Tulamben dive trip in BALI , Indonesia

Tulamben dive trip in Bali

BALI – Tulamben exploration – March 2015

Wow what a place to explore. Dive Inn decided it was time for a diving holiday and needed to see if it would be worth it to take a group back there.

THUS we are planning a Tulamben dive trip in Bali in Indonesia for 2016/17.

Tulamben dive trip in Bali

From Cape Town international airport we flew on Qatar airlines to Doha, couple of hour’s stopover, 9hour flight to Denpassar and then a 3 hour drive to Tulamben. What a relief when we could put our feet up at our final stop in the Ocean View resort. Tulamben is a small coastal village with a lot of dive resorts some close to the sea others a way back.

Next trip definitely a stay over in Sanur and then some diving from there before we hit the road to Tulamben.

After breakfast we headed to the onsite dive centre got a guide sorted check our nitrox and did the long walk to the oceans edge about 200meters down 3 steps and we were on the round volcano rocky shore. The dive centre even had guys taking your kit down so you kit up there and the walk / waddle another 5meters into the calm WARM ocean. We swam out for about 10 meters and then descended in the nice 10-15mt 29 degree waters.

Most of the diving in Tulamben area is on a slope so within minutes we swam down to the bow of the USAT Liberty wreck at 30 meters. The USAT Liberty is also seen as their house reef, how awesome is that!!

Nudibranchs was the main idea to find but we were also treated to Pygmy seahorses, spiny sea horses, and bump head parrot fish, frogfish a wide variety of tiny crustaceans and loads of other interesting creatures. However this was not all on the 1^st dive. Between Naomi and me we logged 50 dives in the 10 days there. We did dives before breakfast, after breakfast, and before dinner and then also a couple of night dives.

We did all our dives in the area and for sites other than the wreck and the reef on the slopes next to it we were transported on a small truck to the other dive sites by the dive resort. Some of the sites were extremely busy with divers and then on some we were the only divers. One of our dives we were spoiled and did a boat dive on the local dug out boats called Jukungs.

Some current were only experienced on the deeper areas and we had some days of surge on the shallower areas but then the swell was a massive 1 meter. For our Cape Town divers it’s really not an issue, it however did require some light treading and balancing over the round rocks when you exit and enter the water. The 10-15 meter viz was not a crystal blue what you would expect in tropical waters and it is probably due to the sandy bottoms and caused by some divers with very expensive camera equipment.

Bali is a lush tropical island with warm 32 degree days and slightly cooler at night. Thus the air conditioned rooms was really nice. Ocean view had delux and superior rooms where the superior is on the higher terraces with good sea views and the deluxe separate cottages lower down with a tv and a lesser sea view but very comfortable and extremely big bathrooms. 2 pools on the resort were also a great past time and both had a sea view.

In Obud about 2 hour drive we visited the rice terraces and an old temple area with our driver taking us through some of the suburbs of the town looking for silver and taking in the sites. The roads are narrow with thousands of scooters everywhere with between 1 to 4 people on some. A lot of stuff can be transported on scooters also dive gear has been run up and down by resorts. The mini trucks got very colourful lights at night and the drivers looked after them as we could see them washed at a couple of places.

Ocean view’s restaurant gave us stunning food with breakfast the normal western type eggs and bacon and then you could have traditional nasi goring (rice) and fried noodles. Lunch and dinners were great. As you are in a different land you need to drink the local beer which was Bintang. Bali fruits we tried were Dragon fruit, spiny big fruit called Durian not so nice to us, sweet Mangosteen, Snakeskin (Salak), and my favourite Rambutan. Some biscuits thingies were also tried and we still do not know what it is but we were able to finish all the things we tried except the Durian.

All in all our time in Tulamben was great and the time to take the long trek back came to quick.

If you are keen to join DiveInn Cape Town to join us for the Tulamben dive trip in Bali 2016/17 trip please feel free to inbox us at carel@diveinn.co.za.

Tulamben dive trip in Bali photos