The Stranger with the Black Cape

Somewhere out there, a mysterious stranger lurks...

I couldn't sleep well that night as I knew I had to wake early. I was planning on meeting Peter, a swiss fellow with kids at Green School, for a dive out at a small island off Bali, Nusa Penida. To get down to Sanur where the dive shop is from Sayan up near Ubud is not as simple as it seems. This was the first time i went down to the coast without a driver, on the scooter. I had the memories of being a passenger on that trip before, I had a full tank of gas - so I guess I was ready. I did have to quickly turn around a come back for my PADI registration which I left at home though!

It turned out that despite that lapse, my memory did not fail and I managed to find my way into the motorcycle morning commuter traffic heading down the mountain towards Sanur. I managed to turn the right way at all the intersections and i didn't even get pulled over by the cops (we keep hearing stories of foreigners getting pulled over and fleeced for petty cash by the police whenever someone tries to venture out of Ubud on the scooters).

I did get a little lost looking for the dive shop but eventually found it in the laid back resort town of Sanur. I thought I was late but Peter arrived about 5 minutes later so i guess I was on time. It turns out that people in Bali are generally on time and there is no "island time" phenomena where everything starts 30 minutes late.

Peter is a very friendly man who works in the pharmaceutical industry. Currently he's working on establishing relations between Swiss pharmaceutical companies in the asia-pacific region. He's also a master diver. I on the other hand had only done 7 dives up to this point.

After getting our equipment together we piled into the boat, I took a gravol and we pitched and rolled across the Lombok Strait for an hour heading to Nusa Penida. Fortunately no one got sick.

When we finally got our tanks on and got into the water I felt relieved. Wearing a wet suit in the sun with a tank on in a rocking boat is a challenge. The signal to go down was given by my diving guide and down we went. We had one guide each. the more experienced Wayan went down with Peter and I followed James, an ex-british army man who had just finished his dive master course. Within minutes we were in another world.

For any one who has not been diving in the tropics, this is certainly worth putting on your bucket list (what to do before you kick the bucket!). First there's the quiet, then the sound of the scuba Darth Vader like breathing and bubbling, then there's the feeling of flying as you rise and fall in the water - and then there's the reef with hundreds of colorful fish.

We were down for about a half hour before we saw the first big fish, a white tipped reef shark quickly scurried away after seeing us. The divers down here do not seem to be worried about larger sharks. A short time later we saw the Manta rays.

These huge creatures contrast with everything else down there. They look like birds flying in slow motion, with a hint of batman or the man with the dark cape in Amadeus. The slow and graceful fluttering of the rays wings is spell binding. They apparently come up out of the deep sea to Manta point for feeding and gather at cleaning stations to rid themselves of small parasite fish that attach to their large black surface. The largest one ever recorded was 22 feet from wing tip to tip. The ones we say were at least 12 feet across. At least they looked huge.

You may remember that Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin died after being stung by a Sting Ray - Manta Rays do not sting. They have a very long tail but it does not have the lethal poison of the sting ray.

As I watched the Manta Ray swim away I was struck with awe and amazed at how beautiful these animals are. As I was losing myself in my reverie, our guide looked at me at signaled that we would be beginning our assent. He also pointed at his watch which was reading 24 degrees celcius - for Indonesians that is cold water. We slowly ascended and left the black cloaked giants, looking like some gallant heroes from an Emile Bronte novel riding slow-mo into the sea below.