Back to Amed

Bit of a theme going on here. Amed is a laid back sleepy beach town and we both love it. On my previous two stays at Amed I had wanted to but failed to snorkel at either Jemeluk or Japanese wreck sites, my aim for this third and last stay in Amed.

Our ‘home’ was a guesthouse on the beach made from various scraps and off-cuts of carved wood crafted into a tiny complex of five houses in a lush garden, surrounding a pool, on the beach. Our ‘house’ was on four floors, topped by a tiny spire. snorkeling is straight out from the beach and wonderful to the left and Jemaluk to the right. We were so busy with the snorkeling to the left - more of everything and turtles galore, that we almost forgot to explore to the right.

We had a dive arranged with a very cool diver from the local community, Ketut, who partners with a guy we work with in Kenya on coral restoration, Rolf from Reefcare. The dive had none of the professionalism and care of a paid dive, but it was great to be left alone to enjoy the dive without constantly updating the Dive Master on our air and the regular’OK’s’ necessary for commercial dive centers. The dive was amazing - along a deep drop off - but it was the coral not the fish which was outstanding. Coral fans, and a type of coral tree with thick white blossom were unlike anything I’ve seen before. It was a challenging dive, deep and a strong current, but beautiful. To see the efforts of a locally managed marine area run by the local community was incredibly inspirational. It is what we are trying to do in Kenya - get the deep and passionate buy-in which leads to responsibility and stewardship - and ultimately change for good in the marine scape. Ketut and his cohort of 70 other locals to Amed are working hard on a number of projects to create sustainable and lasting change in the waters around Amed. Truly commendable.

We hired a moped and set off to explore the Japanese wreck about 10km along the coast. It was wrecked in the WW2 and has become a popular dive / snorkel site. No one had really said much about it so our expectations were not particularly high. However, once under the water, the marine life was amazing. The wreck is small - maybe 40 or 50 meters but the life on and around it is stunning. I got quite lost in the fish soup of it all - a snorkeling bliss I get when I forget everything else. I tune into the sounds of the reef too - fish vocalizing, coral crackling and the unique subtle sound of a busy reef. It would have been great to dive there too but I felt my dives in Bali were complete. Des, never deterred, planned to return the following day for a quick dive before breakfast.

I still wanted to snorkel at Jemaluk and so while Des was off at Japanese wreck diving, I swam to the right, finally finding Jemaluk bay. Finding the coral was not as easy or instantly gratifying as the amazing snorkeling at Pyramids, but once through the sandy bottom and out to the edge of the drop off, the snorkeling quickly got amazing. Balls of fish feeding, a huge puffer, turtles and colorful and plentiful healthy corals. As I turned and swam back towards my waiting coffee, I saw the unmistakable shape and movement of a shark. Not scary or big - less than 4 ft - it was a peaceful black tip on its way somewhere. I didn’t have my trusty photographer next to me so no pictures but we’ve all seen sharks before so I leave it to you to visualize.

Coffee cup emptied, bags packed, and our driver waiting, we reluctantly got in the taxi to head to Ubud and our last 48 hours in Bali.