uss liberty

Tag: uss liberty

Posted at 9:52 am by jasminedesirees, on December 9, 2014

The USS Liberty in Amed, Bali was my first shipwreck dive, and it was amazing. It’s a great dive for beginners, or for people who aren’t actually certified to wreck dive (ahem) because it’s a shore dive, and the wreck isn’t very deep, only 18M, so it gets a lot of sunlight.

The water is very clear so it’s easy to see everything, and it’s pretty wide open so even if you are claustrophobic, there aren’t really any places where you feel trapped inside.

There were a lot of little fish, although we didn’t see anything super exciting, but just the feeling of being inside the wreck was enough to make it one of the best dives I’ve ever done.

I was able to do some wreck diving in the Philippines a few weeks ago, and I actually had kind of a scary experience, (more on that later) but it definitely made me look back on this dive with even more affection, because for those dives it was very deep, and the visibility was pretty terrible, and it was so dark that we needed a flashlight inside the ship.

We talked to almost every dive company in Amed, before deciding to go with BLD.

Most of the dives around Amed are shore dives, so it was cheaper than some of the other diving we’ve done, but if one thing to keep an eye out for is that a lot of the companies will only take you to one dive site per day, to do two dives there, and we found out it’s because they have to pay a tax for each dive spot they go to, and they make more money by just keeping you at one site.

It’s up to you if you want to dive only one site, but we wanted to see as much as possible, which is one of the reasons we went with BLD. Our second dive was actually not that great, it was a shore dive down a sandy slope, there wasn’t much to see but we did spot a black baby frog fish, and it looked like a tiny alien.

Our dive guides were really great, they were local guys from Amed, and we ate lunch with them and chatted about our lives, and their lives and learned a lot about Bali. They both thought it was very strange that we had been married for 3 years and didn’t have any babies. They invited us out to see a band with them at a bar that night. All of the people in Amed were lovely.

If you are a diver, or even a snorkeler, and you have some time when you are in Bali, definitely make the trip up to the USS Liberty, it’s so so worth it.

Posted in Indonesia, travel | 1 Comment | Tagged amed, diving, Indonesia, scuba, shipwreck, shore dive, uss liberty

amed, bali

Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on December 2, 2014

After we left Sanur, we went up to the northeast coast of Bali to spend a week in Amed. It’s completely gorgeous up there, and also very relaxed. It’s very far away from the hustle and bustle of Denpasar, and the tourist trap of Legian/Kuta. It’s just a really cool, chill little town.

Amed is about a 3 hour drive from Sanur, but the scenery is amazing. Amed is quite near Mount Agung, and the drive takes you along the coast, and past some gorgeous rice fields. The coast where Amed is situated is great for snorkeling, there is a reef that stretches all along the shore. although some of the beaches are kind of rocky.

We also did our first shipwreck dive there (the USS Liberty) which was every Little Mermaid fantasy I’ve ever had come to life, but more on that later.

We didn’t have a place to stay, but there are tons of little cheap homestays in Amed, so we found a place no problem.

The best part was, because we were there in October and that’s coming up on the rainy season, it wasn’t very busy, so even though we were staying at a cheap homestay, we went to quite a few of the nicer resorts and hung out there for a few hours each day, and they didn’t mind at all.

We would always order food and drinks, but we couldn’t have afforded to stay there, so we ended up getting the best of both worlds. The Santai had a beautiful pool right on the beach, and delicious mango crumble for dessert.

Amed had lots of cute little restaurants, which were largely wasted on me since it was too hot to eat anything other than mango and iced coffee, a yoga studio where you could practice yoga every evening along the beach, and no fewer than five Bob Marley themed bars.

The best (but coldest) thing we did while staying in Amed was climbing to the top of the Mount Batur volcano for sunrise, but that definitely deserves its own post.

Amed was one of my favourite places in Bali, and is a great stop over for a few days before taking the boat across to the Gili Islands.