"Lembeh-licious"

"Lembeh-licious"

Ok so I confess a lovely girl called Ash created the name of this blog, unknowingly. After an awesome week together diving, Ash posted her diving photos onto facebook with the title "Lembeh-licious" and it has stuck in my mind ever since. It is perfect :) 

Lembeh. I have to restrain from simply writing I <3 Lembeh, which I was tempted to do so many times as there are not enough words to say how much I enjoyed this trip. This island is my idea of heaven. As soon as I stepped off the boat and landed at Two Fish Dives, I already felt as though I had found home! It was a beautiful love affair lol.  I was supposed to leave after 9 days, and ended up staying 21...it just got better and better each day and fear of missing out kept me delaying my departure.  I changed my flight twice and finally left  when I ran out of days to do so, and Dani and Matt were also leaving for holidays!

Lembeh is a small island off Manado, in Indonesia with THE most amazing macro diving I have ever done. I arrived with hopes of seeing a blue ringed octopus - on two afternoon dives I actually got to dive with not one, but two blue ringed octopus.  Add to that the pygmy seahorses, flamboyant cuttlefish, sea moths, frogfish galore - shaggy, painted, giant, hairy...ranging in size from pinky finger nail size to 5/6 inches long. Who knew there were 4 different types of pygmy seahorses too? Not me. Guess who has seen all of them now? Yep - yours truly :) Lembeh stole my cherry on a whole array of critters underwater which I didn't even know existed - zebra crabs, tiger shrimp, coleman shrimp, tozeuma shrimp, donald duck shrimp, candy crabs, boxer crabs.  I saw the biggest robust ghost pipefish ever.  Seriously in one day it was entirely possible to see pygmy seahorses, seahorses, frogfish, flamboyant cuttlefish, several of the shrimp/crabs above, blue ringed octopus, mimic octopus, long armed octopus and wunderpus octopus. SO lucky. Every day I came out of the water smiling.

Diving makes me so deliriously happy. I am so calm and content underwater in my peaceful little bubble. It was noted often that I hardly breath underwater and frequently finish an 80 minute dive with 100 bar left in my tank.  My mind is perfectly still underwater, no demons, no worries, just me, myself and I...oh and a zillion amazing things to see in Lembeh.

We had some awesome dives, so many different stories underwater :) Best was the frogfish Jason and I were taking photos of which was orange and 4cm long with a sandperch next to it. All of a sudden there was a big sand storm in front of us, some thrashing around and then when it cleared all we saw was half the sandperch (twice size of frogfish) hanging out of the frogfish's mouth!! INSANELY funny!! We finished our last dive on a hairy frogfish - and anyone who disputes it I am willing to fight lol! We searched high and low for the hairy frogfish, thinking several times over we had seen one only to be told it was a shaggy instead! Many a 'look at the lure, look at the lure' joke was had in the bar and flooding our masks underwater laughing!! I swear to god on the last dive of 21 days the final thing I saw underwater was a hairy frogfish - happy days :):)

I have loved diving with Doan, he's 18 years old and I could literally adopt him, he cracks me up underwater writing me messages or singing or breaking into a yoga pose or sword fight. It has been a lot of fun. All the guides and boat boys are awesome fun and have such amazingly good eyes for the macro. When I told Doan I am coming back again, he said sincerely please bring a macro lens with you next time ok...most things he shows me are just too small for my little camera to even focus on! As for Rein, well I just want to adopt him as well - he is kick ass awesome with a smile ALWAYS on his face :) Love that!! <3

Everything about Two Fish Divers is eco-friendly, so there are bins everywhere for different types of products. The Divemaster course has eco options, and Sarah who was doing her DMT had chosen the resort based specifically on this. She was such a cool chick, shame she had to spend second half of her DMT in Bunaken - really pleased that she finished her course well and had an awesome experience, even if she did manage to escape the snorkel test celebration :) Would have liked to stick around to see that.  As part of her course she organised an underwater beach clean up in a local village. It was disgusting how much plastic and rubbish was under the water, just horrible. Every customer came along as well as all the guides and we each filled an entire bag with junk :( There is a lot of educating to do in Lembeh around throwing rubbish into the water. 

The resort itself is like a sanctuary it is so peaceful and calm. I am picturing yoga and teaching here being dreamlike and perfect :) The cottages are just beautiful, and every little detail is thought of for you. You are looked after so well. The food was to die for and loads of fresh vegetables and fruit as well. Everyone who works there was awesome.

In between dives we got into the habit of doing boat yoga. I don't really remember how that happened actually. But it quickly took a significant part of our surface intervals, and I would look at Rein and point to the boat roof and off we ran to take our spot and throw ourselves into poses. I say we, I mean Rein - quite possibly the bendiest 18 year old in Lembeh. It took me practice to perfect the headstand, and the 8 angle pose, and the crow, and the side crow. Rein would watch me work my way into a pose, I would turn around and he would be in the pose already! His second attempt at headstand started in crow, then became headstand and then pushed up into handstand and to standing.  He copied this from Jason who also watched me struggle (in a wetsuit) into headstand on a reversing boat, and then jumped up casual as can be and did crow, to headstand to handstand to standing - just like that. Didn't frustrate Dani and I much...lol

In the evenings before dinner, Dani and I became focussed with our yoga, and perfecting some of the cooler crazy kick ass yoga poses. Again, I forget how it came about but we specifically focused on getting into the splits and getting our legs behind our heads. Dani focused on the 8 angle pose too, and practiced like crazy to perfect it. After a zillion sun salutations and hip opener exercises and sweaty yoga classes, our hips opened enough for us to both jump into the splits on the roof of the boat one day :) Yay! The leg behind the head took a little longer but we got there too.  What started as gentle yoga classes to stretch, quickly became what can we do next and how fast lol! 

We even did an underwater yoga class, bringing along Rein to join in and help us take some pictures. So much fun though we did kick up a storm down there, and I did flood my mask laughing a fair few times. We did warrior 3, tree, handstands, headstands, warrior 2, triangle, lotus pose and several others. Matt and Dani were awesome in helping me set up a facebook page, identity and a logo for teaching yoga as I travel through Asia. It's super cool so if you haven't already liked it then click on Serenity Yoga on my facebook page. It's where I will keep all of our boat yoga and scuba yoga photos!

During my 21 days in Lembeh we had such a cool group of people come to visit Matt and Dani. A Scuba Junkie reunion, which was so much fun - Ash & Dave, Debs & Neil, and Jason all arrived for a week or so and we all dived like crazy. Brilliant diving days, fun on the boat, fun underwater, fun in the bar in the evenings. One memorable night stands out for me - the drinking games night.  I was shockingly bad at each of the three games we played and ended up drinking a lot of gin that night. We played a neighbours game where I completely forgot to say "G'day there..." and insisted on saying "Hi there" - my defense being I am English though...didn't work and I was first out of the game which is pretty impressive as you get so many life lines along the way. We tried some kind of Captain drinking game, again fail. Then we tried a memory game which was hilarious!

Neil, Debs and I went to the jungle one day to see the tarziers.  We walked for hours and got eaten alive but the reward was meeting face to face the cutest and weirdest looking creatures, which at about 5 inches tall are the smallest monkeys in the World. Their eyes are enormous and their bony little hands remind you of ET. Debs and I wanted to take one home with us :) 

Indonesia cracks me up with all the love songs blasting out of the radios, the boys crooning to Celine Dion while they clean the garden areas and singing to themselves underwater! When we were in Manado in the van, my ability to fall asleep as soon as a car starts moving served me well so I didn't see too much of the lethal driving that goes on with trucks pulling out in front of each other and whole families (without helmets) on scooters.

I was particularly clumsy on this trip (in true Caroline fashion as you all know well ;) and got myself quite a reputation to the point where people would think to themselves what might Caroline do today. Several times I had camera issues which ranged from me getting to 30m underwater and trying to take a photo to realise I had not put the battery in, almost flooding the camera at Nudi Retreat, diving with a housing filled with toilet paper to test housing several times over to the boat boys amusement, and fogging up the housing almost every other day as I didn't change the silica packs often enough. One morning on the way to our afternoon dive, the boat boys stopped the boat and said someones jacket fell off the boat. Jason, my upside down all the time dive buddy, looked at me, I said it wasn't me, my jacket is there. Then they said it's green...and everyone looked at me and I had to hide my head in hands and admit I had left my green towel on the roof of the boat and it had indeed vanished like a green manta into the ocean. The shame lol!! The best was on the last day when I was trying so hard not to do something silly, everyone was handing in their towels while I frantically looked for mine - Neil just shook his head and said it's round your neck Caroline. Neil eventually ran out of words after 10 days and just chuckled to himself instead.  I like to think I provided the entertainment.... :/

I have had the most amazing time, and can't wait to come back in May/June to dive and teach yoga :) Matt and Dani you are the best hosts in the World. Miss you guys already! 

I <3 Lembeh xx