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Part 2: In the shadow of a sunfish Nusa Penida was the site of our day trip away from Tulamben. We travelled back in the little bus towards the airport for about one and a half hours to reach the golden sandy shores of Nusa Penida. The water was freezing, at least for us spoilt Asian divers, with a temperature of approximately 22ºC. Divers wore more than one wetsuit into the water and looked like little marshmallow men bopping on the surface. There are multiple places to dive in Nusa Penida and we dived around the Lembongan area. The best way I could describe the dives here is: 'Batten down your BCD, stay close to your buddy and get ready for the dive rush of your life.' Currents are strong and unpredictable and not for the faint-hearted and you must stay close to the reef for protection. The excitement commenced upon entry into the water. Not only did you need to control the undesirable urge to release the contents of your bladder in your wetsuit due to the temperature but also some divers enjoyed a brief and entertaining waterskiing experience. The highlight of the dive was trying to interpret Jason's signal to swim away from the safety of the reef and follow the loud clacking sound of stones to view a mola mola, commonly known as a sunfish. Later that evening we tried to decide whether it was a genuine sighting under Jason's sighting guidelines, because officially David could only confirm the shadow of the fish. Alas, Sugi came to the rescue and agreed to verify and confirm the sighting. This did however raise an important issue about underwater signals and thankfully our gallant leader provided further demonstrations of the different signals for squid, octopus and the various sizes of sharks. Suffice to say that these signals should only be used underwater and outside of Singapore. If such signals were used in Singapore, in a land-based situation, they could be viewed as R-rated in nature. This is in particular reference to the different size of sharks. It was good to return to the resort to take up the pina coladas (again) and I managed to work out how much you needed to drink from the glass in order to sit comfortably in the pool and have the remainder of the beverage balance on your lips through the straw without having to physically move your head. This took some hours of experimentation and several test samples to determine. |
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