Diving in Candi Dasa, Bali

After getting my diving certificate in Koh Tao, Thailand, Bali was an exciting stop for us. The diving and snorkelling is known to be absolutely breathtaking here. When covid shut down diving for a period of time during our stay in Bali, there was a bit of time between my first time and our next dives. I had to get comfortable again. This did not take long as we were all very excited to get back under the water.

Normally when diving you have one buddy during a dive that you double check your gear with and watch for during your dive. We however were an awesome group of 4 that would switch out buddies all the time (Josie, Ruben, Ryan and myself), yes we knew our main buddy was our spouse. However if we were closer to someone else and needed help or saw something worth noting, there was no problem communicating and being a team or bro beans. The four of us had now been diving together for over a month and were aware of each other's strengths, weaknesses and fears (yes, I am a baby).

After diving in Amed and seeing what great sights Amed and surrounding area had to offer, we started looking into diving in the Candi Dasa area. This was for one main reason, to go to Manta point to see the Manta Rays. We took a day and walked around Candadisa and looked at the dive shops, spoke with different guides/instructors until we found one we all clicked with. The dive ship is called "Benthouse" and our guide was Pabalo, he showed us a map they had painted on the wall of all the local dive sites and Manta point. We were instantly all over Manta point and wanting that to be our first site and booked our dive for the following weekend.

Photo Credit: Ruben

The waves were rough getting off the dock and that set the mood for the entire dive. We were going from Bali over to Lombok down by Blongas to dive at Manta Point. When we reached the channel in the boat the waves were ove 20 ft tall and in a small dive boat this was challenging. It took close over 30 minutes to get through the channel to Manta Point, for the boat captain to then say " that he had never seen waves this big before". Then Pabolo looked out at the waves and then back to us asked if we wanted to try. I said no (I couldn't figure out how to get into the water or let alone out with all my gear safely), Josie said no and the boys even said no after the captain's comment, getting into the water would have been a challenge, the waves were massive and the swells would have pushed us around to the point of no visibility and making it a dangerous situation.

As a result we cancelled the Manta Point dive and decided to do a drift dive on the other side of the island closer to Labuhanpon, however we had to go back through the channel to get there first. I will never forget these waves or this boat ride, there were points I did not think we were going to make it. When we did reach the end of the channel and started towards our next dive site SD Nusa Penida, the quiet tension left the boat and everyone breathed a bit easier laughing and starting to loosen up, becoming our normal diving brobeans of laughs, jokes and chirps.

We did two different dives at Nusa Penida SD and Nusa Penida PED. These were beautiful drift dives (floating with the current) seeing the brightly coloured coral, fish and lots of sea turtles. Everyone else was numb to seeing sea turtles at this point in our diving because we saw them every single dive, but I still found them beautiful, graceful and just spectacular to watch glide through the water. These two dives seemed so uneventful from the start of our dive excursion and you feel the disappointment amongst us all because of the conditions at Manta Point, however we made the best of the dives and enjoyed it.

When we returned back to the dive shop, we agreed we wanted to go out the following weekend and booked right away to go out on the Saturday to the small islands close to the beach by our place. Pabolo told us we should see lots of sharks here and sometimes MAYBE even Manta Rays.

The next weekend we got up and walked to the dive shop only to turn around and walk right past our place a few minutes later with Pablo to meet our boat to head for Gili Melnpang and Gili Tepekong, these were fun dives. No current, no drifting, just easy fun with the hope of seeing Manta Rays or sharks. We had maybe been in the water 5 minutes when our first reef shark crossed our path, this was at Gili Melnpang.

Everyone was pumped up about the sharks (1 out of 2 creatures we wanted to see), we were buzzing to get back under at Gili Tepekong hoping that Manta Rays would be waiting for us. You could feel the excitement and energy as we descended for our second dive of the day, between the rock faces we went into the deep blue looking for Manta Rays. As the dive progressed we passed sea turtles and fish going about their lives. Then we came across a section for coral that had 6 white tip reef sharks just hanging out.

Not only did we get to spend a good amount of time watching these majestic creatures swimming through the coral, some of the footage that Ruben got on his GoPro was astounding (video below). This would be our final dive in the Candi Dasa area for a month before leaving Bali, this dive did not disappoint in the slightest even if we did not see Manta Rays.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/05f7d2_c17a7d22ce064c8e832b9ef816bbe8df/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Video Credit: Ruben

Later on in our trip after doing our scooter ride around the entire island of Bali for a few days in August, we had a dive planned 5 days before flying back home to Canada. Unfortunately for me, there was a small scooter accident that left me bed riden and unable to dive or really do anything for our remaining days in Bali.

Ryan, Ruben and Josie did get to try and go to Manta Point again. This time they did get to descend and start the dive, but due to visibility conditions the dive got cancelled and they moved on to other dive sites.

If you are in Candi Dasa area or Lombok and wait to see some beautiful coral reefs and watch the turtles, fish and other marine life swimming around you should take the time to dive or even go snorkelling in this area. You may have better luck than us four and if you get the chance to go to Manta Point and see the Manta Rays first hand I hope it is everything I have heard it to be.

Cheers!

**Please note that all opinions and views expressed in this post are my own, from my own experiences. If you would like to see more pictures follow me on Instagram vikki.gray **