Eleven days of heaven onboard the Damai! It's a 5-star floating hotel with beautiful rooms, a crew of 18 to cater to the 10 guests' needs, 4 dive guides for the divers, food that could easily be served in any fine restaurant anywhere in the world! Wow, it was an amazing trip!

From the black sand "muck" dives in Ambon right under the main pier with eels, frogfish, shrimp, gobies and lots of other critters to the schools of jacks and snapper circling around us....then on to Air Laut & Banda to dive coral slopes, sheer walls, hard coral gardens and more sandy rubble slopes looking for critters! Off the island of Banda we dove the volcano lava slope. The hard coral gardens there are acres and acres of gorgeous, unbleached, corals. Scientists have been amazed at the sheer amount of the numerous varieties of hard corals that have covered this slope in a little more than 20 years since the last eruption! While on Banda, Paul & I took a break from diving to visit the little town of Banda Nasaira and a lovely spice plantation, the local Museum and the Dutch fort built in the early 1600's! We saw cinnamon trees, nutmeg trees, almond &cocoa trees and other amazing growing spices. I bought a bag of nutmeg, mace, cinnamon and nutmeg candy for just under $10!

After leaving Banda we visited Koon, Run (roon), Momon and then finally arrived at Triton Bay. We visited a fabulous waterfall along the shore, saw petroglyphs carved into the limestone wall 40' above the waterline from many hundreds of years ago and, of course, did our last 3-1/2 days of diving the fabulous dive sites there. Larry's Heaven, GT Rock, Tim Rock, Davids' Rock, Little Komodo and a few exploratory "green wall" dives were logged in Triton Bay. Lots of critters were seen, huge schools of fish including some of the largest varieties of sweetlips surrounded us at times and the hard and especially soft corals were gorgeous. Everyone was excited to see "wobblies" (woebbegong sharks) under a lot of the coral heads, some blue-spotted stingrays and too many creatures to name. Another one of the highlights was a great encounter with a blue ring octopus as well. You name it, we saw it here! It's not easy to get to/from but the diving is amazing!

Yesterday was a long day of travel...from Kaimana to Ambon to Makkasar to Manado..none of the flights are longer than 1-1/2 hours but the waiting times in hot, un-air-conditioned airports make it seem longer! We were happy to get back to the Novatel in Manado last night and snuggle into a comfortable bed after a long, cool shower! This morning we're just hanging around the hotel until late morning when we all make our way back to the Manado airport for our flight to Singapore and then we'll all split up for our homeward journeys. It was a wonderful group to spend 3 weeks with...we had a lot of fun, good food, great drinks and amazing diving! Next trip onboard the Damai is this coming November and we can't wait to get back!

Terima kasih to Capt. Alwi; our always smiling First Officer, Sofian; Chief Engineer Joko; our 3 wonderful chefs, Rudy, Wayan, & Brida, our skiff drivers Udin, Sabang; our masseuse Hendrik; our 3 engineers Indra, Achmadun & Holan who kept our rooms cool and the compressors running smoothly; our wonderful "restaurant stewards", Ketut & Kadek, who remembered all our weird meal requests and served us always smiling; our fabulous dive guides Ketut, Chris & Inyo (with the AMAZING critter eyes) and, of course, last but not least our Cruise Director, Mike Veitch! You dealt with all the little and big glitches seamlessly and with great Canadian humour! See you all again in November...sempa jumpa lagi!