Amed and diving

  We have been in Amed for six days and so far it has been our favorite place of the entire trip. Our hotel (Puri Wirata) is the nicest we've stayed in with an ocean view, two pools, dive shop and good restaurant and only $48 per night. The climate in Amed, being on the ocean is pleasant with comfortable humidity and nice cool evenings. It is also very quiet by comparison to Ubud. There are nice restaurants and best of all the snorkeling and diving is fabulous (check out the dive pix at "http://gallery.me/jamesodba/100228"). There is only one two lane road through the town with very little traffic (90% motorscooter) and makes for a beautiful and cool afternoon motorscooter ride along the beaches and high cliffs past little villages and jungle and fields and the occasional chickens, dogs, cows, goats, pigs and kids waving and yelling "hallow!" as we pass.

We signed up for a scuba dive and because this is the low season we were the only ones so we had our own private dive and dive master. Lily really wants to see sea horses and makes a point to ask every dive shop if there are any and where they might be, but there aren't any or they don't know. However, this time the dive master said that he knew where one was!
We started the dive off the beach behind the Diver's Cafe and unlike most of the other beaches it was sandy and not all rocky. We had just started and were in less than ten feet of water, the bottom was still sandy with a few rocks here and there when the dive master signaled to look at something. OMG! A small seahorse about three inches long just sitting on the bottom! I gently picked it up and let it rest on Lily's hand; she was in heaven! It slowly started moving away and we let it get back to whatever seahorses do and continued on. As the bottom gradually dropped away there were large coral clusters with lots of schools of colorful fish moving around and solitary big fish just feeding and munching on the coral or just hanging out. An artificial reef had been made by dropping large concrete blocks in the water and over time they become covered with coral and the home to many varied creatures. The dive master knows the area very well and pointed out the inhabitants of each nook and cranny. There was large lion fishes with their poisonous feathery fins, stone fishes that are so well camouflaged that they look like coral with eyes.
As we continued we came to a large sea fan type of coral white with black marks and the dive master pointed to what seemed to be a little floating black piece of the the fan coral but as I got neared it started moving away. It was another type of seahorse that disguises itself as the coral it lives in. It looked like a little piece of black seaweed.
  The most amazing thing I saw was when the diver pointed out a section of coral. I couldn't see anything except the coral and then the dive master moved his pointer closer and like a magic trick; instantly the big lump of mottled coral turned into a large black octopus! It hesitated for a while and then with it's tentacles curled it jetted away. Unfortunately the camera battery had died minutes before, so you'll just have to take my word on this.
On Friday we left Amed for Candidasa that is along the east coast and has good snorkeling.