And now for the Trip Report
My buddy Kerstin and I left Dubai at approximately 02:30 on Friday 30th September and arrived at Denpasar at around 15:30, there's a four hour time difference so approximately a nine hour flight.
We were meeting up with Kerstin's nephew at the airport and all travelling together to Villa Alba (VA). Hs flight from Germany via Taiwan arriving two hours before us.
We had four queues to deal with:
1. Health check for Covid Vaccination status. This took approximately five minutes
2. Visa on Arrival to purchase the visa. This took approximately 35 minutes.
3. Immigration. This took two and a half hours
After immigration we found Kerstin's nephew in the baggage reclaim waiting for us. Our bags were already off the carousel so no need to wait.
4. Customs queue. I had completed an online customs form but was unable to print off the barcode as I don't have access to a printer. I did have a screenshot though on my phone. However they required a paper form to be completed, and another 20 mins passed as I completed this in the queue.
So in total three and a half hours just to get out of the airport.
The VA driver was patiently waiting for us and he recognised me from my previous trip last May.
We stopped at a petrol station for some snacks for the three hour drive to VA arriving just before 22:00.
Off the other three who arrived earlier that day, only G83 was awake. WE had a beer and some food then crashed out around 23:00.
On the Saturday morning Kerstin and I were up early to assemble our dive and camera equipment. The plan was for the first dive on the house reef at around 09:00.
Happily to report that the pygmy seahorse is still there at 22m and the reef still very healthy looking. Loads of fish and of course nudibranchs
The pygmy seahorse shot was taken using 105mm lens with a +10 diopter, in fact I used this set up for most of the dives and was shooting macro all of the time.
One of several small frogfish on the house reef
After the dive we had lunch then headed to Seraya where
@outofofficebrb popped her Harlequin Shrimp cherry.
Loads of shrimps to photograph too
So that's it for Day 1 of diving