PART X - Japan And Philippines

Unexpected, expected, great and plain annoying things happened in June. While the first Tubbataha trip was a bust due to the typhoon in the area, the second time actually worked out and I got to see the beautiful protected reefs - a UNESCO world heritage site - for the first time. The most striking feature in my opinion are the absolutely gorgeous sea fans that are present on most dives and can grow to ridiculous sizes. That you can also find them in relatively shallow water is surprising, given that Tubbataha is closed for tourism for most of the year due to getting hammered by weather. The most surprising thing though happened at the ranger station, where I ran into two friends from an expedition a long time ago. The diving world really is rather small. On the “less fun'“ side of things, during my week at Tubbataha BOTH my remaining strobes broke. One developed a fault in the power cable, rendering it useless, while the second one - that I had bought seven weeks earlier as a emergency replacement - simply felt like filling up with water was a good idea. Not from the battery compartment either, but from the end containing the sensitive electronics. So, instead of staying out on the reefs for another week I raced back to land to get Gary to bring his strobes from Switzerland for me, for the next part of the trip. Which is why I still managed to do photography. Seeing as Puerto Princesa is not the place I want to stay in for any longer period of time I changed my flight and went to join Jessica in Japan a week earlier, which was an outstandingly great decision. I loved every second there, turns out that not suffering from acute burnout changes my outlook on countries. Great food, lovely people, beautiful nature. Kenroku-en, the garden in Kanazawa, is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. After that the diving crew flew back to the Philippines and we finally joined a trip that was originally planned in 2020. But something happened and we couldn’t go? I don’t remember the details… We went out to Tubbataha, then tried diving Cagayancillo (failure, they didn’t want to allow us to dive), Guimaras (success after a loooong wait, but not great visibility unfortunately), Malapascua (huge success, lots of thresher sharks!), Ticao (meh, Manta Bowl without mantas…), Romblon (massive success, holy moly is that place crazy with rare nudibranch!), Marinduque (success, exploratory dives that were very good and turned out to contain half the genus of Phyllodesmium) and finally Anilao.

Enough rambling, enjoy the images!

p.s.: Tubbataha backwards reads Ahatabbut. Or also: ‘AHA! THE BUTT!’

Part IX - Vietnam and… Lembeh?

This month turned out a little different than expected - which, at this point, I should have expected, I suppose?

We started our month by flying from Thailand to Ha Noi, where we spent a few days sightseeing in ridiculous humidity and temperatures, as well as with a lot of people. May 1st in a communist country? Yep, it’s a thing. We then continued to Ha Long Bay, where we spent two days on a cruise ship. The views were pretty, and as we now know, the water is cold. From there we went to Sa Pa, which I imagined to be a quaint mountain village with rice terraces and water buffalo and good views.. Which there were, but the mountain village is one of the more touristy places I’ve seen in my life. Meh. From there we flew to Da Nang, but moved directly on to Hoi An, which in my opinion had some of the best food I had in Vietnam. Onwards to Hue and its wonderful citadel and royal palace, where I kind of lost it due to the constant noise and hustle and just felt like I needed to get out of there. Phew. We ended up in Can Tho at a very pretty resort and managed to relax for the rest of the time that was planned to be our trip.

And then things got even weirder. I was supposed to continue to the Philippines to board a boat out to the Tubbataha reefs, but looking at the weather for the region showed a super-typhoon approaching. Not super at all. The day before I was supposed to get on a plane to Manila it was clear that no boats would be allowed to even leave the harbor in Palawan, so I figured out a last minute alternative - Lembeh Resort! I hadn’t been in quite a few years (there was a pandemic or something?) and missed the place, so I jumped at the opportunity and spent a great week diving with all the little creatures Lembeh Strait is famous for. You can see some of them below. And now: Off to the Philippines, again, for a second attempt at Tubbataha!

Juvenile honeycomb cowfish

Halimeda ghost pipefish

Yellow goby

Wunderpus octopus

Ornate ghost pipefish

Blue-ring octopus

Costasiella kuroshimae

A valley near the China-Vietnam border

Growing rice

My friend, the water buffalo

Part VIII - Thailand!

Ten days in Bangkok eating all the street food (and not even taking my camera out of the backpack!), visiting cultural sites, and bathing a rescue elephant. And then Koh Lanta and a bunch of diving in too warm water but with a surprising amount of pretty soft coral.

Part VII - A month of bali

We arrived in Bali on the 3rd of March, and have spent the entire time in a private villa we rented via AirBnB, with our own pool and right next to a dive center. My parents also dropped by for a couple of weeks, and I ended up doing roughly 40 dives this month, which isn’t much but it’s honest work…

I also shipped my first application for a post-vacation job, which may or may not have been very well written, as it was the first time I had to do this in over 15 years…

Part VI - More New Zealand

Well, that was another month in New Zealand, this time on the South Island. Which was good, because when we flew in from Fiji to Auckland the airport had just been flooded. And then three days later there was flooding again. And two weeks later there was a cyclone that hit the North Island, which they usually don’t. But you know, at least it was 37°C on the Canterbury Plains when we arrived, so we got all the extremes. Generally speaking, so far this year has been a lesson in climate change. September/October weather in Indonesia was weird (especially R4 was not as I remembered it), October/November in Australia was rainy (third La Nina year in a row, anyone?), North Island NZ was mostly rainy too… We’re off to Bali for a month now, where I’ve prebooked 60 dives, then to Thailand (30ish dives), then Vietnam and Cambodia, before I head off to the Philippines and 5 weeks of liveaboard live (Tubbataha for the first 3 weeks plus a bit of the last trip).

Anyway, enjoy some images from the South Island of New Zealand. It’s a pretty place!

Part V - More Fiji!

I’ve written a little more about the second week in Fiji (well, the whole Fiji trip, really) in the trip report here, which also has a proper lightbox for images so you can look at them in full-screen.

Part IV - Week 1 of Fiji

After a long time on the North Island of NZ Jessica and I flew to Fiji last Sunday - in the middle of rainy season, so instead of going diving on Monday morning we spent the day hanging out in the bure. Oh well. The rest of the week was friendlier, despite the frequent rain. Let’s see how next week works out with a cyclone passing by in the West.

Week 1 was on the main island of Viti Levu, in Beqa Lagoon, which is famous for shark dives, and quite reasonably so, as you can probably tell from the images below. Dozens of bullsharks, with tawny nurse sharks, lemon sharks and reef sharks dropping by. And sometimes you get tigers and silvertips… Whew. Aqua Trek is running a very professional shop, and I felt very safe with their guides/safety divers, even when the bullsharks were a bit on the excited side in the morning today. Would recommend, great fun!

Bullshark Close-up

Reef Scene

Reef Scene

Bulls on Parade

Bullshark Swim-by

Part III - Happy New Year from NZ!

Well well well… Looks like it’s 2023 already and I haven’t written anything here since… a long time ago. Whoops. Time flies when you’re not doing anything, I suppose.

Since the last post I’ve done exactly two (2) dives, nowhere near as many as I had planned to do, due to the fact that Tasmania assaulted me with a cold just as I was going to dive - managed the first dive (extremely pretty underwater landscape with lots of kelp and fish and colorful soft coral) and about 20 minutes of a second one (with a weedy sea dragon!) before my sinuses refused to let me do that anymore. And then I arrived in NZ with Covid, and that’s been that with diving.

On the plus side, in exactly one week we’ll fly to Fiji, where I’m planning to see a lot of sharks (tiger, lemon, bull) and I hope to have a lot of images for you by the end of week 1 of 2 over there. After that we’ll be in NZ again, around Christchurch, then Kubu in Bali for a month where I expect I’ll grow gills due to extreme water exposure, before heading back to NZ for the third time.

In the meantime, please enjoy some images from my time on the North Island of NZ…

Glowworms in Waitomo

Gollum's Pool waterfall

Hills near Mangōnui

Ketetahi Falls

Tongariro Alpine Crossing

Lichen-covered trees

Part II - traveling in Australia

Well, it’s been a busy few weeks since the last time I posted. We’ve been traveling around the South East of Australia, started in Sydney and drove all the way over to Adelaide already, next stop will be Tasmania where I’ll actually do a few dives. The one day of diving I had planned for this part of the trip was cancelled because weather (oh boy, the weather has not been very helpful so far!), but I did manage to jump in the water on Kangaroo Island yesterday, where I saw my first ever leafy seadragon - ridiculously amazing. :)

Part I - Dive cruise from Maumere to Sorong

It was an epic journey; first I had to get to Maumere, on the island of Flores, from Zurich. Quite the trip with stops in Istanbul, Jakarta and Makassar. Luckily the guy at check in at Jakarta airport was in a good mood and my 40kg of overweight luggage magically turned into 10kg. Phew. In Maumere I did my first couple of dives since having double back surgery over the last few months, and instead of causing pain it actually relieved it! Hooray! From there we boarded the Mermaid II and started the 1850km cruise to Sorong, with stops at Alor, Wetar, Damar, Serua, Manuk, the Banda Islands and Raja Ampat. We saw many hammerheads among other things. I can't recommend this itinerary highly enough.

Now I'm off to Manado, Singapore, then Sydney.

Pictures from below and above the sea have been added below.

Images from Biodiversity cruise

Hooray, a blog!

Yeah, I don’t actually have anything to report yet. But I do need at least one post to set this up, so… This is it. This is the post.