Bunaken Island ,Silowesi, Indonesia (Dec.9-13)

Artemis Walden
Thoughts and impressions

We are driving to the airport in a tuk-tuk. I’m in Cambodia, Phnom Pen. The tuk-tuk diver stops in front of a large building presumably the airport. The flight we’re about to take includes a 10 hour wait in Kuala Lumpur airport from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., yeah not too excited about that. Although we are taking a airplane and I always get exited about flying. The driver gets out and starts to take out are bags. We thank him and proceed into the airport. After that it all goes by pretty quickly. We do all the usual airport stuff. When we finally get on the plane I read the whole flight. We land. Find a comfortable seat and 10 hours later where on are second flight, next thing you no where in Northern Sulawesy, Indonesia mounting a boat to go to Bunaken (an island about one hour from Manado the city we landed in).

Boat packed to go to Bunaken

We pull up to shore. About 20 meters away from shore it starts to have trees growing in the water witch is strange because it’s an ocean. There isn’t much of a beach, but I could live with that. We all get out of the boat, get handed are bags and look around. This is a hotel well you could call it that but it was more of a resort. I could see some stairs that looked like they leaded up to the huts (where you would live if you stayed here). There is a little bar to my right and to my left is a building that is the lobby and where they probably hold all their scuba gear. A man comes over to us, we ask him if we can see the rooms he tells us to follow him and he leads us up the stairs (I new it!)

Three different places and five hours later we are all to tired to care were we stay and end up at two fish. It was the most convenient since we would be diving with theme at 8:00 in the mourning and it would be to much of a hassle to walk down there from another place. I did like the two fish rooms the most. It was also three meals a day included and a snack between lunch and dinner. All in all it was the nicest and my favourite place out of the three.

Bunaken Resort

We finally got all are bags in the right rooms and then we all crashed. After a sleepless night at the airport and a two day travel we were all pretty dead.
When it was super time we meet everyone because there was only one long table in the dining room (well there were two, but who wants to site alone?) Everyone that was there was really nice and they all had English accents. I’m pretty sure we all had a good nights sleep that night. I was so tired I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep so fast I cant remember being awake on the bed at all.

The next morning dad and Caleb left for scuba diving at 8:00 am.
Caleb underwater

I was to tired and decided to take the day of and do nothing. I woke up at 10:00 and missed breakfast. The resort was really beautiful and cosy. It had a big garden all around the resort. There was the eating area witch consisted of two long big tables and a big wooden roof to cover everyone. There where rooms and huts. Mom and dad stayed in a hut while Caleb and I stayed in a room on the first floor (there where two floors of rooms and each floor had about 4 rooms). The boys came back at around 12:00 in the afternoon we all had lunch with the other divers. Caleb and dad said the diving was amazing, by the end of the day I was so exited and nervous to dive tomorrow.

The next day I wet diving. I don’t know how but I managed to wake up at 7:15am everyone had breakfast then we got on the boat. I’m always so nervous before the dive even on the boat but once I get in the water all my fears disappear. We talked to everyone else on the boat ride to the dive site and I had a great time.

Artemis ready in wetsuit

Mark, CAleb and Artemis getting ready to plunge

Mark getting some help with the tank

Caleb getting ready

When we finished the second dive and started to head home it got really wavy and started to rain! I swear the boat almost tipped over! It was really nauseating. The diving was amazing! Better than Koh Tao. We did mostly wall diving; witch is basically diving on the side of a cliff that goes strait down and all you can see if you look away from the wall is blue water, never ending. It was like someone painted coral everywhere. There was not one place where there was no coral, life or color. The wall goes strait down, you can’t see the bottom. I saw my first shark on the second dive of the day. It was swimming below us maybe 5 meters down. It didn’t even look up, it just swam right by. I wasn’t even scarred; witch is weird because before I saw that shark my one fear of diving was seeing a shark. It was a white tip reef shark, 2 meters long.
Everyone coming back after the afternoon of diving

Another great thing about two fish was that it was so homey. The food was great , they put it out like a buffet and you took what you wanted. We got free water, tea and coffee (if you wanted a juice or a sprit or something like that you needed to pay extra).
Group walking to the village

One day after diving a bunch of us walked down to the village. It was a really cute little town and everyone was smiling and happy. A weird thing about the village was that it was Christian. So here you have a tiny cute town with a huge church in the middle of the town and Christmas lights everywhere (we were there around 2 weeks before Christmas). One little girl was so happy to see white people she shook moms hand and kissed it! She was adorable.
Church on the tiny island

We stayed at 2 fish 4 days and I did 5 dives. The last knight we were there we used the TV they had and played one of are movies called “Run Lola Run”. We pulled up all the chairs and everyone watched it (great movie).

The morning after that we had to catch a ferry back to the city Manado (where the airport is).

I had a really fun time at Two Fish Resort on Bunaken . I will never forget it.

By Artemis Walden