Bali, Indonesia (Part 1)

Well I am currently in Bali, Indonesia and it is truly AMAZING. The sand couldn't be better and the water couldn't be clearer. For the last few days,in addition to relaxing in paradise, I have been finishing up my Scuba Diving Certification. I am proud to say that I am now a certified, open-water scuba diver. To complete this certification, I obviously had to go out and do some dives. I went to the north east corner of the island and we dove at a site off the cost of a town called Tulamben. In Tulamben there are a few different dive areas and we explored them all.

The first site that we went to was the shipwreck of the U.S. Liberty that was sank when a Japanese submarine torpedoed it back in World War II. It is truly spectacular to see a shipwreck that has been on the bottom for so long and has had enough time for coral and other marine life to grow all over it. Aside from the wreck itself, we were lucky enough to be able to see three black-tipped reef sharks, millions of beautiful fish, stingrays, and a barracuda.

The next site that we went to is known as "The Wall" and is basically an underwater cliff that drops straight down from about ten feet to a hundred feet. The wall is absolutely covered with corals and plants of every color imaginable. Along with the plants, there were millions of fish again and we were even lucky enough to see clown fish, or as many of you probably know them as, "Nemo fish."

After experiencing those first few dives, I think that I have found a new sport that I am going to get very into. I already have another dive trip booked and we are going to head to a dive site known as "Manta Point" in hopes of seeing Manta Rays. It is pretty much guaranteed that we will see Manta Rays so stay tuned for details about that! In addition to my trip to Manta Point, I have also decided to immediately upgrade my certification from "open-water diver" to "advanced open-water diver." In order to do this, I have to do five "specialty dives" with each of the five dives focusing on a certain specialty. I was able to pick from a huge list of options and I selected deep diving, underwater navigation, multi-level diving, night diving, and fish identification. I will post more details about what each of those was like after I complete them in a few days!

Well that's about it for now. Keep tuned for Bali part two...