21 February 20:03

I think we have finally come to the vacation mode where we don’t mind spending the morning in the hotel room and on the balcony just relaxing, going through photos and videos. And reading some. Our dive today didn’t start until 14:00. We thought it might be worth seeing a new divesite and not just diving with sharks. It was an okay dive, but we have definitely had better ones. Both here and in Indonesia.

This dive was a soft coral pinnacle, and sure enough, there were so many soft coral on the bottom at 24m. Many cool seastars as usual, we saw a pygmy seahorse, a cow fish which are so cool. I also found a dive writing board that one of the divemasters took since he didn’t have one. I also found a silicone muffin form that I brought up to the surface and threw away. I pick up everything I see and I’m so glad it isn’t too much at these dive sites.

The visibility was really bad, only like 10m. At Kimud Shoal, we had around 40m and on Gili Trawangan it was always 50+, on all dives. So the last three dives have not been optimal. Mikael is consuming much more air than normal probably due to stress of not seeing. What if we missed a whale shark today in the distance because we couldn’t see?

Pygmy seahorses. Somewhere in this picture!

Cow fish

Mikael, I and one of the divemasters ascended earlier due to Mikael running out of air. At the surface there was a pretty strong current and I started drifting away from the boat. But it worked out fine. We circled around for like 10minutes before the other ones surfaced. On the way back, on the waves, we saw lots of fly fish and we decided to skip the night dive today because Mikael has been feeling a bit off the past few nights. I think the divemaster looked a bit disappointed for the last minute cancellation, but not feeling okay while diving is not good. So we signed up for thresher shark dives tomorrow at 5am and a night dive at 17:30. It’s our last day of diving so we will max it! No matter what. The Kimud Shoal dive starts at 5am because they are going to Gato Island also. We thought about signing up for both of those big trips, but 4 dives in one day? On two divesites that are in the opposites directions. We both don’t feel 100% on these boat rides and forcing 4 dives out of our last diving day doesn’t quite feel alluring. Even if we want to give Gato another chance, I just don’t really see it being worth it. So Kimud Shoal and thresher sharks and our first night dive sounds like a good last day of diving.

Dinner once again at our new favorite restaurant, Villa Potenciana with leftovers for tomorrow’s breakfast. I can’t believe our alarms will go off at 4am, haha! And we’re on vacation, crazy people.

Today’s sunset looked like Mordor.