West Timor, Sulawesi, September -October 2004

Getting back into Indonesia, visas at last in hand (two months...thank you Kermi) and in our least favourite spot of Indonesia, Shit kicking Kupang again to try and get a flight out to anywhere else...
boat to nearest islands run once a fortnight, .no flights availble for five days...
We eventually got to Sulawesi via Surabaya, arrived in Gorontalo to discover the once weekly boat had just left and rather than spend even more time hanging around in half arsed provincial towns, we headed to the Togean islands the long way round.

By the time we got there in need of a break and settled in for three weeks of wonderful snorkelling, great company and dangerously trippy cheap rum. Out on the diveboat almost eery day for world class snorkling over barrier, atoll and fringe reefs. Best snorkling we've ever experienced : swimming with eagle rays, surprising a barracuda, meeting a lionfish and regularily running into a whole host of underwater beauties, favourites being the Oriental Sweetlips and huge bumpheads, least favourite being the odd jellyfish and all the seasnakes dozing in the sea grass just outside the huts.

There's even a little story to sum it all up...
the day we arrived on Kadidiri we sat down and had a drink looking out onto the sea... Suddenly a black marlin dives out of the sea in the distance, first thing we saw.. and thought, this is gonna be great...
three weeks later, countless underwater encounters later and our final day we're all leaving on mass with our new found friends on the boat out of Wakai... it's chugs back past Kadidiri island and all the staff, Wolf the divemaster, Scuba and Bajo the dogs are all running along the beach waving and shouting, flapping big sheets and flags in the airand seeing us off.
It was a really touching send off when suddenly the Marlin leaps out of the sea between our boat and the island...
a very cheesy Hollywood style moment as we leave the island with the sun going down. Too perfect to be true but hat summed up our stay there.