Now about Noon, we looked at some antiques, Kris (traditional curved dagger), and headed for the airport. Our next destination was Manado, Sulawesi. They are a group of islands to the north of java, renowned for its corals. We took a cold and hungry flight to the northern part of the mainland Manado, and got in at around 6pm.
We haggled with the taxi’s from 1 Million rpl to get to the city to 45,000. The cheap hotels were full so we decided to brave the extra $5 night and go to midrange places. We finally found a place, who toilet did not work and had a rule list on the door with #1 rule- No prostitutes. The Shower was simply a 1 gallon bucket with a facet, and the foam mattress with stained with horribleness. We slept on our Sarongs and woke up late, ready to reach our real destination, Bunaken Islands.
Day 13- Bunaken – We hit up Megamall and hit the internet for work and emails. As there are very few tourist here (called bule-after the royal white cows- derived from the word for albino), so all the teenagers try to secretly take your picture. When you catch them and offer to have a photo with them in the picture, they get too shy and run off. I bought some undescribed local liquor for $0.75 for a bottle (its sooooo nasty, its only 14% alcohol, but it tastes like burning). We then figured out that the boat to Bunaken doesn’t leave on Sunday and that we were stranded in this anus of Sulawesi for another day. We puttered around watching local volleyball games (volleyball and badmitten are huge here and not sissy sports as they are in the US), we headed to the pier at 4pm to see where the boat left from and ran into some lady who was part of a dive boat that was stopping off for supplies and departing in 30 minutes. We ran back to the hotel, paid, and hit the pier. As the island doesn’t have any restaurants or stores, we ran into MultiMart and grabbed some random food: Cucumber, water, another bottle of nasty local liquor (we hadn’t tasted it yet and $.70 was too good to pass up), Pringles, chocolate bar, red pepper, and toasted nuts. Don’t ask me why the pepper and stuff, Adam picked it out. Something about him needed vitamin c and not liking oranges. The boat was late leaving, so we bummed some fishing hooks from the locals fishing the piers and eventually headed into the sunset (very pretty and poetic). We got to the small island of Bunaken just after dark at some posh hotel (the most expensive at the island, which is posh because they have flushing toilets, provide free toilet paper and soap and have a pool). The road looked like a hiking path and there were no lights, so we had to pull out flashlights (which those crazy Europeans call torches). We found the cheapest place in the area which had no sign and was nothing more than an unmarked goat path into the woods that went over a hill and to some poorly constructed cabins. It was called Lorenso’s villa and it was owned by a local islander named, or course, lorenso. The bamboo cabins looked like the crappy forts me and my brother used to make out of sticks, and the toilet flushes by filling up a liter of water and pouring it quickly into the toilet, hoping it goes down. It takes several attempts but eventually works. The cabins have open spaces for windows, stained sheets for mosquito nets, which don’t breath and make it unbearably hot. Needless to say we did not sleep well. But tomorrow we would have time to survey the countries best corals.
Next- attacked at sea.
Day 14- Bunaken- Lorenso’s place- The morning light revealed a dense mangrove forest almost on our doorstep. Adam and I down a cup of local coffee (its like half instant/half regular coffee, so it tastes bad and leaves muck on the bottom of your cup) and hit the water. The speargun at hand (which has a range on only 2 feet), we hit the corals. Absolutely pulchritudinous. The corals are only 1-2 meters deep and after 100 yards out from the island dramatically drop off into the blackness. It’s supposed to drop a couple hundred meters down, but I don’t think I’ll test that. The waters are a bit more chilly than on the Gili Islands, but the corals and fish diversity are much more intense. We spot 4 black tip reef sharks, some giant groupers, and a gaggle of curious unicornfish. There are more of the familiar scorpion fish, and parrot fish, and all sorts of other unnamed colorful creatures.
After a late lunch Adam takes a nap, and the brave narrator ventured alone, back through the coral, unaware of the lurking dangers beneath the waves awaiting him. The sea was restless and small unseen jellies left a stinging reminder that this was not his innate environment. Slowly prowling the cliffs edge, our hero caught shadowy glimpses in the cold depths and felt the anticipating eyes upon his skin. Everything went still, and that’s when our hero first felt it. The small fish awash in silent screams scurried within their coral refuge, the demons of the deep cowered from the malice quickly approaching our unsuspecting hero. All of a sudden there is a jerk on his foot. With the reflexes of a robot ninja, He swerved around, fetal position as to make it the most difficult to bite, speargun at hand. Even underwater, he could feel the sweat beading on his skin as he stared into the snarling eyes of unmentionable evil. Out of the darkness they emerged. The two bodies twisting upward, teeth bared, preparing for the next attack. Our hero’s fin already witness and victim to their first onslaught, the orange trim off their black bodies glistening from the sun.
It was no shark, no giant squid, no half man/half crocodile, “wow” our hero thought. “I didn’t know Triggerfish got that big….and that they had teeth”. Two trigger fish about 2 feet long and about a foot of height came at him again with renewed vigor, biting at our hero’s fleeing fins. He kicked at them, they came back. He charged them, they called his bluff and pushed him back. The little bastards have mean looking teeth. He debated spearing them to end the conflict, but decided that was a bad idea as there were 2 of those orange bastards, and probably wouldn’t take too kindly to me killing its mate, with a reload time for the spear at 3 minutes, our hero decided on wanting to keep all 10 fingers and gallantly running away. The retreat was less than honorable. With his fins suffering several bites and his ego inflicted with their fish taunts and insults, our hero fled back into the saftely of the mangrove forests and harassed a couple of stingrays.
Laugh as you may, these triggerfish were not to be trifled with. I’d be like running into a group of cute fawns with fangs. And those big trigger fishes got some nasty looking teeth.
Hence is the story of how our hero escaped with his life and fins intact, but left his masculine ego fall prey to the new dangers of the not-so-deep.
Next- the slowest internet in the world- Living color Hotel. Our hero spend all day trying to upload data for work.
1 comment:
Do you know what species of trigger fish they were? And did you see the nest? What else did you see diving out there? How was the condition of the reef in general?
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