Wakatobi

We did a lot of research to find the perfect place for muck diving. Well, first, what is muck diving: It's diving and exploring sediments like sand and other natural debris and searching for weird and wonderful marine creatures. It's unlike reef diving where the environment itself is pretty.

The Palagian, a liveaboard located in Indonesia, offered exactly what we were looking for. The dive yacht is 115 feet long and offers room for 10 guests. The yacht is a part of the Wakatobi Dive Resort in South East Sulawesi.

Each dive is different and we were lucky to have captured some incredible pictures, such as below anemone fish, trying to hide.

Anemone Fish

Flatheaded Crocodile Fish

Nudibranch

Sea Urchin

Pygmy Sea Horse

Peacock Mantis Shrimp

Lion Fish

Decorator Crab

Napoleon Snake Eel

One night we stayed in a bay where we could hear the muezzin call to the daily prayer. In the morning kids were having fun watching our bubbles when we surfaced from our early morning dive.

Before and after our stay on the Palagian, we spend some time on Bali, which is a very charming island with many temples and other ancient structures. We stayed at the Beach Hotel in Nusa Dua, built in a traditional style.

The fountain had beautiful stone carvings demonstrating what local artist are capable of producing. It was very peaceful.

Our private driver Katut took us around the island and this gave us a unique perspective of many local customs he explained in details. He showed us rice patties on the way to Kintamani, which is a village at the edge of a large caldera.

Kintamani

On the way to the rice patties we stopped and tried Luwak coffee beans, and I still prefer a nice espresso.

Rice Patties

Ubud has lots to offer, a dense forest, temples and macaques. I was more interested in the local architecture, whereas the monkeys were more into how can we annoy those visitors.

When exploring Bali, it is highly recommended to see a traditional Bali dance performance, where like in a western theater, an entire story was told. In this case it was a mythical tale with demons etc.

Turks and Caicos

After Palau, we were looking for a shorter flight to a dive destination and found Turks and Caicos, where we rented a condo, which was great because we could use the washer and dryer so that we always ended up having dry towels.

 

The sand on the beaches was very white and powdery and we usually were the only ones there. The locals raise conch, which is a mollusk or sea snail, in farms and we definitely had to try them. As with so many local "specialties", they were, guess what... special, and it turns out that I still prefer bread and cheese.

Be aware that traffic is on the "wrong" side and some of the dirt roads are very narrow and it takes some time to get used to passing on the "other" side.

Little Cayman

The Cayman Islands are located directly south of Cuba. As the name indicates, there are multiple islands that belong to this British Territory and Little Cayman is one of them. A small puddle jumper takes you there from Grand Cayman and that's why there is a weight limit. As a scuba diver there is not much weight left for some shorts and t-shirts and you're over the limit, especially when traveling with a underwater camera. Luckily, there is no dress code. 

The island is so small that you can take a bike ride around the island and don't forget to get a ice cold beer at the beach.

This solderfish or squirrelfish seems to be ready to defend its territory.

Swim throughs and turtles can be observed almost on every dive.

Palau

If you haven't heard of Palau, you're not the only one. It is a small island country in the Western Pacific. It is known for many reasons, for WII history buffs it may be the battle of Peleliu, for divers it's the Blue Corner, to biologist it's Jelly Fish Lake and for some it is the fact that the official currency is US dollars.

From the Mid-West it takes about 24 hours to get there and it's worth every minute.

Seventy islands is a protected sanctuary without access. This is great for the environment and the wild life as it is preserved for future generations.

Above picture was taken by Dan, who we met together with Tom.

Let's just say it: The diving is simply outstanding partially because there is a lot (did I say: a lot) of fish. 

It's not a fish here and there. It's fish everywhere.

There are schools of barracuda and other species and with a lot of food there is also plentiful of hunters, such as grey reef sharks. During our first dive in the Germain Channel we noticed quite a large turtle shell that looked like someone took a bite out of a hamburger. That could easily have been a tiger shark.

The boat ride from Sam's Tours to the dive site was always exciting because the captain chose a winding path between those mushroom like structures that were eroded close to the sea level.

While diving the Blue Holes our dive guide (Keith Santillano) shows us a Flashing Disco Clam, which is one of the weirdest living things I have seen so far.

One of the highlights was Jelly Fish Lake. The first encounter is somewhat intimidating since everyone learned that you shouldn't touch any wild life. So you dodge the first one, and the second one and so forth. The farther you swim, the more jelly fish you see and very soon there is no dodging anymore. You are surrounded and they touch you everywhere.

The island itself has so much to offer, be it kayaking, hiking to a waterfall or getting a history lesson.

On our last day we went snorkeling and we enjoyed lunch at one of the beautiful beaches reachable only by boat.

Bonaire

Since Bonaire is one of the three islands off the coast of Venezuela, it's part of the Netherland Antilles and most important it is a gem for shore diving.

It's a simple concept: you rent a truck and with your own scuba gear you get your tanks from the resort's drive-through and then drive to the numerous dive sites any time you want. Let's say you want to see who's hunting at 2:00AM then you do what we did, you just do it.

The slave huts are a reminder of another time when not even the Europeans were disturbed by owning other humans.

They were freshly painted and stood out in the bare landscape, close to a still operational salt production.

During one of those night dives we encountered a box jelly fish that was just hovering in the water column as if it took a break from an interstellar journey. We spent quite some time with this "monster", partly because we were intrigued, partly because we tried to imagine how close we got to these tentacles. Are they dangerous to humans? What would happen? How would we do if we got in contact? If anyone has an idea what type of box jelly fish this is, please let us know in the comment section.

When night diving, it's good to know that the large silver fish that flies by you from behind is just a 6 foot Tarpon. They use your light beam to hunt for their dinner.

Curacao

 As Aruba and Bonaire, Curacao is a Dutch owned Island off the coast of Venezuela. It is the most industrialized island of the ABC islands.

We came here to scuba dive and stayed at the Curacao Habitat.

Downtown Willemstad at night, where European style meets Caribbean charm.

The underwater camera equipment was very primitive, which shows in the images we were able to capture. Besides moray eels, snakes, turtles and lobsters we saw stone fish, and flounders and other reef fish.