Diving dragons

Where to even begin? We just got back from our trip out to the islands east of Bali - including Flores, Komodo, Rinca, a glimpse of Sumbawa, and Lombok. Now are back in Bali and planning another day of diving around Nusa Lembongan (we are officially addicted now) and then a few more days back in Ubud because we like it there so much.

As for what we just did in the past week and a half.....wow. Komodo dragons on land and dragon wrasse below! Diving from the Felicia (our liveaboard) was UNREAL. I think Jay is going to write about this if time permits so I won't go into it in much detail. The true stars of the show in Indonesia are the corals - the diversity was through the roof! And the fish that came with the corals.... wow. But I loved the crabs the most. We did 2 night dives and found heaps of crusties on the dives. Little "cheerleader" crabs holding anemones in their claws. Decorator crabs that matched the reef rubble. Filter feeding crabs perched on anemones. Cleaner shrimp soliciting business from local fish (I tried for a cleaning and failed). A tiny pink crab that had knobs that matched the sponge it called home. WOW. I want to say so much more, but don't want to steal from Jay's writing. One more thing though - pygmy seahorses! Even cuter than they appear in all those dive magazines. =) Oh yeah - and the FROGFISH. Bono, our divemaster, called us over on a night dive to see a SPONGE? Nope - we stared and stared and finally figured out where the eye was. Then the mouth. And then it started to play with it's angler in the water, fishing in front of us. Awesome.

Much of it was truly awesome and as incredible as we had imagined. Indonesia, after all, surrounds waters with the highest marine biodiversity on the planet. Unfortunately though, it wasn't all pretty, and I think we saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. The reefs within Komodo National Park were in fantastic shape, apparently because the park is patrolled to keep out dynamite fishermen. It may also have been spared a lot of high-temperature coral bleaching because of the strong water flows and cold-water upwelling from the Indian Ocean. Outside of the park, it's a different story, and on our last dive of the trip we were shaken by a nearby dynamite explosion. I had always heard of dynamite fishing, but experiencing an explosion underwater made me realize that this is really much more widespread than I would have thought. There was a real difference in the state of the reefs outside of the park.

A few days later on our trip by boat back to Lombok, we went snorkeling on a small island off Sumbawa and were thrilled to see the biggest and most beautiful thicket of staghorn coral we had ever seen. Then, snorkeling around Gili Meno off Lombok, we saw little more than rubble--supposedly the result of the widespread coral bleaching that occurred in 1998. Very depressing to see after having seen such healthy reefs elsewhere.

When we were not diving or snorkeling we were exploring the islands. We were able to walk around parts of Rinca Island twice....this island is part of Komodo National Park - but actually has more wildlife than nearby Komodo Island (which we only snorkeled around). We saw a ton of Komodo dragons! They are not as ugly as I thought they would be for the world's largest lizard - they are actually darn cute! They drool a lot and strut their wide legs as they saunter around sticking out their tongue to sniff the environment. We also saw water buffalos, which I didn't expect but loved. We had to watch out for their poop that was all over the trails. These islands in the national park were also super different in terms of vegetation. They are much more arid and dry with few trees, whereas the islands of Bali, Lombok, and Flores are more wet and support more vast jungles.

We have also had great interactions with the friendly Indonesians here - they have been wonderful about teaching us their language (we try) and their country. They LOVE Obama. One Indonesian said to us when he found out we were American - "I love to hurt Americans." Don't get worried! His English wasn't great and we soon discovered that he was trying to say he loved to give Americans a hard time because of George W. Bush. This kind of reaction is not uncommon for us to encounter and in some ways I am glad that it happens. This kind of reaction gives us a chance to explain that many Americans disagree with the current president and are appalled at our foreign policies. This man said to us that if we elected Obama as president, it would help to restore a little bit of faith in America abroad. I couldn't have agreed more.

We were encouraged when talking to another Indonesian who said that although many people speak poorly of America, they are reminded that the US gave the largest sum of aid funds following the tsunami that devastated the Aceh province back in 2004. But later, as we learned more about Indonesian history, the reasons for this apparent charity have become more clear. We now understand a lot of the basis for the violence that occurs in the Aceh and Papua regions. These regions are rich in natural resources (oil, gold, natural gas)....so take a wild guess at which country has it's little hands involved in the management of this country. The USA! Our country has provided many dollars to the Indonesian military - which has in turn killed thousands of civilians in these regions in attempts to crush their independence movements (because these regions could, presumably, profit from their own resources instead of losing the money to the "Javanese empire"). In light of this I am humbled by how kind Indonesians are to us even when they find out we are American. They are unassuming and wonderful people.

Finally, we have tried and failed at uploading a lot of our photos. Check often in the picasa sites if you are a photo hound. We may only get a few up each time we get online and probably won't bug you with updates. We wish we could put some on the blog right now....but cannot deal with these connections. We miss you all.