We’ve been at the Pondak Sari hotel in Pemuteran for the past 4 nights. Pondak Sari has the lowest prices of all the beachfront places, but also has the best beachfront, with coral rebuilding project just a few meters to the left in front of an adjoining hotel, and by far that largest and most interesting pool, complete with Buddah statue island and underwater lighting for night swimming. Unfortunately there is no sunken poolside bar, but you can’t have it all.

I’ve been suffering from some sort of upper respiratory ailment that slowly worsened, until I broke out the Cipro two days ago. I’m still coughing up a little yummy stuff, but it doesn’t ache anymore, and feels lots better. Unfortunately Julia has come down with some other sort of ailment that makes her feel like throwing up. We’re hoping for a quick recovery.

The coral: 15 years ago there was an unusually warm current that brought out an unusual quantity of coral eating starfish. Combined with the innovation of bomb-fishing, the coral in front of Pemuteran was all killed. For the past 9 years there has been a WWF sponsored coral rebuilding program, they dropped metal cages into the water with live coral strapped to it, then rigged it up with 15volts of dc, which causes the coral to grow 5 times faster than normal. Sadly, coral grows slowly, so 5X a small number is still a pretty small number. Its nice to see some coral out there, but its like a bunch of potted plants, it makes me appreciate the lagoon near padang-bai, where the different coral forms were all interwoven in a beautiful way. Also, its not so nice snorkeling above what look like a bunch of dumped radar antennas and a large sat-tv dish. Finally, there is quite a bit of garbage in the water and the water is murky from rainy season, so I’d give it a 4 on the snorkeling scale, saved by the fish, which abound.

On the good side, Wayan is swimming really well, including underwater, so I rented some fins, snorkel and mask for him to practice with in the pool. He took to them quickly, really just an hour of practice and he was ready to hit the ocean. I made him wear his floaty-suit, and he held onto my arm the whole time, but he was amazed by what he saw - especially the sea urchins hiding under the rocks, and the schools of colored fish, and a large fish being groomed by smaller fish.

I was pretty fortunate to learn to snorkel in Fiji, where in hindsight there was insane water visibility, and endless fields of coral right off the beach from the hotel. Here off the hotel the coral is pretty sparse and the water is pretty murky; in the late afternoon we had about 10 meters of visibility. I guess wayan has something to look forward to, lets home we can find him some decent snorkeling.

I’m tempted to take a boat today over to Majangan Island, in the Bali Park, there are all sorts of unusual critters that live in the water there, but I guess we won’t because Wayan still isn’t adept at clearing his mask, Niels isn’t old enough to snorkle, Julia is sick, and Wendy can’t swim. Maybe next time.