bunaken marine park

For her big 4-Oh, Helen decided she wanted to go to Bunaken Marine Park in northern Sulawesi. I would imagine your next question is “where the heck is Sulawesi?” Well, dear readers, it is east of Borneo, south of the Philippines, and north of Bali… got it? Riiiiight.

Bunaken is just another gorgeous Indonesian set of palm fringed volcanic islands, but it has the distinction of being known for some of the best wall diving in the world. A wall is a coral and rock reef that drops straight down. In many dive sites here, the shore water would be 3 meters deep (10 feet) and then suddenly the wall would just drop straight down to 40 (130 feet). In a bad visibility situation walls can be a little intimidating, but the vis here was about 30-40m so it was like entering an aquarium. A really warm one.

It was the beginning of the slow season so on 10 dives in 5 days (we were taking it easy), we only saw other people on 2 of the dives. We stayed at 2-Fish Dive Resort and I would recommend them to everybody. After unpacking before the first dive, the only time we would be allowed near near our diving equipment was when we were putting it on or taking it off. The staff would load it, unload it, clean, rinse, dry, and even assemble it for each diver. They even remembered the little idiosyncrasies of each set up, things like how high a client liked their tank on their BCD. A really professional organization. I have never trusted anyone else to put together my underwater life-support system kit, but I had every confidence in our wonderful guide Kris. As the days rolled by the dives just got better and better. I have never seen so much color under water.  

These are some of the things we saw.

2 Fish Divers is located right on the water's edge in a stunning mangrove forest. It was so nice to stay in a place that hadn't cut back the natural vegetation to build their resort. In the mornings Toby the Dive Dog escorted us to the boat. Our arrival back was usually at low tide so we had a short trek through the mangroves to get back to our lovely little hut. On Helen's big day we opened a bottle of red wine we had smuggled onto the island – the staff of 2 Fish bought her a cake and sang in Bahasa Indonesian.

One day after our dives we explored the local vilage. The game in the fifth picture in the first row is where they tighten a string between each hand and push it against their friend's string – the winner snaps the other person's string. With proper technique a kid with thread can beat another kid with fishing line. This is proof that young'uns are ingenious and inventive, and can have hours of fun by simply using their tenacity and imagination... who needs a Playstation!

After returning to Manado we decided to take advantage of an extra day and do a little tour of the mountains. Luckily for us, on our way out of town we saw Jesus protecting the highway (this part of Indonesia is 80% Christian). This made me feel very safe, until I noticed Big Ben showing the incorrect time (come on Ben, we expect better than that!). Our first stop was a local market. Barbequed rats, bats, pigs, cows, you name it, they BBQ it! Now, this will really offend some people but in Sulawesi they eat dogs. The dogs in a cage are for purchase and the seller will barbeque them as seen in the next photo. It’s very easy for us to judge others by what they eat, but McDonalds used to mix ground horse meat in their Big Macs. There was also some things that ... well, sometimes you just don't want to ask do you? I’m just glad to be a vegetarian…. Evidently one stall hadn't bribed the cops enough so they made up some reason to bust up a stall.

After lunch we saw a pre-fab house factory, passed through a village of potters, and visited an ancient burial ground where they encased their dead above ground and in a squatting position. A couple of imposing statues forced us from the cemetery, and as we were exhausted Helen and I stopped for water and were given some local hooch instead. I’m glad none spilled on the car because it would have ruined the paint finish. Next, was a sulphur hot spring which smelled like all of them do ­– stanky funky rotten eggs. A beautiful lake was next and finally a very pink Buddhist temple rounded up our big day out.