Wakatobi (near Bali)

Wa-ka-to-bi, it's an acronym of four of the 13,000 Indonesian islands, kind of like Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. I, along with 11 other divers, stayed on a live-aboard for ten days of luxurious diving. We dove, ate and slept. The diving was awesome--three or four dives a day, with one being a night dive. The fish here are beautiful, as is the coral where anchors have not hit them or crowns of thorns haven't razed them. I feasted on fish and seafood the whole time, feeling a little guilty that I was eating what I was so enjoying watching underwater.

The second part of our trip is at the Wakatobi Resort. Google that and you'll see the luxury I'm enjoying here. By staying away from the sea snakes, I was able to dive for a total of seven days at the resort. Apparently sea snake venom can kill you within 20 minutes, so there's really no rescue from this when diving. Cuttlefish, crocodile fish, frogfish, leaffish, clown and picasso triggerfish, humphead parrotfish, turtles, as well as the ordinary wrasses, damsels and thousands of blue/red-tooth triggerfish are in vast numbers. And today, we even saw a new species that was just discovered a few months ago--what appears to be a single strand of hair but is actually a type of fish.

The dive masters here have at least 1000 dives in their log books, if they're still keeping log books, so can find the tiniest marine life. The single strand hair specimen was hard to see even when I knew what Divemaster Doris was pointing at. If they can find that, the 1/2 inch pygmy seahorses, in comparison, must seem easy to spot. I had my contacts in one day and only saw a blob of a pygmy seahorse and a miniature octopus (that I somehow found, though couldn't tell what it was). On later dives sans contacts, the pygmies were much easier to see, all things relative.

I asked about the requirements to be a dive master here because it is so beautiful. Its remote location means that life would be very quiet. I heard complaints that there was no night life. Hmmmm. If/when I have 770 more dives in, I could go there and work on my book when I'm not diving. I'd certainly not have much excuse not to write then.

The local village is within walking distance of the resort. We took a boat around to the city dock on our last day. Kids scampered around us, doing cannonballs in the water as we meandered the wooden ocean walkway past the adults milling around. This was certainly a different way of life from living at the resort. Wakatobi contributes greatly to the local economy and has developed a program to train locals as dive masters. The problem is many of the locals don't read English or any other language the dive books are written in. But there is a will to do this, so they'll figure out a way.

I'd have wanted to stay at the resort if it wasn't for my niece's upcoming wedding. A few days back home and it would be time to head out to La Jolla CA for the big event. With all the planning that had gone into it, I knew it would be a triumphant success. Though my sister didn't make my niece's wedding dress, as she did her own, she hand-made the save-the-date announcements, the wedding invitations, the wedding programs, and more. She even designed a logo for the invitations that Laura then had made into her wedding ring. Oh, to think my niece will be a married woman!?! As most parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles can say, they grow up so fast. And they do, into adults we can be proud of.