RAJA AMPAT, IN WHICH WE LOOK AT AND EAT A LOT OF FISH

We have just returned from 10 nights in the stunningly beautiful area of Raja Ampat off the Bird'sHead (Vogelkop) of western Papua. Imagine for a moment the scenes of brilliant, sunny, blue and turquoise waters over white sand beaches beneath palm trees; the sort of thing they put on posters to mount on the ceilings above dentists' chairs so that you can look at something dreamy and distant while a dental hygienist scrapes away at your gums. Raja Ampat was like that (but with no gum scrapping): dreamily brilliant blue and turquoise and white, complete with palm trees leaning over the beach, but... real. How do you even begin to describe that? (Without feeble references to dental office posters that is?) My main concern, heading into this blog, is a dearth of appropriate adjectives I can use to describe the place. "Beautiful" doesn't really cut it and I'm at risk of over-using it anyway. Other options would include "gorgeous" or "stunning" but even so, what are these next to a picture? I'll include what pictures I can, and let them do what my paltry adjectives cannot.

We stayed at two homestays, four nights at a place called Kordiris on Gaam Island, and six nights at a place called Koranu Fyak on Kri Island. Liveaboards are another option for visiting Raja Ampat, but not for the likes of humble, poor, workaday teachers like Nicole and myself. Even so, our homestays were expensive compared to the usual price of homestays in Indonesia. Accommodation was very simple. We slept on mattresses (comfortable enough) under mosquito nets in thatched, bamboo huts with wooden planks as the floor. Every lunch and dinner consisted of a big colander of rice, and more often than not fish and boiled spinach or another vegetable. Once we got chicken (we think; it was hard to identify exactly,) squid another and beef one other time, but otherwise it was fish, fish, and more fish. Usually they would serve us some new fish for one meal and at the next lunch or supper it would be refried, and then it would make one final appearance, dressed up heavily in some sort of sauce for a third meal. The first couple of days I felt hungry a lot because of the low calorie meals and no snacks, but I guess I got used to it after a while. (Did get a bit tired of fish/rice/spinach though.) The bathrooms consisted of squatters and non-flush toilets, and also mandis, or bucket showers, which were new for me. For the mandis, you just scoop water to pour over yourself. I came to appreciate them quickly; you tend to use a lot less water that way. Most Indonesians shower that way anyway. We also had phone service (but no WiFi) and varying amounts of electricity, depending on how long they let the generator run.

Our days were spent lounging about and snorkeling for the most part. I didn't go diving at our first homestay because their operation looked just too small and unprofessional, but I did at the second homestay. Actually just walked down the beach from Koranu to Yenkoranu, owned by the cousins of Koranu. (Someone told us there are just four main extended families in this area of Raja Ampat.) Yenkoranu had a larger operation and there were some Americans and Europeans there whose brains I picked as to the safety and professionalism. Hearing only good things, I went for a dive that day, and what a dive it was! Diving in Raja Ampat might spoil me for life, I'm afraid. I saw so many fish! It's not just the variety, because the variety was amazing. I've never seen so many different, colorful, vibrant, interesting fish of different shapes and sizes. But beyond the variety, it was the quantity! Schools upon schools of fish. Hundreds in some schools, thousands when it came to the little fish. On the first dive, I saw two schools of barracudas, reef sharks, and had a triggerfish try to attack me.

When I tried to go back to Yenkoranu for another dive later that week, I was told that they couldn't take me, that I'd have to use the dive shop at my own homestay. Because they are related, they are a little touchy about business, not wanting steal each other's customers and create bad blood between them. (At one point in time, we asked if we could move to  Yenkoranu - this is an entirely different story - and were told no. Even though they had room, we had to stay at Koranu Fyak because we were already doing business with them. I understand it's to do with family relations, but it doesn't make for a great business model.) Anyway, we eventually got some new neighbors at Koranu. The day our middle-aged German neighbor, Lutz, moved out, we got Ava and Eric, an American couple about our same age. They had been working in Australia and were now traveling in Indonesia. I enjoyed their company a lot and found it easy to get on with them right away. They went diving several days in a row, and found everything to be fine, so I joined them on our last full day, along with our most recent neighbor, Alex, a Malaysian living in New Zealand, who had arrived the day before. I did three dives that day, and they were all great. Some of the highlights included a Napoleon fish (they're big!), a giant clam, extensive fan coral, turtles, nudibranches, sharks, pipefish, and most amusing of all, fat old sea cucumbers and a comical looking flounder that looked like a piece of carpet shuffling on the sea floor with barnacles for eyes. I'm always surprised by how big and fat the sea cucumbers are. Before I knew any better, I had always naively assumed that sea cucumbers were the size of, you know, garden cucumbers. Instead they are like monstrously fat, primordial sea slugs, a foot or two long, and maybe four or six or more inches in diameter.

I am so glad I learned how to dive. It feels awesome to be able to explore underwater. Sure, the descent is always a little scary, and so is relying on so much equipment just to breathe and see and maintain buoyancy, but being able to explore reefs and see fish, sea cucumbers, nudibranches, turtles, and sharks in their natural habitat is very cool.

Besides the diving, the highlight of Raja Ampat was the trip to the Fam Islands. We went with three other guests from Yenkoranu: Marina and Jack, a Canadian-Australian couple, and Bastian, from Germany. It was an all day excursion. Our first stop was called Manta Sandy, where you can sometimes see manta rays, but we were not so lucky, seeing as it was low season for them. We then went snorkeling at a place called Fam Wall, which offered a lot to see underwater. Before lunch, we stopped at a lookout place called Pianemo. This looked like what you might see if Google "Raja Ampat": island clusters, almost like mushrooms, surrounded by a turquoise-blue bay. It was so picturesque, it was hard not to continually snap photos, knowing they would all end up looking the same. After drinking in the sight for a while, we descended to the dock (apparently the president is coming to visit soon, so it's been decently built up) and jumped into the bay and swam a bit. It was very salty - we floated with ease.

We had lunch on a little, unfortunately litter- strewn island. For all its charms, Raja Ampat is not free of litter. At this point, I don't think I will find a litter-free place in Indonesia. There were some monitor lizards scrounging about, and we watched them (although I hate the way they move, it creeps me out.) With monitor lizards scrounging further afield, we all safely took naps on the beach.

The last snorkeling spot was the best of the day, in my opinion. Melissa's Garden was too choppy, and the current too strong, so we moved on to Amborek village. We walked around the village a bit and then swam at the jetty. There were cool things to see like big old lionfish, a lobster, and even a black and white polka dot fish! I really did see one! It was the craziest thing. It was white with perfectly round, black dots. (A Google search tells me it might have been a Panther Grouper.) But the most impressive thing was the number of fish. Like my first dive, there were so many schools of fish. They clustered around the jetty in the hundreds and thousands, swimming together in huge streams, flashing silver every once in a while. The best was to swim down and come up through them, like parting a solid curtain of silver-blue fish as they squirmed and flashed away. I never got tired of that. Diving was awesome, and it's hard to hold a candle to the Pianemo lookout, but the Amborek jetty ties at least, in my humble opinion.

The Fam Islands trip was the day before my birthday. The next day was my golden birthday. I'm 25! I'm one-quarter of a century old and officially an old geezer. (Pretty sure I'll say that next year too.) The best part of the day was snorkeling by our homestay and seeing a big, leatherback turtle, swimming lazily along the reef. I saw turtles three days in a row, starting that day. They're very fun to watch, taking their sweet time as they glide through the water.

All in all, Raja Ampat was calm and quiet. It's low season now (November being the high season). As you snorkel or go by boat along the shore, you see that it's still mostly undeveloped. Far more trees and empty stretches of beach than buildings. The homestays have a handful of cottages / shacks each, and they are in the process of building more, but even so, there are so few people, so little noise and light pollution. I could see the stars very clearly, and even the Milky Way, I think. I'd love to go back, it's easy to enjoy letting time slip by there, but it's hard to say if that will ever be  possibility. In the meantime, I've got all my photos and inadequate words to remember it by.