Take My Tentacle

The diesel power station that was washed ashore.

Yes, this house has a boat on top of it...

Recently, I was lucky enough to have Good Friday as a holiday. Kristina and I took advantage of that long weekend by getting our dive count up to nineteen total dives! We stayed in Indonesia, but on Pulau Weh, a small island off the northern coast of Sumatra. We flew late Thursday night into Banda Aceh (pronounced Bond-ah Otch-ay) so that we could take the early Friday morning ferry to Pulau Weh. Banda Aceh was a place that I had remembered from when I was a senior in high school (December 2004). My science teacher at the time showed us a before and after aerial photo of Banda Aceh after a huge tsunami hit the area (which was caused by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean of magnitude 9.1-9.3, the third largest ever recorded). There is now a tsunami museum that we visited, a diesel power station that was brought in shore about 4 kilometers via the tsunami (and not moved back to the water) with a tsunami education park built around it, and even a house that has a boat on top of it, which now serves as a tourist spot and memorial. According to the city tourist map that was given to me, the tsunami destroyed almost 60% of the city with approximately 75,000 victims. Walking through that museum was very depressing, but it was amazing to see all of the help that was sent after the disaster. 

Here's a little history lesson for you, thanks to Wikipedia J Relative to most of Indonesia, Aceh is a religiously conservative area. It has the highest proportion of Muslims in Indonesia, who mostly live according to Sharia customs and laws. I believe this law became even stricter after the earthquake/tsunami. Aceh was the closest point of land to the epicenter of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which devastated much of the western coast of the province. Approximately 170,000 Indonesians were killed or went missing in the disaster. The disaster helped precipitate the peace agreement between the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). The region has wanted to gain independence from Indonesia for quite some time.

Okay, enough serious sad talk. That was a very interesting part of the trip, but the reason we were there was to dive! We set up our dives and accommodation with a dive shop called Lumba Lumba (which means ‘dolphin’ in Indonesian). The dive shop was set up differently that others we had been to, as it seemed to cater to more experienced divers. This made me nervous at first, because we are definitely not in that category, but everyone was helpful as long as we asked. We even talked to some of the dive masters and got advice about options to become Advanced Open Water certified, and really just becoming better at diving so that it’s even more enjoyable.

The motorbike with sidecar that took us to the dive center.

Under the sea for four dives, each lasted about one hour…

1. We saw two octopuses (is that the plural?) for the first time. The best part about it is that one was dragging the other along by the tentacle as they both kept changing crazy awesome colors and patterns. Apparently, as our guide shared with us when we got back to the boat, they were mating! I think we watched them for at least ten minutes, which is a long time, considering we’re only underwater a total of sixty minutes each dive.

2. We swam against some of the strongest current that we’ve experienced yet. We even had to hold on to pieces of rock and coral on the bottom just to make sure the current didn’t make us drift away from our guide.

3. I learned that it’s a “tradition” to get naked underwater during your 100^th dive, which is typically done by men, and not necessarily by women, due to the logistics of the task (this was just a story the dive masters told us; it was not something that we had to witness underwater).

4. I’m going to need to invest in a dive computer (basically a fancy watch to wear while diving that keeps track of a bunch of important information about each dive you do, including your depth and rate of descent/ascent, so as to avoid decompression sickness).

5. Diving is still totally amazing, and I want to go on to the next “level” so that I can dive deeper and get a certificate/specialization in some areas to make me a better diver (buoyancy control, deep diving, night diving, underwater photography, identification of plants and animals…are just some of the options).

Believe it or not, I only have six weeks left in Jakarta! And that means only two more weeks of teaching, one week of revision for the students, two weeks for student testing, and the last week for preparing report cards (and getting ready to leave)! 

Time flies when you’re having fun!

That's me 15 meters (50 feet) underwater!

Underwater selfie!

Eel

Can you spot the Lion Fish? It looks like it has a mane.