We're finally back in a wi-fi zone, so you are getting 'BOGO'...buy one update, get one free.

One of the items on our 'what I want to do on our summer vacation' list is diving, but for many reasons it hasn't happened until now. As it turns out, while diving is BIG in Indonesia, the best diving is in the Komodo area..and, that's where we are...so dive we did! The company with whom we booked is Manta Rhei Divers, and, they are excellent: very professional, state of the art equipment, and very well organized. The dive boats (from all companies) are all a little shaky looking, but ours did the job just fine. Yes, we did have to move from side to side while in transit to balance it, but that was a minor point. One of the big assets of this company was the plethora (I always like that word) of boat boys, always there to lend a hand and be helpful, whether for helping us on with our equipment, getting us back on the boat after the dive, or just serving us food and drink. We were on the boat for a 3 dive day. The price included breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack, as well as rental of all equipment. The food was excellent: Benny, the owner of the company owned a restaurant in Belgium for 17 years. His beef stew was superb. (For a price, I'll reveal his secret ingredient.)

The reefs here are, unlike most that we've seen in other dive sights, pristine. No dead coral! Everywhere you look, left, right, up and down, there is an intense display of gorgeous colors, not to mention fish, fish, fish...(yep, a plethora). We saw huge turtles, a white-tipped shark, trevalley, moray eels, scorpion fish, lion fish, the usual reef fish (angel fish, wrasses, etc) and, our farewell surprise, a bandit sea snake which slithered right in front of us. Some dive sights boast their coral; some take pride in their fish. Komodo has both. The dive masters were superb. Our buddy, Don, had never dived before, but Benny, the owner took him under his wing, hung with him one-on-one, and now Don is getting certified this week, and will be outfitting himself in Bali, which reputedly has excellent (American) equipment which just happens to be made in Indonesia, at great prices. Who knew!

You probably would have preferred to see a pic of the coral or fish instead of us lovelies but...we don't have an underwater camera...and a friend gave us this photo. It was the best we could do. His other pictures were all videos.