Day 59 / Tag 59 Wed. May 10 Bunaken to Lembeh

Smooth traveling with Bastianos Transport: Bunaken to Manado by boat,

Bunaken village with mosque and church

Manado is a dirty old town

at Manado Pier

the typical Manado bus

School's out

North Sulawesi, christian land

 Minibus from Manado to Bitung on the East Coast,

the road

Bitung is an even dirtier older town...

outskirts of Bitung

Bitung port

Bitung port

Bitung port

road to Bitung port

boat from Bitung to Lembeh Island, crossing the Lembeh Strait.

I arrive more or less at lunch time.

A group of Spanish is already there. I have lunch with the two Singaporians Elyne and Charlton, who I know from Bunaken already. They arrived yesterday, Elyne is „upset“, there is no beach at Lembeh Resort ;-) , but great muck diving.
Since I don’t dive today, I have an early Bintang and a lazy afternoon. Later, Gemma arrives. She organizes the tour to Raja Ampat and is the cruise director, together with Eduardo, who will arrive late at night, due to missing a flight in Kuala Lumpur (this sounds familiar to me, somehow…;-))


Thomas, the swiss Resort Manager gives Gemma and me a resort briefing.
WiFi is slightly better than at Bunaken. Good, I want to finish that Sipadan blogpost!
I check into my room, luckily made an upgrade to AC, so I get room number 8 with beautiful view from my balcony over the Lembeh Strait.

The Lembeh Straits as seen from my room

For dinner I join the spanish group, who will be my travel companions for the next ten days. It is hard for me to follow the conversation, my spanish got a bit rusty, covered by the many different flavors of English I hear during the last weeks.
So many new faces and names to memorize…
Set up Equipment and to bed early. Start diving tomorrow. This guy will wake me up:

 

See you under water