certificate! Some of the calculations with the dive and decompression tables were pretty strenous... Today everyone dives with computers anway. Of course it is good to know how it works manually, before depending only on a machine!
Uven and the boatmen load the oxygen tanks for the 5 of us and all our equipment on board while we have our breakfast. We are ready to go at 8h00. It will take us 1h30 to reach the first dive site. Today we will descend to 18m, the maximum depth for a PADI diver. We are now slowly getting used to equalizing as we go down and it does not take as long anymore at the first days. We begin to feel more and more at ease with each dive. I am practising on taking longer breaths and not paddling as much…
As the boat leaves Ankermis we can slowly see the hilly background of their place. In the distance we can also see the mobile phone towers. Even the poorest fisherman in Flores has his own mobile phone today. Soon we are surrounded by beautiful turquoise water…
We see a few villages situated on the islands that we pass that are built right to edge of the water. This was a serious problem during the December 2004 Tsunami… The village of Bugis, close to our first dive site today was strongly afftected. The total population of 1’000 was reduced to 600 after the tsunami. In each family at least one person perished… After the tsunammi the government moved the villagers to the mainland setting them up in new housing. But since all of them live from fishing they have slowly, but surely moved back to the original village. They have rebuilt their houses only a few meters further back from the beach than before. Our boat driver and assistant have both lost their sons in the tsuanmi. They are both very kind and attentive to us, but somehow I can feel after spending 2 days with them that they seem to harbour a certain sadness inside...
The first dive goes very well. There is a pretty coral garden with lots of colorful, fish like anemone, clown fish, shrimp, etc. After 1 ½ hours we come up and take off all our equipment and rest for a while drinking tea with a light snack. We are supposed to rest for 1-2 hours between each dive, to let the residue nitrogen slowly leave our body before we begin a second dive.
The second dive is located by a long crack about 50 cm wide from the 1992 earthquake. It was the largest and deadliest earthquake that year with a magnitude of 7.8, killling 1'500 in Maumere and 700 on Babi island... It is pretty impressive seeing the length and size of the crack from the boat (see photo above). The couple that have come diving with us have planned to go down into it! We just follow Claudia along the crack and let ourselves be slowly transported by a mild current that we experience for the first time. We see lots of tiny creatures living in the corals along the wall.
Today we are able to see blue spotted stingray, moray, nudibranch, gorgonian sea fans, crabs, lionfish, etc. I will have to learn to control my depth gauge as well… Being very fixed on how much air I have left, I totally forget to monitor my depth. As we are diving down at 18 meters, I am a bit a head of the others searching for big fish and accidently go down to 22 meters… You really do not feel that you are descending a bit more at that depth. The dives today have been a fun experience and we feel more relaxed now after having finished our skills.
I admit to be a bit dissapointed though after two full days of diving and not seeing any big fish…. But I know, even here it is a question of luck to see a wild animal in its natural habitat.
On our second to last day we complete the final written test and have now earned both earned our PADI dive certificate! Some of the calculations with the dive and decompression tables were pretty strenous... Today everyone dives with computers anway. Of course it is good to know how it works manually, before depending only on a machine!
