We flew out on Thursday March 17th from Narita. It was terribly difficult just getting to the airport but after the night bus and airport shuttle bus, (and 9 or so hours later) we made it!
After our fun night out in Singapore, we were back to the airport to fly to the island of Sulawesi. We flew in to Manado and headed to our guest house, The 4 Fish. It was fantastic! We had a lovely little room with a HUGE deck! Down the stairs was a nice pool. The place included breakfast and dinner. The dinner was cooked by their cook who is a local and a fantastic chef! They were so yummy!
Here are some pictures of the guesthouse…
The large patio looking towards the tables/kitchen-
View from our room outward...those chairs were comfy!
The view from the porch (with us)...palm trees galore!
Our room...
The food was spicy and delicious! At the guesthouse, our dinners always had soup, main dish and dessert. This was one of our most interesting desserts...avocado smoothie...
I also learned that sprinkles on toast means breakfast in Holland! It was delicious!
We enjoyed wandering around our local village. We would walk to buy a bit of chocolate or soap. The village was always full of children playing or people working or cattle, pigs and chickens wondering.
me and the street..
Rebuilding the local church...
One of the shops. It was about the size of a one car garage.
Locals bringing fruit to market...
The "road" to the main shop-
The local dive center is called “Thalassa.” We went there on our first day to get the overview of our week and pick out our dive stuff. We worked with our awesome instructor Man over the week to complete the “open water diver course” and “advanced open water diver course.” The open water course was about 4 days long. It consisted of 5 confined water dives in a swimming pool and 4 open water dives in the sea. The advanced course is meant to give you more experience with different dive. We were required to do two specific dives and then allowed to pick three other dives from a long list. The two required were the deep diver (going down to 30 meters) and navigator.
We spent many nights back at the guesthouse studying. Here we are at the table reading…as we were almost nightly!
studying...
and more studying...
One of our advanced dives was a photography course so here are some awesome underwater photos…
all the dive sites around the island (we went to about 6 so...best go back!)
On the boat after a dive! COLD!
WOOHOO! Underwater!
FISH! (should learn some names!)
Cute little fish
Crazy looking things grow under the sea...
We loved these cute little fish that lived on large pieces of coral. They would pop up and down lots and were so cute!
One of favorite moments of the whole trip was seeing the sea turtle! I had to chase this out to sea to get a picture but I got him!!
Sea slug. ick.
NEMO!
Lots of fish and lots of coral! It was BEAUTIFUL!
We had lots of fun being neutrally buoyant! (lots of spinning and somersaults!)
On our day off we went into the city of Manado but it turns out it was a total hole. We did get pizza for lunch which was pretty awesome though. We took a taxi for the 30 or so minute dive and it cost about $8! While in the city we bough more chocolate. We also found this terrible and funny “Hello Kitty” wanna be crackers.
After all our dives were done we had a Friday afternoon free, since we had to allow 24 hours before flying home. We spent the afternoon at the fancy spa in the city. It was amazing to get a salt scrub and massage and facial! It was very relaxing!
It was a lovely vacation!! We can’t wait to go back! (We have wreck diving and enriched air on our list as our next courses!)
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