Diving Kadidiri - Day 4Sep 19, 2009
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Coral garden at Dominic Rock dive site.
Me diving in the coral garden at Dominic Rock dive site.
Bannerfish
It is 9:30 at night, and i'm sitting in the dining and common area here at Kadidiri Paradise Resort. Since dinner, I have spent a significant amount of time with several others working out the logistics in connection with our trip out of the Togean Islands and to the port of Ampana in Central Sulawesi. As none of the locals here have been able to discern exactly when the ferries will run again, but we are hearing that all ferries running through Kadidiri to Ampana may be canceled - no one is quite sure - for all of next week on account of Eid-ul-Fitr, we are taking matters into our own hands, so to speak.
Here's what we've organized. Tomorrow a group of us, consisting of Vikki and I, an English couple - Imagen and Andy - and a Czech couple - Tomasz and Renata - will do an afternoon dive at Atoll, an atoll with a number of dive sites fairly far from here. Atoll lies not to far from the island of Bomba, the last island in the Togean Island chain and the one closest to Ampana. From here, boats run far more regularly to Ampana and charter boats are easier to obtain. Therefore, we will take all of our bags with us on tomorrow's dive, dive at Atoll and thereafter have our dive boat ferry us to Bomba. We'll either stay a day or two in Bomba or, to the extent a ferry is running, head on the first ferry to Ampana. We're having to pay a bit extra for tomorrow's dive, given it is a pretty far ride to get there, but this will bring us one step closer out of the Togean Islands. Admittedly, there are a lot of moving parts here, so i'm not sure the logistics will work. Given that we might otherwise be stranded here an extra week or so, though, it's worth giving this plan a shot.
Things here at Kadidiri Paradise Resort have been quiet today. It is operating with only a skeleton staff, as most of the employees have gone home for Eid-ul-Fitr. Unfortunately, this is having ramifications on our diving. When Vikki and I showed up at the dive center this morning, we learned that the boat driver had gone home for Eid. As such, we couldn't do a dive this morning. The divemaster here, a Frenchman named Bertrand, managed to rustle up an alternate boat driver so we could do an afternoon dive today at the nearby dive site of Dominic Rock, but things are sketchy as to whether there will be a full diving schedule next week anyway. Apparently, the week during which Eid-ul-Fitr occurs is the equivalent of the week between Christmas and New Year's in the west where much of business as usual simply ceases. No one can simply tell us...
Anyway, we returned this afternoon to Dominic Rock for our last dive while staying here on Kadidiri. We went to around 30 meters during the dive, and this resulted in it being somewhat shorter than most of our more recent dives - 36 minutes. A great dive, however, with lots of fish and good visibility...
Tomorrow morning there is no one to drive the dive boat, so our sole dive will be our dive en route to Bomba. So tomorrow morning I imagine we'll simply relax and enjoy our final hours on Kadidiri. I'm really hoping that our plan to get to Bomba works out. While i've really liked staying here at Kadidiri Paradise Resort, we don't want to stay for what could be another week or so.