Greetings from an airy cafe in Amed, where I’ve been back for a month and a half, too lazy to write this update. The blog’s unofficial motto is “better late than never”, and we soldier on.
My month in Raja can be summarized as another demonstration of the power of expectations. It was very difficult for me to go into this trip with a clean slate because I had heard so much about Raja, running the gamut from “the most impressive place to dive in the world, by far” to “largely destroyed and overrun”. This messed with my head quite a bit, and for the first several days I found myself evaluating the state of the place rather than just taking it for what it was an enjoying it. I had to give myself a little talking to, and I had a much better time after that.
The first stage of the trip was a week living on what turned out to be a very nice boat, cruising around and freediving. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what freediving means in this context, it’s basically advanced snorkeling. We’d take the little speedboat out to a cool spot, buddy up, snorkel around at the surface, and take turns diving down anywhere from 5 to 25ish meters, hanging out at the bottom for as long as we could (or felt like it). This is a very different kind of freediving from what I’ve done the most, which is getting super duper relaxed and then swimming straight down and straight back up in a sort of trance, with nothing to look at but the rope. On the one hand, looking at stuff is very cool! On the other hand, with lots more stimulus and moving around the oxygen turns into carbon dioxide faster, and it gets uncomfortable in a different way, which I find more difficult.
Freediving is always a test of the ego, and fun diving is a different kind of test, which is interesting. If I’m looking at cool things but feeling quite uncomfortable, where is the line where it’s not worth it to stay down any longer on that particular dive? And what about the confounding factor of being an instructor, and feeling like I should be able to do long dives, and having my big ego get in the way? I have no conclusions or words of wisdom here, just things I was ruminating on. By the way, please do not worry—all of this ruminating takes place in the area where things are going from comfortable to uncomfortable, not from safe to unsafe. Promise.
Ruminations aside, we saw lots of cool stuff on the freediving liveaboard. First we went to the southern part of the region, near an island called Misool. This area is famous for its topography above the water as well as the animals below. You get karst (a type of limestone, I believe) towers jutting up out of the sea, carved all over by the wind and water into razor sharp, fantastical curves. There are several different areas with extensive lagoon systems, where you go into a big bay in an island, which opens further into another bay, and another, and so on. These are particularly beautiful when seen from above, with turquoise water in the shallows around the edges and dark blue in the middle where they get deep.
One of the highlights of the Misool area was a jellyfish lake, an isolated lake in one of these islands where a trapped jellyfish population has evolved to lose their stings. It’s a surreal and meditative experience to float around, surrounded by hundreds of these brown jellies, ranging from big ones the size of your head to tiny babies no bigger than your pinkie fingernail frantically squirting along.
Another highlight was getting to see the area from above. We went to two different lagoons where we were able to hike up a rickety set of steps to a high vantage point. I think you’ll agree it’s no exaggeration to say that the pictures from these spots are truly the stuff of postcards and travel brochures. At each of the viewpoints we all agreed to a 15 minute period of silent contemplation, and I can tell you that while that may be some hippie bullshit, it also genuinely heightens the experience.
We didn’t get that lucky with the big pelagics (open ocean species) in Misool, nothing too crazy swam up out of the depths. But there were still some lovely reefs to dive on, plenty of reef sharks and turtles and fish, and a great time living slowly on the boat. After a few days we then headed up to the central area of Raja Ampat, which is famous for the reefs (everywhere is famous for the reefs, really) and for huge schools of fish.
This did not disappoint! We had some amazing dives, including a very cool night dive, and I really enjoyed the rest of the week on the boat.
OK, holy cow, this is already incredibly long! Let’s keep things moving…
After the first liveaboard I had a week before the SCUBA liveaboard, so I stayed in a couple of homestays to get a taste of the local experience. The homestays in Raja are something of a famous experience—many are only accessible by boat, and the lifestyle is rustic but beautiful. Think bamboo cabin on stilts over the ocean, limited electricity, all meals included because there’s nowhere to buy food and you wouldn’t be able to get there even if there were. Most of the homestays can organize day trips for you to famous dive sites, but since I had that well covered with the liveaboards my homestay time was all about just relaxing and slowing down.
The first spot I stayed at is famous for its opportunities to see birds of paradise. In this case these are actual birds, not the flowers. They’re famous for their beautiful plumage and extravagant courtship dances, and if I remember correctly they exploded onto the worldwide scene in the very first Planet Earth. There are two species you can see here, the Red Bird of Paradise and the Wilson’s Bird of Paradise. I was lucky enough to see the Wilson’s, which is endemic to a small area in Raja Ampat. It was cool! Unfortunately I whiffed on the Red Bird of Paradise, which also turns out to be the one with the crazy curlicued decorative feathers. A couple I met on the second liveaboard said they’d gotten to see the Red in its full glory, courtship dance and all, and I have to confess I was jealous.
Otherwise homestay time was all about unplugging, reading, journaling, and generally just trying to enjoy being present. The two places I stayed were actually close to the main city and so had cell service, which is not that common among the homestays. I used it occasionally but tried to mostly keep my phone off, which honestly felt amazing. It’s a shame that I’m never able to keep that dedication up when I get back to civilization, but so it goes.
The second homestay was even better than the first—the host family were extremely nice, and the spot was nestled on a nice quiet strip of beach with a gorgeous reef right out front. I got to do some swimming and running and snorkeling and relaxing, and really had a great time there. I also met a few Swiss people who were also staying there. They highly recommended I read The Swarm (Der Schwarm in the original German, I believe), a bestselling sci fi novel about the ocean fighting back and trying to exterminate humankind. Let me just say, this book sucks! It’s almost 900 pages long and I powered through out of sheer stubbornness, wanting to finish it so that I could be confident when I talked shit about it. And I am! So don’t read it, but if you do, please call me so we can complain about it together.
Last up was 10 nights on a SCUBA liveaboard. This was really, really fun! I got extremely lucky with the group—there were 6 of us, all right around the same age, and the vibe was just great. This is the big gamble with a liveaboard, especially if you’re on your own. The diving may be incredible, but if the group is annoying that substantially diminishes the experience. So it was delightful to have the opposite here, with a group that made the whole thing lots of fun.
It was also really fun to do lots of SCUBA. I got my first SCUBA certification in 2018, but have only done it sporadically since then. Over the course of these 10 days we did 27 dives, so I got to really dial in my buoyancy, play with my frog kick, and generally have everything feel second nature so that I could fully enjoy looking around. The trajectory of the diving oddly matched the freediving trip—a slow start, before things started to come on strong. We ended up seeing so much stuff: lots of reef sharks, turtles, mantis shrimps, octopuses, crocodile fish, nudibranchs, stonefish, lionfish, mantas, enormous schools of fish, walking sharks, the list goes on and on. One highlight was the night dive we did, moving around between the pillars of a jetty that were absolutely covered in stonefish and frogfish and lionfish and much more. There was enough venom in the water to take down an army, and I was genuinely relieved that our group didn’t have any accidents.
After a fun ferry trip with the group and a lovely goodbye dinner, it was decision time. Luckily for me there was no opportunity for my analysis paralysis to set in. I had misunderstood how the visa renewal situation was going to work, and I needed to head back to Bali right away to renew my visa. After some confounding flight rescheduling I made it, got a day to rest, and then made the two hour drive up to Singaraja. I had wanted to turn my visa visit into a short trip exploring the area, but after all the travel I’d been doing I was cooked. So I took a lazy day checking out Singaraja, stayed in a beautiful homestay up in the hills, and then made my leisurely way back to Amed the next day.
The past month and a half have been… slow. I took some time to just rest and settle in, and then on a last minute impulse I signed on to teach at Deep Week. Deep Week is a big freediving festival held in various places around the world, where students of all levels come to work on their diving, attend workshops with famous freedivers, and generally have a good time. It operates at a baseline level of enthusiasm which is substantially higher than my own, but I was able to pick my spots and have a good time getting through it. The only bummer was that, as soon as it started, I realized “oh yeah, I really wanted to be resting and falling back in love with freediving, not teaching right now”. So that’s another lesson in listening to myself and not second guessing, but it was still a good time.
After Deep Week I needed another week or so of physical and social recovery, and now I’ve been back at a steady state for a couple of weeks. What I want right now is to have some routine and work on things—fall back in love with freediving, get in shape, do PT to get my back and knee right, read, practice Indonesian, etc… It’s a constant exercise in balancing the right level of structure to make the days feel meaningful, the right amount of socializing, and the right amount of trash time (NBA playoffs babyyyy). I go back and forth, but right now things feel good!
So, what’s next? I have a couple of friends visiting Bali in the next week or two and am excited to see them. Somehow my visa will already need to be renewed again in two weeks, so I’m trying to decide what to do then. I would like to do a bit of a trip, for real this time. I’ve still never been to the west side of Bali, which is supposed to have some beautiful diving, and when I go to Singaraja I’ll already be halfway there. So one possibility is to rope a friend into going and checking out that area with me (never dive alone!), with the potential to continue on, hop on a ferry, and scoot around the east side of Java a little bit. I’ve been enjoying my routine and feeling a bit lazy when it comes to travel, but I think I will try to at least get over to western Bali. I guess you’ll have to stay tuned for the next update, hopefully coming before another 6 months pass, to find out what happens!
