I got up early, had breakfast at my hotel.  They have a cute open air kitchen and made me a fried egg and toast.  I love this little hotel.  The dive shop picked me up, thank god.  I need a day off from driving that horrible vehicle on tiny roads.

A lot of buildings here look like temples with ornate stone entrances, but they are just homes or businesses.  In fact, I’m not even sure what a temple looks like at this point.  The dive shop was the same.  I large stone wall with a grand entrance.  Inside was a stone pool that looked like a temple in it’s own right.  It’s so hot here, maybe it should be a temple.   There were a lot of people and it had a wonderful feel to it.  It looked like a higher end dive shop.  Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I’m thinking of getting my dive master certification and working as a dive guide as a possibility after teaching.  I chose 3 dive companies based on their dive master internship programs.  This one is off to a good start.

I had requested to dive Nusa Penida which is an island nearby.  So, they put me on a boat with 8 dive interns, their instructors and my dive guide.  So, basically, it was private diving with a boat full of other people.  It was neat to watch the dive intern class too.  I read later on line that my dive guide, Wayan, has over 10,000 dives in Bali.  Holy crap.  I have 156.

I did my back roll into the warm water and felt at home immediately.  After adjusting my gear and telling Wayan I was ready, I looked down at the sandy bottom with a reef off to our right.  As we decended, I felt like I was in an aquarium.  It was clear and there were tons of fish.  The coral wasn’t the brightly colored coral I remember seeing other places, but it was alive and moving in the current.  Most of it looked like long shag carpet.  There were others that looked like gardens of giant cabbage.  We hit a mean thermocline.  It went from summer to winter in an instant.  This was hopeful as the Mola (Sun Fish) are found in these conditions.  It’s not Mola season, but still possible to see them.  They are huge getting up to 14′ tall and 10′ long.  We went to the point of the reef and held on against the current (current another good sign) and waited.  No Mola today.  Still, this dive was great and I’m relieved that not all the reefs of the world are dead.

The second dive was Manta point.  We got to see a manta ray, many sting rays and 3 different octopus.  The Mantas are huge and beautiful to watch, but 3 octopus in one dive during the day?  That was the highlight for me.  Just watching them change colors over and over is fascinating.  The third dive was wonderful too.  It was a drift dive, meaning that the current is strong enough that you get in, go for a ride past all the coral and then the boat picks you up farther down the reef.  At first there was no current.  Near the end of the dive, it kicked in.  It’s kinda fun just whizzing by and I find it very relaxing.  The highlight of this dive was a large turtle.  We grabbed on to some reef and watched him chow down on something for almost 5 minutes.

So, for those of you who don’t know Scott’s turtle story, you get to hear it now.  One time Scott and I went diving at a small resort in Belize.  We were the only ones staying at the hotel and the only ones diving all week.  The first dive, the dive master said we might get to see a turtle.  Not only did we see one, it came up to Scott and swam around above him in his bubbles.  We saw a turtle on every dive that week.  Every one we saw interacted with Scott or his bubbles.  One came straight for Scott.  He dropped to his knees in the sand to avoid touching it and spread his arms out wide.  It was almost wider than Scott’s outstretched arms.  From that point forward we joked that Scott was the King Turtle.  It must be his bald head and big nose – they thought he was a turtle.  A few years later when I was researching the memorial tattoo I wanted to get in honor of Scott, I knew it would be a sea turtle.  I wanted the symbol of a turtle, not an actual picture of a turtle so I googled Seat Turtle Symbol.  What I got was Seat Turtle Symbolism. In a couple different cultures, the sea turtle is the communication link between this world and the next.  I remember being stunned.   I figured that turtle had been telling Scott to get ready because his time in this world was almost up.  I took a bunch of images to my tattoo artist, but didn’t tell him the story or even that it was a memorial tattoo.  A couple days later he had his design.  While he showed me the design he showed me how he had symbolized past, present and future, the sun, sky, water and earth and gave him a third eye to see beyond this world.  Again, stunned.  Of course, I cried and shared the story with him and he cried.

My mother’s husband, David, died yesterday morning.  I wonder if the sea turtle was bringing me a message from David.  In reality, I don’t see an actual direct link between the turtle and death, but I’d like to think it was David saying goodbye.

After diving I ventured out to the beach walk.  It’s a sidewalk that runs along the beach for quite a distance in Sanur.  It has hotels, restaurants, and shops along it.  I saw people doing Falun Dafa on the beach and was reading the information they had posted because I had never heard of it.  It’s a Chinese “Traditional Self Cultivation Practice to improve  Mind and Body”.  A a lady asked if I’d like to try it.  Sure.  We sat cross legged and she showed me some hand positions that we would hold for ” a minute or so each.  I closed my eyes and listened to the waves and the people walking by.  My favorite was the sound of the bicycle bells as people rode by.  They sounded like little chimes.  It would have been relaxing except for the fact that my foot fell asleep and I couldn’t walk for a minute or two after we were done.  It was fun to experience and I’m glad I tried it.  I went looking for the night market and got sidetracked by a pedicure and ear candling.  The pedicure wasn’t maiming like the ones in Thailand – Yay!  I got to see my first religious parade.  I read in the travel book that it is common to see a parade of people all dressed up carrying offerings to a local temple.  They were all dressed in white playing drums and gongs.  I found the night market and then decided I’d rather eat dinner at one of the beach side places I saw so I did that.

Then I went back to the cute little hotel and made a plan for tomorrow.  I’m going to drive east and stop at a couple beaches along the way, then see some rice fields, go to a water temple, and then arrive later in the day in Amed at my next accommodation.  Hey, Sharon, Look – I  have a plan…..

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore