Beside the fact that my boat arrived at the second port on Nusa Lembongan and not at the main one, made my meeting up with Sandra a bit tricky as she was waiting for me at the wrong place which also made me walk for nothing in the heat and take a scooter ride. Sandra was waiting for me at the homestay. She had not changed and nothing between us had changed. As if these 12 years without seeing each other had not happened.

After settling in the homestay, we went to the dive shop Sandra was diving with, to check when we could go diving. The next day was booked ! After lunch, I went to Two Fish Divers for my interview. Bryce welcomed me very warmly and the interview went really well I think. Yes I can dive for 75 minutes, yes I have experience in drift diving and yep, PADI standards and procedures will be respected with me.

We stayed a couple of nights at Deany's, our homestay before moving to Secret Garden. This new place had a swimming pool and we would pay less if we shared a room there, so we went there for the remaining of our stay, 3 nights. And because there's nothing much to do at night in Nusa Lembongan, we used to go to sleep very early and go diving, riding our bike and wander around for our entire stay.

About the diving, it was incredible. The corals are well alive and healthy. Very impressive and heart warming. On our first day we did SD Point and Toyapakeh. Both coral dives. Gorgeous. The only down bit behing that the current in Toyapakeh was extremely strong !! And the boat didn't drop us off close enough to the beginning of the dive site which made us swim against the current for the first 10 minutes of the dive and waste air and energy.

The next day we went to Manta Bay and Crystal Bay. We wanted to see mantas, we saw mantas. The dive site was only 10m deep at the deepest. So easy dive, only with a bit of surge but nothing major. We first saw 4 or 5 mantas from the surface so we knew they were there. When we jumped in, we didn't see much more to start with, looking from one manta to the other, peacefully, quietly.All of a sudden, more mantas joined the first pod and we ended up with about 15 of them, swimming around us and we didn't know where to look. I am and always will be amazed by these beautiful giant 'flyers'...

The second dive (on Crystal Bay) was very different and extremely interesting ! We went down along a sandy bottom and found there many different fish and creatures like a cow fish, a few eels, then moved along and found many nudibranches, schools of small fish. We also saw a massive puffer fish, and smaller ones too. As we came back the same way I spotted the smallest scorpion fish I've ever seen (about 7cm long) and the DM showed us a stone fish hidding close to the mooring line. I really loved this dive site !!

We had a break the next day as Sandra's ear started being painful and went for a scooter ride to Cenangan. There was nothing much to do or to see there but a scooter ride is always great !

On our day before last on Nusa Lembongan we went back diving. And because there was only the 2 of us on the boat, we got to decide where we wanted to go. So we went back to Crystal Bay. I forgot to tell you that this dive site is famous for Mola Mola... And because we didn't see any on the first dive and also because we were closer to the full moon, we had more chance to see them that day. We didn't see as much as on our first dive there on that day but something stroke me: the thermocline.Frecking thermocline !! I know Mola Molas love cold water and that meant we were more likely to see one but when I saw that difference in water density, I knew I'd be freezing. And I was indeed freezing. With my 5.5mm wetsuit and my hooded top ! But no luck, no Mola Mola that day either. And it was our only dive of the day and last dive of our stay on Nusa Lembongan for Sandra's ear got really bad. I didn't wanna do the next dive as it'd save me money too.