Our new, and unwelcome, alarm clock was the sound of Japanese children thrashing around in the pool just feet from our bed. Unsurprisingly neither Bob or I felt as excited about being awake as they were but we mobilised, had breakfast and skipped to scuba school with the expected nervous excitement that preceded our first open water dive. Christopher (late) offered around bottles of 'sweat' as we boarded the 'minibus-of-doom' and the driver set off with the mindset that everybody else on the road must also be heading to Tulamben and therefore must be overtaken, so preventing the dive site from running out of fish. We dodged, ducked and weaved through heavy traffic, never more than 1 foot away from crashing into the car, van, moped or stray dog in front with the engine revving at a very uncomfortable level. Eventually we progressed onto more free moving roads but this was a mixed blessing because it gave Mad Max the momentum to pull off higher speed manoeuvres, including the blind curving uphill summit overtake of a convoy of 4 trucks, scattering blaring scooters to the verges and making Bob focus very hard on her kindle.

Beyond the immediate chaos, which was enthralling, our road became a tunnel of leafy trees surrounded by lush paddy fields, with palm trees shooting up in lines on their banks. In the misty background, steeply wooded volcanic mountains loomed and, as we entered their foothills, the paddy fields gave way to forest and temples but the serenity of the landscape was no indication for the one van demolition derby to slow down.

After 2.5 hours, with our adrenal glands aching, we mercifully arrived on the north coast of Bali in Tulamben. We were briefed and kitted up on a hotel's patio, overlooking the sea and then waddled along the pumice beach to our entry point where, despite our drivers best efforts, some other divers had arrived before us...

We buddy checked each other and Bob was like an excitable sprite entering the water and descending into a stark volcanic underwater desert. Farish took us through a few drills before we set off to explore. The ground sloped away leaving behind its spattering of dull brown Guppys and suddenly we were flying towards the hulking bow of the previously mighty USAT Liberty and it was hard to keep the regulator in my mouth for smiling with excitement. The marine life was incredible and the dark sand changed to a rainbow of corals, anenomes. More fish than I have ever seen were curling, darting and drifting between the bulkheads, capstans and hatches of the old US naval transport ship which had been beached here after being torpedoed by the Japenese, before a subsequent volcanic eruption submerged its rusty bulk in the 60's.

We zoomed around for roughly twenty minutes, which felt like an age, descending to around 14m, negotiating our cumbersome tanks between the corals, spotting clown fish and great banks of retracting reed eels before surfacing in a splutter of superlatives. Christopher was not feeling so good and fed the fishes for a while, but we eventually dragged our waterlogged bodies out of the sea and up for lunch. We returned for a second dive which was just as spectacular but involved a few less pleasant drills including clearing a fully flooded mask. We got right into the wreck this time and the experience was incredible.

On top of the world we came ashore, dried off and boarded our bus to return to Sanur. Unfortunately the afternoon rain had arrived and the now wet roads did not slow the driver's attempts to write off the bus and we swerved all over the slick, oily Tarmac, past poncho clad scooters and past a pick up full of fully grown pigs in wicker baskets! Farish wisely busied himself marking our exam papers and proudly announced that we had passed the theory with flying colours.

After some nifty reversing, and one mercifully small collision, we were back in Sanur where we headed back to the hotel to pack. We had an amazing supper of yellowfin tuna with a basil sauce and king prawn linguini before returning to watch the Penguins of Madagascar.