Amed, North-East Bali

After getting on the fast boat from Lombok to Bali I arrived in Padangbai in the early afternoon, from here I shared a van with a Dutch family who were also going to Amed. Arriving in Amed I checked in at the Kadek Home Stay, here I got a nice bungalow with sea view, and really nice banana pancake for breakfast.

My place in Amed

The view from my place, the wooden things in front are made to produce sea salt

The sunset seen from my place

Saturday morning I woke up at 6am in order to meet up with Fabien from France to go diving the wreck of the USS Liberty. We had two fantastic dives at the wreck, and one dive in the afternoon at a wall just 500m east of the wreck. The visibility was great, and so was the diversity in marine life.

Sunrise before going diving

On our way back to Amed we went to visit the local factory for Arrac, the strong alcohol they produce here. Of course I had to buy a bottle while I was there, so I brought my own 1,5 l bottle and filled it up with freshly distilled Arrac.

Well, this is where they put the finished product

This is the distillery, run by wood fired ovens

This is the finished product, the one to the far left is the #1 quality that's been distilled many times.

Tomorrow I'm going on a motor bike trip in the are around Amed, heading east along the coast.

Diving SS Yongala of Ayr

I left Cairns together with Torstein (first Norwegian I met in six months...), and we drove to Ayr. We arrived at 5 pm in the afternoon and were lucky enough to dive the SS Yongala because of two cancellations. The next morning we packed up the gear and ready to go, but due to uncertainties about the weather we had to wait for a bit before the trip could start.

After landing the RIB from the beach and a 45 minute long rough boat trip we finally arrived at the dive site of the SS Yongala, a ship that sunk of the Queensland coast in 1911. During the dive we saw the bathtub, the toilets, and parts of the steam engine.

The marine life on this wreck was amazing, we saw a giant Elephant Tail Ray, Giant Cod, and heaps of other marine life.

While we had our surface interval there were several turtles catching a breath while we were having refreshments.

This was definitely a different and interesting dive!

For more information about the wreck, check out this web site.

http://www.timsaxon.co.uk/divesite_yongala.html

The SS Yongala

The position of the wreck, where it has been for 100 years.



The dive briefing before we went out on the RIB.

The RIB with 2 x 200 horsepower engines taking us out to the wreck in only 45 minutes.
The tractor landed the RIB from the beach.