Wednesday 24th January

Today is theoretically a day off, but I spend a lot of time catching up diary early in the morning. At 10.00 am we go for a dive at the Canyon, which is absolutely beautiful - the first dive we have had this time with the sun shining - it makes a real difference to the visibility and the rays of sunlight falling on the huge fan corals makes it really beautiful.

Mixing business with pleasure

We ring and book our hotel in Medan for the night of the 29th, while eating delicious tuna sandwiches washed down with cold milo and devise a complicated plan. Fadlullah of Muslim Aid has arranged for us to do an show at 4.15 this afternoon, at Kreung Raya (a temporary housing shelter we visited in April) but Haggis really wants to go on the 2nd dive at 2.00 which will be going to the wreck at Sabang Harbour and then a mini-dive at a site where a fissure has opened up on the seabed since the tsunami, where hot water bubbles out. Can we do both? Not really. By the time we get back to Gapang off the diveboat, showered and into a taxi with all the show stuff, and drive to Kreung Raya it would be at least 5.15 which is a bit late to start. How about if we don't come back to Gapang, but swim from the hot water bubble place to the shore and get picked up by the taxi there to go to the show? That would save a lot of time, and we can have our dive and do the show! We pack the show stuff up and leave it on the balcony for Mr. Moose the taxi driver to collect, and set off with the dive boat. We have a "wet bag" with us on the boat which contains our dry shore clothes - oh, I do hope this is going to work out!

Wreck dive

The wreck dive is lovely - quite a small tug boat in quite shallow water. No large fish, but masses of tiny fish on the deck, and as they don't have anywhere to hide, Haggis is in photographer's heaven and he gets some great shots of juvenile emporer fish and cleaner shrimp (who have a go at cleaning our nails!) As this dive is very shallow, we can all do a tiny second dive a bit further back along the coast to see the hot water bubbles. This is actually very boring - the water isn't that hot, the bubbles aren't that big and they are just bubbling out of the sand. We get back on the boat and see that Mr. Moose has arrived on the shoreline - whoopee - it looks like the plan is going to work. We swim to the shore with the wet bag (leaving our diving kit on the boat). As we emerge from the water, we realise that we stink of rotten-egg sulphur from the hot bubbles, but luckily there is a mandi to hand and we throw water over ourselves and dry off. A quick coffee with Mr. Moose, who has collected all the show stuff, and off we set to Kreung Raya, arriving in plenty of time. It felt rather James Bondish arriving almost straight from the ocean! Unfortunately in all the excitement, we left the camera on the boat, so I have no pictures of today's show, but Farid of Muslim Aid took some and is going to send them to me soon, so we will get them up on this web page as soon as we can.

Post-tsunami babies

No badge-making or parachute games, but Haggis presents an excellent show. Half way through the audience has to scatter to allow a boat to be carried through to the sea. Ducks and chickens everywhere. Very pleased to see a large number of post-tsunami babies and toddlers. I do love this country!

Mr. Moose takes us back to Gapang and we have a quick dinner on the beach before hurrying back to our bungalow between torrential rainstorms. Huge sheet lightning, which is very beautiful. Sleep very well after our diving trips, the Bond adventure and the show.