Weekend #2

Jess and team at Trans Studio

Friday was a holiday in Indonesia, so we were able to have a long weekend.  Two of our team members books a flight to Java for the weekend to visit temples and do touring on that island.  The remaining eight of us went to a local theme park on Friday called Trans Studio.  It was all indoor, so we didn't have to worry about sunburn or rain (which it rains a lot here), and air conditioned!  I would describe it as a very small version of a Disney park.  There were a handful of rides and a few attractions that you watched (like a show with dancing, a green screen demo, etc.).  Overall, it gave us something to do on Friday.

Later that evening, a few of us wondered around and found a hotel to visit with a great balcony overlooking the ocean!  Wow, what a view!  

Sunset on the ocean!

One of our five project teams is working with a nonprofit organization, YKL, which is a marine conservation group benefiting coastal and marine natural resources.  It just so happened that YKL had a reef check scheduled with about 25 local university students (all part of a dive club).  This was a 2-day, 1-night excursion in which they invited the team to join them.  We left Saturday morning around 8:00 a.m. to go to the dock where the boat was parked.  We loaded the boat and off we went!  The boat ride was actually pretty fun as the students brought along equipment and tools to make coffee (Taraja Coffee - good stuff and I'm not a coffee drinker) on the boat.

Coffee-making team!

The weather started out being gorgeous, but quickly turned into lots of rain.  Needless to say, this put a wrinkle in their plans of doing reef checks.  The original plan was to check many different reefs on two islands the first day and to check three different reefs on another island (the island in which we stayed overnight) the second day.  We ended up just going straight to the last island and docking the boat.  We dumped our stuff at the hostel and took a walking tour of the island.  The island was quite small.  Here is a map of the original itinerary.  We stayed on Barrang Lompo.

The rain did let up and the dive team went and checked the reefs around Barrang Lompo.  A few of us swam out to a reef close by and did some snorkeling there.  I saw some neat things, but nothing like I was going to see the following day.

We stayed at a hostel with the YKL reps, the master divers, and the student divers.  Although I had not stayed at such a place before, it reminded me of college and we had a great time after dinner in the evening.  Someone brought along a guitar and everyone was signing songs (similar to what we would do around a campfire minus the campfire) and teaching cultural dances.  Even though only a few people knew English, it was amazing how we were able to communicate with everyone.  Actually, some of the students knew it quite well.  This was a really fun night!

Accommodation (with Nitu from India)

Of course, when we weren't walking around the island, having dinner, or singing songs, I took the opportunity to walk back out to the dock and just sit there and enjoy the beauty.  I haven't talked about culture and/or religion too much in my blogs and will likely weave that into some of them in the future.  Here is a short video of my surroundings while sitting on the dock.  The "singing" you hear in the background is the "call for prayer" as the island we stayed on was primarily Muslim.  They have this call five times per day in which they go to the mosque and pray.

The next day, we got up, had breakfast, and took off!  It turned out to be an absolutely PERFECT DAY!!!  The sun was out, it was hot, and I was on a boat in the ocean.  We stopped at several reef check locations throughout the day at the remaining two islands.  They had dive teams that took turns doing the checks.  During that time, the rest of us could swim, snorkel, or relax on the boat.  At different times they either had music playing on the speakers, or were playing guitar and singing.  I've never snorkeled so much in one day in my entire life!  The first stop, I probably went for an hour and a half, the same at the next stop.  I saw so many different colors of coral and fish that I hadn't seen at other snorkeling trips/excursions in other parts of the world.  Blues, greens, pinks, purples, yellows and almost any other color you can think of - felt like I was on the Discovery Channel!

At the final stop of the day, I decided to give SCUBA a try and loved it!  Thanks to the help of my friend, Tom, and one of the YKL people, Irham, I was successful.  Sorry in that I don't have any pics of me snorkeling/scubaing, but I'm sure the rest of my team does and I'm looking forward to seeing those pictures!

Part of the dive team after our return.

What a great group of people and a great organization!!!  Thank you for inviting us on this most amazing trip!  I know I definitely learned a lot about the mission and learned many cultural things.  I hope the students enjoyed having us along and got some good laughs out of some things!