Bajo Dive

Bajo Dive - Labuanbajo Bajo Dive is one of the shops in Labuanbajo that dives the waters between Komodo and Flores. I enjoyed diving with these guys. There were no other divers that day so it was just me and John the dive guide. It was nice to not be crowded down there. We started of with Batu Bolong a common dive there. It is a neat shaped island with a hole in the rock. We dropped down to 30 meters and hung around for a while on the leeward side of the island where there was not much current. It can really get going between those islands and can make for an interesting dive. That dive lasted about an hour. For our surface interval we headed over too Karang Makasar also known as the Runway or something like that. This is when things started to get interesting. There were so many mantas skimming the surface that the water was churning. John estimated that there were over a hundred of them. I took a few pictures from the surface but with no polarizing lens and lack of skill on my part the pics don't really do the scene justice. I will put a few in here anyway. Maybe they will show something. The water at the karang is fairly shallow with depressions here and there. We went with the current close to the bottom and started seeing mantas close up. If you don't swim towards them they don't seem to mind you hanging around. There was a big one coming our way with its mouth wide open. John was kind of heading towards it and I stopped and just drifted. The manta turned my way and I got an incredible view in its mouth as it was swimming straight on to me. I could see the cleaner wrasse way inside it's mouth cleaning away parasites. The water was murky but it swam up very close before turning away. It was really a great dive. After that one we decided to go for another as we stilll had 2 spare tanks. We went over to Tatawa Besar, an island with a beautiful beach while we had our surface interval to off gas any residual nitrogen. I imagine it would be a nightmare if you ever got the bends out there. Even a mild case would be a problem because there is no decompression chamber nearby. This was a shallow dive also with a lot of current which was exciting. A turtle that was going up for air got swept away. John and I took turns getting out in the current and then waiting behind a coral head while the other would leapfrog past. We saw a lot of bigger fish and a number of turtles on that dive. It was a great day! 2006   www.dutchpickle.com

 

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