Manado

I spent about one day travelling from Sydney to Manado, via Gold Coast and Kuala Lumpur. Manado is the principal city of Northern Sulawesi and is renowned as one of the world’s best dive destinations, or to be strictly accurate, the smaller islands and reefs that can be accessed via Manado are the main attraction. Our final destination is Bunaken Island, which is about 10 minutes boat ride from Manado, and gives its name to the Bunaken Marine Park – a large area of coral islands containing some very interesting marine life. Because of our flight schedule and the fact that it is Christmas, it was not possible to head straight for Bunaken, and we therefore chose to spend two days at a small village called Bahowo, on mainland Sulawesi and just across a short stretch of sea from Bunaken.

Having arrived on Christmas Eve, I quickly realised that I had not entirely managed to escape from Christmas altogether. Turns out that Northern Sulawesi is one of the few Christian enclaves in an otherwise mainly Muslim Indonesia, and of course, Christmas is a big deal for the locals. So our hosts, Phil and Paula, had to pop out to the church in the middle of our evening meal, in their role as, essentially, ‘lord and lady of the manor’. We decide to have Christmas Day as a chill-out day and not do any diving, even though it was on offer. Lying by the pool, even my noise-cancelling headphones were unable to drown out the sound of the singing (all morning) coming from the local church, which was right next door. Bah, humbug! In retrospect, we would have been better off staying in Sydney over Christmas and joining the other Brits in their festivities on Bondi Beach. At lease the Aussies take Christmas as a bit of a laugh and an excuse for a barbie and a few tinnies.

Today we went out for a dive to Buaken with one of the local dive operations. Lots to see, but difficulty to take it all in as we were in a drift current that whisked us along the coral wall at a rate of knots. I had my first opportunity to try out my Christmas present from Santa (Alison) – a new camera with an underwater housing. My old dive camera has been a real pain in the next virtually since day one, and totally unreliable. Thankfully the new one performed impeccably and the quality of the pictures was excellent, even if the content left something to be desired. Still, plenty of opportunity for improvement in my technique over the next few days in Bunaken.