Bali

I’d always thought of Bali as this tropical, peaceful paradise, and in reality, it is and it isn’t. Yes it’s tropical and has beautiful nature…

… but it’s also teeming with people, so not so peaceful sometimes.

We actually spent a couple of days in Amed, on the NE coast, before we joined the boat on Komodo. Amed is a small fishing village that has some fabulous diving right from shore.

This Spotted Eel is nicely contrasted by the colorful fish around him.

It’s commonly referred to as “muck” diving, when you’re looking along a sandy or silty bottom for interesting little critters.

That little guy above is usually referred to as a “Pom-pom” or Boxer Crab. Letting you see the actual size:

This next fish, a Leafy Filefish, is one of the more odd ones we’ve seen -

I always like to share nudibranch pictures, because they’re just so beautiful -

definitely enlarge this picture to appreciate all the fine details of the nudi

So, we returned to Bali after our Komodo dive cruise, and spent 5 glorious days in Ubud. This is a town near the center of the island that is very popular with tourists. Traffic can be really slow at times, so we were able to get a good look at how the locals live. Nearly every property is surrounded by brick or concrete walls, enclosing lush courtyards and the family’s temples -

There were always entrance gates to the property, some more elaborate than others -

A daily activity for the Hindus here is making offerings to the gods. Every morning we’d see (usually women) riding on motorbikes and carrying baskets of prepared palm leaf boxes filled with flowers and a small bit of rice. They would place the offerings on the ground in front of the house or business, and then lay a smoldering piece of incense on top.

There is a lot to tell you about in that picture above. This was on a street corner, but usually the offerings remain undisturbed, as people walk over or around them. There are more offerings on the platform above the statue. Concrete or carved stone statues are everywhere. Statues are draped with cloth for celebrations, and sometimes are left, so that they fade, but this one is relatively new. I always smiled when I would see a parasol shading a statue from the strong sun.

We would see a number of shops selling statues, as we rode along -

Now here’s why we had a glorious stay in Ubud -

This huge villa with our private pool was only $87/night! I won’t bore you with all the photos I took, other than to say, we really enjoyed our time here.

On our first day of exploring Ubud, we visited the Palace in the center of town…

… and there were definitely more elaborate gates -

I smiled at the additions to the statues -

We then walked to the Sacred Monkey Forest to ogle the inhabitants - Long-tailed Macaques:

The babies were the cutest, of course -

… and I was definitely drawn to the Mohawks they sported…

… and the moustaches (on both females and males) -

A nice family tableau -

Until next time…

Komodo, Indonesia

Our next adventure took us on a liveaboard dive boat for 10 days around the myriad islands of Komodo National Park.

our boat is the one with the wooden top level and white hull

We had a morning excursion to visit the namesake Dragons, and got to see several -

(you’ll have to forgive the slight blurriness of the pictures because I forgot to change my camera settings to account for the low light)

To see the next video, be sure and use the link at the bottom of the post to open the page in your browser -

We also saw some of their prey -

… and learned that they can go a month between feedings, although probably not if they just eat one or two of these monkeys!

They are ambush predators, and can take down agile or large prey by blending into their surroundings and lying in wait. For the bigger animals, like these water buffalo…

… they either get a calf away from the herd, or bite an adult — infusing venom, and then trailing the victim until it collapses.

Enough of land stuff, on to diving!

We saw many similar fish and creatures to the ones in Raja Ampat…

… but I was especially proud of this Thorn Seahorse that I found on a night dive, while everyone else was looking in other areas.

The dive guide found this tiny (only an inch long!) Bobtail Squid -

The nudibranchs, or sea slugs, were quite varied here -

(this picture is blown up so you can see the detail)

… ranging in size from an inch or two, to the Spanish Dancer, which is commonly about a foot long!

See how they dance -

(you may want to replay that video a time or two to catch the actual dancing in the first few seconds)

This Banded Pipehorse was posing beautifully -

Steve captured these Schooling Bannerfish (as well as several other schools you can see in the background) on one of our deep (90 ft) “epic” current dives -

This eel was one we’d never seen before - a White Ribbon Eel:

(you may want to enlarge the face to see some interesting detail)

I know this post has been a little hodge-podge, but I wanted to share the highlights of our diving.

I’ll let this blue Ribbon Eel say goodbye for me -

Diving in West Papua, Indonesia

The Raja Ampat islands are an archipelago of hundreds of jungle covered islands. According to many divers we’ve spoken to over the years, this seems to be the best diving in the world.

We had flown into Sorong, and then had a 2 hour boat ride to the resort. Our home away from home for the next 2 weeks -

Our bungalow was the fifth down on the left, and we could always see ours coming back from a dive, due to the laundry hanging out on the lines we strung on the deck. :)

There was no AC, and since we’re near the equator on a jungle island, we constantly lived in a sheen of sweat, even with fans running.

On one of our first dives, we were excited to see a Wobbegong shark -

We soon learned that their family name is “carpet shark” and they definitely lived up to that moniker. We never saw one move, and we saw at least one on every dive.

That one was for you Nemo lovers! Anemones and their resident anemonefishes were everywhere. I won’t bore you with pictures of all the different species we saw. ;)

This Peacock Mantis Shrimp is a big dude (probably about 6 or 7 inches long)!

I caught this picture on just our second dive of the trip. For the rest of the 2 weeks, we’d only see their heads after they had scurried back into their holes -

Many fish are masters of disguise. Can you spot the Scorpionfish in the picture below?

be careful not to put your hand down on him - the spines on his back are venomous

When putting this blog together, I’m scanning through 13 folders of pictures trying to pick out the best and most unique, and not wanting to bore too many of you.

We saw tons of different nudibranchs (sea slugs), ranging in size from 1/4” to 3” or more.

From sea slugs to Mantas, we saw it all.

This big guy/gal (wingspan 16 ft!) flew right near us, and you can see how murky the water was. Steve’s video captured the show we were treated to at the Manta cleaning station -

(be sure to click the link at the bottom of the email to be able to see the videos)

There are also some pretty unique creatures we saw - a Leaf Scorpionfish…

… is just a tad ungainly, wouldn’t you say? This Bubble Coral Shrimp is almost transparent -

This is what it feels like to become one with the school…

… and this is the big picture:

The sheer numbers of fish were just mind blowing!

Two super neat creatures that we were thrilled to see were the Pygmy Seahorse and the Blue-ringed Octopus. Over 9 dives, the 2 dive guides accompanying us and other divers scoured every dive site for the Pygmy Seahorse. We couldn’t really help because we weren’t sure what we were looking for (how big exactly and where they like to hang out). First I’ll show you a short clip from Steve showing the sea fan where our guide found them…

Did you see them? Neither did I. But I aimed my camera where the guide pointed, and the camera did the rest -

That little one is less than an inch tall; be sure to zoom in and see how cute it is!

Now, to the most venomous creature in the ocean - the Blue-ringed Octopus. On our last day of diving, our guide showed us a tiny octopus in the reef. He’s the size of my thumb.

After I got a number of pictures of him, I moved on down the reef, and Steve started filming with his GoPro -

We later identified the fish as a Cheek-lined Wrasse; but, interestingly, Bard (Google’s AI) doesn’t believe it:

"There are no reef fish that are known to prey on blue-ringed octopuses. The blue-ringed octopus is one of the most venomous animals in the world, and its venom is fatal to most animals, including fish. Reef fish are typically small and do not have the strength or speed to overcome the blue-ringed octopus's venom. Additionally, the blue-ringed octopus is a skilled predator and is able to defend itself from most threats."

(We didn’t follow the fish, to see if or how quickly it died.)

A Radiant Sea Urchin (that’s actually the species’ name) on a night dive -

This next one is probably my favorite, due to the brilliant colors -

did you see the shrimp in the anemone above the fish?

So now you’ve seen the highlight reel from 2 weeks and 38 dives.

Oh! I almost forgot the resident Cuscus!

She would climb down the tree for the bananas left there by guests. A cuscus is a large marsupial found only in the forests of northern Australia and Papua New Guinea.

We had a number of gorgeous sunsets, but I limited myself to only two, to close out this post.

Singapore

Yes, we are “halfway ‘round the world” right now! We spent a full day sightseeing (and trying not to drop from exhaustion from jet lag). We were staying in Chinatowm…

… and the mix of old and new was very interesting.

The majority of our time was spent in Gardens by the Bay, which is actually a “world renowned” botanical garden that is massive (250 acres) in the heart of Singapore. I mainly wanted to go here to see the Supertrees….

… that I had seen so many pictures of on the Internet.

I hadn’t realized that they were making living “walls” of the trunks, and work is ongoing. They were first completed in 2012. There was a walkway that we could have paid to walk around near the tops of several trees in the “Grove”, but we just wandered ‘freely’ among the grounds.

Sorry the pictures aren’t brighter, but it was a cloudy afternoon, after raining all morning. Very nicely hot and humid! ;-)

The Marina Bay Sands hotel is pretty eye-catching…

… but we didn’t have time to visit this time. When we return to Singapore at the end of our trip (in mid-June), we’re going to try and visit the casino at the top, and at least have a cocktail and take in the views.

There was a wetlands area that we wandered through, and it reminded us of our recent visit to southern Georgia -

I thought the chick was kinda cute…

… and the Water Monitor kinda fearsome -

Apparently his bite is toxic, so we gave him a wide berth.

Downtown Singapore:

I don’t have a great closing for this post. I just wanted to get a little bit out while I have a day off from diving. The next post will feature our day trip around Makasaar on South Sulawesi island in Indonesia.

Georgia

As I said previously, before we explored Florida, we spent a couple of days (unfortunately pretty rainy) in Savannah. The live oaks dripping with Spanish moss kept grabbing my attention…

… as did the beautiful squares…

… and streets lined with stately homes.

I was dismayed to find that we arrived after azalea season (in late March), but I did find one bush still blooming!

Down at the Savannah River, I loved this juxtaposition -

The sun came out the morning we left (of course!), so we made a quick detour back through Forsyth Park…

… which is Savannah’s version of Central Park. The fountain in the center is understandably the most photographed fountain in the city…

… and serves as the background to many an engagement or wedding photo.

On our way out of town, we headed to the Bonaventure Cemetery.

I wasn’t interested in any of the “famous” people resting there - I just wanted to stroll along the lanes, and take in the peaceful ambiance.

The family plots were interesting, with their raised concrete borders…

… and labelled entryways -

Some interesting statuary -

They sure can set a mood -

We did a quick drive-by of the entrance to Wormsloe Historic site…

… and I found out later that there are over 400 live oaks lining the 1.5 mile entrance drive.

Now, jumping forward in time, to the end of our road trip, we came back into GA to visit Okefenokee Swamp. Longleaf pines and saw palmetto were the predominant plants we saw…

… but there were also what I consider the eponymous watery areas of a swamp -

As I was taking that picture above, Steve said, “oh yeah, nice ‘gator”…

… and I almost literally jumped back from the edge of the water, because I hadn’t even seen it, as I was focusing on the waterway!

From this tower…

… we had a bird’s eye view of the swamp…

… and got a neat angle looking down on cypress and some water below -

As we were driving out, there was a snake in the road…

… and I found out by research later, that it was a Pygmy Rattlesnake! I loved the red highlights along its back.

We then visited some of the barrier islands along the south GA coast, and it was on Jekyll Island that we found Driftwood Beach -

What was once a maritime forest is now haunted by skeletons (some purported to be 500 years old) -

It was really windy when we were there - (open this email in your browser by clicking the link at the bottom of the post to see and hear the video) -

I’ve never seen sea foam bounce and fly like that!

I captured this pair right across the road from the beach -

Tri-colored Heron and Snowy Egret

Besides the Spanish moss, check out all the greenery growing on the branches -

Our last stop on this road trip was spending a few days with friends on Little St. Simon’s Island. Overall, it was like “summer camp for adults”. We definitely didn’t have to sleep in tents or on bunk beds, but we did get to go on lots of guided excursions, and even bike rides on our own. My first big surprise was seeing this fella as we neared the beach -

I had never gotten to see a wild armadillo before, and certainly didn’t expect it on a lush island in south GA! The beach was huge and deserted…

… other than for the multiple dozens of Terns and other shore birds -

I loved their swept-back hairdos. :)

Royal Terns, and one Forster’s Tern in the foreground

I know y’all aren’t crazy birders like me, but I just have to share some gorgeous species with you. We visited a pond, where quite a few were nesting.

This is a Great Egret posturing for a mate…

… while I bet you can see where the Roseate Spoonbill gets its name.

I loved the show this Snowy Egret put on -

I can tell your eyes are getting glassy from too many birds, so I’ll switch to snakes!

Grass snake

I’ll close with this shot of sand on the beach, made intricate by the wind -

Even as this blog is posted, we’re on our way to our next adventure… far, far away! ;)

Florida (part 2)

So, after the Everglades, we headed down the Overseas Highway (US 1) from Key Largo to Key West. It is 110 miles, and actually had much less driving over ocean than we thought. We thought there was going to be a lot of this -

… when in fact, there was a lot of this -

We were really surprised by how much land is present on individual keys, and there is an amazing number of them.

Most of the time driving we were enclosed on both sides of the road in scrub and some palms. We stopped about halfway down the road at Marathon Key to walk along the Seven Mile Bridge. I took pictures of the sign and thought I’d just post those, so you can read the information for yourselves. I found it interesting.

And this was on the back…

We only walked about 1/2 mile on the bridge, so that I could get a different perspective than what we had been seeing by car…

… but of course I had to get a zoom shot -

This next one doesn’t look very appetizing, does it? I liked that you could see some far off keys at the horizon -

As we got closer to Key West, the land we saw seemed much more arid, and there were new clusters of mangroves everywhere (probably going to become their own keys in a few hundred (or thousand) years) -

Key West was beautiful. Between interesting homes with manicured plantings…

… to those where you could barely make out a house…

… we loved wandering the streets and ogling enormous banyan trees…

… and admiring all the orchids that were blooming profusely from pots just tied to tree trunks…

THE big thing to do on Key West is to watch the sunset (with several hundred of your closest friends) from Mallory Square -

… so of course we did.

And I must include a picture of some of the more colorful denizens of the island (they are everywhere!) -

After bidding adieu to this bright and hot island, we headed back north on the Atlantic side to Palm Beach. There is a unique diving opportunity at Blue Heron Bridge where you can see many weird and wonderful fish and creatures. This was a really big Hermit Crab that ambled by - (usual reminder: open this email in your browser by clicking the link at the bottom of the email, to view the videos)

This dive was on a really boring sand flat in no more than 20 feet of water. However, the unique creatures we saw just blew us away! This is a 1 minute long video that Steve shot, following a cool fish called a Flying Gurnard, that we had never seen before (in over 500 dives!) -

The next is a Molly Miller Blenny playing peek-a-boo. (you’ll probably need to enlarge the center of the screen to fully appreciate it) :)

Ok. Enough diving pictures. Just know that we were underwater for nearly 2 hours, and that’s a record for us. We could last that long on one tank of air because we were so shallow.

We then continued north to St. Augustine, because Steve was interested in seeing the area, after having read a lot of the history of the “oldest city in the US”. It was established by the Spanish in 1565, 55 yrs before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It was a cloudy, windy day when we were wandering around, so forgive the drab appearing pictures.

The sharply angled walls of the Castillo de San Marcos were quite striking -

Its walls were made of coquina, which is rock made up of millions of compressed coquina clam shells. This is found in very few places in the world, and no other building used this material before the fort was made in 1672. They didn’t know how it would hold up (it’s done very well for 350 years so far!), and were happily surprised when cannonballs either bounced off or stuck in the stone only a few inches, due to the stone’s compressibility in absorbing the shock of the hit.

There were some gorgeous buildings (built in the 1880’s)…

… that we admired from the outside as we wandered, because we didn’t have enough time to check out any museums during our short stay.

I’ll close with a sunset shot from Key Largo. I forgot to mention that we stayed there on our way north out of the Keys, but we didn’t sightsee there - just spent the late afternoon at the beach and relaxed.

Florida (part 1)

We had never really explored the state, so we set out to do so over about 2 weeks. I’m actually going to tell this story out of sequence because we visited Savannah for a couple of days before actually entering FL. I’ll cover Savannah in my Georgia post.

Our first stop was to be Kennedy Space Center, but we had a little detour first. Heading down I-95, our trusty little Honda Fit (with only 180,000 miles on it) suddenly had a loud bang! under the hood, we smelled something burning, and the car started shaking and running really rough. Steve was able to get us safely off to the shoulder, and we proceeded to call AAA. Unfortunately, they estimated that they’d have a tow truck to us in 3 hours (we had miles to go before we slept), so a repair shop recommended we call PepBoys. “Only” 1 1/2 hours later (sitting on a piece of cardboard in the shade as semis roared by) the tow truck arrived and delivered us and the Fit to a repair shop in Jacksonville.

Amazingly, in all of our travels, we had never had a car break down! So add that now to our life experiences. :)

We had already bought tickets for the Space Center for the next day, so we rented a car at the airport and drove on down to Cocoa Village, just across the “Indian River” from the barrier island that Cape Canaveral is on. It surprised us that Orlando was only about an hour’s drive west of us.

The Kennedy Space Center is 3 miles away from the launch site on Cape Canaveral. The picture above was taken without any zoom.

I wanted to go to the Space Center to be up close to rockets and such, to get a personal feel for the magnitude of these things.

Above is a mock-up of the rockets that took the Space Shuttles into orbit. One of the actual Space Shuttles -

We did the “Shuttle Experience” (or some such name) that apparently does a very good job of allowing you to see what it feels & sounds like to be in the Shuttle for a launch. It’s really loud and amazingly bumpy.

I just liked the contrast of all the bright colors -

After retrieving the car (only 2 days after dropping it off), we were back on our scheduled itinerary over to Crystal River on the Gulf side, to snorkel with manatees! In all of our years diving, this was one creature we’d never gotten to see.

There are springs near Crystal River that are a constant 72 degrees year round, so in the winter, the manatees come in from the Gulf to stay warm. Even though they don't look it, they have very little fat under their hides. Our snorkel trip was at 0730 and it turned out that we were the only ones on the boat. I was expecting a ride out to the springs along the coast, but we ended up motoring about 100 ft off the dock and anchored in 3 feet of water where there were several “sea cows” enjoying grazing on the sea grass. The water was pretty murky, especially after the manatees passed by, stirring up the fine silt on the bottom -

Steve’s new GoPro got some great videos (as usual, make sure you have opened this post in your browser to be able to see these) -

And this one showed how close we were to the dock and shore -

They are truly “sea cows”, and we could see how easily they could be injured by boat propellers, given the shallowness of the waters in which they feed, as well as their need to surface to breathe. We spent 1 1/2 hours and got our fill, so I then came up and sat in the sun for quite awhile to finally stop shaking and shivering!

We then headed down to the Everglades, to explore that unique national park. Apparently there is no other place like it on earth. Soon after we entered the park on the 40 mile road through it, we stopped at a short (less than 1 mile) trail with awesome wildlife spottings.

This Anhinga was drying his feathers in the sun. Despite being a water bird, and hunting fish underwater, their feathers aren’t waterproof, so they have to dry them before they can fly.

There was no shortage of alligators to be seen, and this one was enjoying the sun, with his buddy, the Great Blue Heron. These were just off the main path we were walking along!

This was a common scene as we were driving along - all that grass is probably hiding large areas of water several inches deep…

… and then we’d see areas like this -

This was one of my favorite birds, the Purple Gallinule…

… check out her toes!

There were some very different pockets of plant life…

… depending on elevation (even if it’s just a few feet). Dry land ridges let these pines take root, and this species of palm thrives around them.

A few miles down the road, we found this…

… as a feeding area for Great Egrets…

… and White Ibis…

… as well as a nursery for alligators -

A common scene, as we drove along…

… until we reached the next unique stand of trees - this time, Mahogany -

At the end of the road, Flamingo is the post that signals you’ve reached (probably) the southernmost point of the “continental” US (not counting the Keys). Here we found an interesting cast of characters - Osprey in a huge nest, right in the harbor -

… Manatees to be seen from above…

… and a Crocodile!

The Everglades is the only place in the world where both alligators and crocodiles coexist. Alligators live in fresh water, but crocodiles prefer brackish or salt water.

This one was a young one, but we saw an adult in a pool on an another trail. Upon researching, we learned that if you can see bottom teeth, it’s a crocodile (alligators have an overbite and cover their lower jaw when the mouth is closed) -

I’ll continue this state’s coverage in the next post.

Watchu lookin’ at?