There is one thing worth mentioning here in Manado, and it’s the goreng pisang, or as the locals say it, pisang goreng.
I like the way they cut the banana and fan it out. The ratio of crust to banana is that much better. I can imagine a very ripened and sweet banana cooked this way. Crust and sweet. Heaven.
Okay, the photo of my point:
Today, I went out to Bunaken National Park. The skies were clear with a bit of clouds. But more importantly, the waves were calm. The seas here can get rough. It was a lovely ride out. About 45 minutes long.
Watching the experienced divers today, I surmised that diving is essentially an activity where you gotta like your dive mates. Most of the time, it’s spent talking. Talking on the way there, talking in between the dive, plus lunch, then talking the way from one dive site to another, and talking back to land. In between, you do the dive. Usually about an hour long, because someone at some point will run out of air. Since you descended as a group, you ascend as a group. The only time of silence is during the dive itself. Even then there are hand signals and eye contact.
I tried the Discovery Dive, which cost me US$90. Yes, when they quote dives, it is in USD.
I have no pictures to prove what I did, because the underwater camera failed to work and I didn’t have my own camera.
However, I have my tracker map that shows where I went. The pins indicate the dive sites.
The Discovery Dive is not really diving. It’s someone in the driver’s seat, and you’re along for the ride. But unlike being in the driver’s seat, you have to learn a few hand signals. No one can scream at you to watch out. You gotta do your own mask cleaning, balance out the pressure in the ears, or suffer pain. There’s stuff to think about, besides your own life suddenly being absolutely out of your control.
Panic is your worst enemy. And I came face to face with mine.
My first dive was close to disaster. Salt water up nose. Salt water in throat. I thumbed up to surface. There is nothing like fear of drowning. I can imagine the pain. The ultra-salty water piercing the lungs. I have almost drowned twice in my life and both experiences were not pleasant. I only managed to dive up to 4 meters before giving up.
The second attempt, was half an hour long. It was at this coral reef that dropped down a cliff. I made it to a depth of 9 meters. There were plenty of pretty things there. But not knowing what those pretty things are didn’t make the experience as rich and fulfilling as could be. I saw this blue eel with orange fringes. A lobster looking thing hiding in coral, that if I saw it again, would know that I came face to face with it before. There were these huge angelfish looking fish. And plenty of clown fish playing in anemone. Then there was the trigger fish that is best left alone. There were fish of neon colour, small fish, large fish, fish that sometimes were too friendly. And those coral. Huge banks of them, that you’re so scared your flippers would lop one off, and there you go, destroying years of natural hard work.
So that deep blue ocean – where you can’t see the ocean floor and where there are plenty of hidden mysteries, are best, to me, left as mysteries.