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Deco Stop Bar is the place to be in the evenings on Bunaken. The drink list consists of Bintang Beer, local palmwine, arrak or rum, gin and a combination thereof with coke of tonic. If you want to drink water, you need to bring it with you. They play life music with at least 2 guitars, cajons, a shaker and a one-string base. The line-up is basically akin every evening – long-not heard and even longer not sung Beatles and Reggae classics, Tracy Chapman, U2, Johnny Cash, Hotel California, Lemon Tree and the inevitable Despacito. Interspaced with some Indonesian songs, which always cause a lot of laughter. And the boys are good. Instruments are not individually assigned – as soon as one player gets up to get a refill, another guy takes his place, pinches his cigarette behind the strings of the guitar head or takes a seat on the drum, and jams in. The lyrics are in the book, although sometimes a little bit modified to better reflect realities on the island, because …

… there is one key reason to go to Bunaken: Diving

The small island in front of North Sulawesi’s Manado is surrounded by deep water with strong nutrient-laden currents, home to an abundant marine life and said to be one of the best diving and snorkeling spots in the world. Vertical walls full of hard and soft corals, sponges, hydrozoans and sea fans fall into a dark endless blue. 200m drop-offs are not uncommon. Most tourists are divers, and many locals work in tourism, which is why the underlying theme of many chats, picture exchanges, name of bars and logically altered song texts is … diving. So, get yourself a drink and please enjoy the memorable Bunaken playlist:

Fast boat / original: Tracy Chapman

On most days we do two dives in the morning. Depending on the tide, we may enter the boat directly in front of our place, but often we need to walk through the mangrove and sandy area. A belt of mangroves protects much of Bunaken’s beaches and corals from erosion. For the first time it was a bit spooky to wade through trees and aerial roots, but you get used to it fast.

As soon as you mount the boat a routine program starts: Check that all your stuff is on board and in one place. Attach personal gadgets like dive computers or cameras to the BCD (the Buoyancy Control Device, basically the jacket holding your tank and all other equipment). Take some water or tea and get out on deck and in the sun as soon as possible.

I love the boat rides to our dive sites. Sometimes for only a few minutes, sometimes to a place a bit further away. The mornings with glittering water, island and volcano silhouettes on the horizon and warming sunlight hold promises which they more than keep at the end of every day…. Chatting, exchanging latest gossip, or just daydreaming.

Our dive master Stevanus’ “Oookay” as soon as one of the engines is turned off and the boat slows down is the signal to get ready. Quenching yourself into the wetsuit, often still wet from yesterday afternoon’s dive – mmmh, yummy! I see a big opportunity for innovative ideas to ease this cumbersome activity! Sugar level check, if needed some additional fast carbohydrates to get above 250, mask clearing, booties, weights, BCD, fins. Buddy check. The boys on the boat are superhelpful and always there, often before you even need a hand. A last check by Vanus.

Dive Site Briefing. But careful – no chatting or rambling around meanwhile. We are only 6-8 people on the boat, but this seems to be the most stressful part of the day for our dive masters, and they rightfully expect us to be sufficiently attentive for a minute or two.

Finally sitting on the side of the boat. The waves play with sunshine, corals and colourful fish shine through transparent water. A bright transparent turquoise getting increasingly more intense. Clear? Clear! Backroll and YES – finally in! Despite the good and comprehensive briefings, I am flashed and fascinated by the new scenery anew every time I hold my head under water.

GO DOWN? Go down! Oh yes!

No woman, no dive / original: Bob Marley

We dive in small groups, maximum 4 per dive master, often only 2 or 3. Going down as a group, taking care of each other, limited but very effective communication. You rely on each other and after the first dive, you understand and speak the language of your dive master and buddies, which is based on some universally understandable signals, but with individual variations. A very special and also bonding experience for me.

And solitude at the same time – Feeling weightless, floating, controlling your depth just by breathing. Just you and the big blue sea.

The first dive is usually deeper than the second, we descend fast to 24, 25 meters or so, the colour palette changes into all shades of blue. Feeling like a fish in the water. What is most breathtaking for me down there it the scenery. Something you can’t capture on a picture or film. At least, I can’t. When you look up from 20 meters below to the sunbeams breaking through the surface, myriads of fish swirling above you, there are moments, when you think: and if I should die now, it’ll be alright. I have seen it all. Pure joy.

There is hardly a stay in the water without encountering turtles. Black-tipped reef sharks are also frequently present. They are not too big and don’t seem to bother about us. To encounter my first shark was much less unspectacular than I had imagined it to be. Forget about another fear.

Every now and then big schools of fish pass by. A turtle is sitting in the wall, patiently waiting to get out of her parking lot until the drifting divers from the left have passed by (left diver priority here 😉). It’s tempting to follow them, but you may end up in depths or heights you did not plan for, which can cost valuable air. But sometimes it’s worth it 😊. We see Napoleon wrasses and their smaller relatives, barracudas, lionfish, painted rock lobsters, giant clams, bumphead parrotfish.

A bit higher up is the homezone of puffer- and boxfish, beautiful black-and white striped or spotted sweetlips with yellow fins, trumpetfish, all kind of nemos, anemonefish, myriads of butterflyfish dancing around us, beautiful but mostly shy angelfish in yellow, orange, blue and white, parrotfish often in their distinct green and turquoise shading… oh, and so much more friends and neighbours on the reef, of which I am only starting to learn their names and families.

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for / U2

Bunaken it is also famous for muck diving, for its tiny creatures that you can detect in the coral walls. There is a world I did not know of before. And when you see colourful nudibranchs, tiny soft coral crabs, ghost pipe fish, sea slugs or marine worms for the first time, you are not sure if they come directly from the drawing desk of a particularly creative artist in Pixar studios or if Big Mama Earth had a fresh palette of colours and great fun when creating them. Needless to say that they are not easy to detect, but obviously our dive guides know where to look for them. My Austrian friends knowing Kaiser Robert Heinrich 1^st’ “Schneckengruß” will immediately know how to signal Come here, I detected nudibranchs! 🙂

Diving in an area with dense macro life is special in itself. I could have stayed down there for hours,  slowly drifting along the coral walls, carefully searching for the small wonders.

Stand by me / Ben E. King

Another good option not to find what you’re looking for are Night Dives. Not even thinkable for me some time ago, I seriously enjoyed my first dive in the seemingly black waters. There is even more limited communication, lights come into play. Vanus explained only the key principles, like showing half tank and 50bars with the help of the torch, but all his other signs under water in the dark were just on point and all clear. Staying closer together, never ever losing each other is of course key before anything else. How our dive master spotted the stargazer hidden in the sand, the small ghost pipefish, the flounder, or the Macrotritopus paralarvae – sort of a through-shining baby octopus with long tentacles -, will remain a secret to me for the time being.

I can see clarly now / Johnny Cash

Ascending again we often work our way up in multi levels. Before finally exiting the safety or deco stop comes into play. Basically you spend 3 to 5 minutes, or whatever your dive computer says at 5 meters, to avoid decompression sickness. At the place I learned diving it was a rather boring activity, hanging around on a line descending from the boat and waiting for time to pass by. Here it is among the best parts of our dives! The light is great, the shallow reef tops are phantastic places populated with a wealth of colourful fish of all kind, clown fish, morays or just ever so beautiful corals. Honestly, I would go down only for the safety stops! Often we spend way more time than required at 5 meters depth.

Some last deep breaths, look up, careful ascend and head out of the water.

Nothing compares to … the smiles of divers emerging freshly out of the big blue. Faces are transformed completely, pure happiness. It’s wonderful to see it with your fellow divers, and especially with people being in the water and experiencing the magic for the first time. Floating around, goofying around, laughing, Shit, my mask was foggy all the time – haha, you put sunscreen? Oh, did you see the …? Vanus, what were the school of big fish we saw in the beginning? Ikan haha …  Waiting for the boat to come and pick us up.

Recovery break on the boat. Out of the wet stuff, tea, fruits, cookies, warming up in the sun. Head to the next dive site. And repeat.

Take me home by public boat / original: John Denver

We are a loosely connected, cheerful multi-national group of people here and it is always sad to say good-bye to the ones leaving the island.

Writing all this, I realize that I am now travelling for 7 ½ weeks already – and it’s far from enough for me. And I realize how lucky I am, I don’t go home afterwards. I travel on. It is a very special kind of freedom. Life is VERY kind at the moment and I feel so much alive.

And sometimes I feel bad about it. Then there is this voice in my head, testing: is this ok? How happy may you be? It is a complex question that keeps coming back with me, and also with other long-term travellers as I have learned.

It is about how much do you allow yourself to be happy, to enjoy life fully when it feels good? Is there always a bitter in the sweet, the black dot in the white? Being a notorious sceptic, do I need to be suspiscious if life is too good to be true? Do you need to earn these moments by going through bad times before? Or can you just be happy without deadline?

You can’t, but here’s my refrain after Bunaken: Too much of something good can be wonderful. There is a time to say: Hey, girl, you may well just enjoy it to the fullest. All of us should be allowed to be so happy that the door to our hearts and souls can‘t be closed anymore.

I will need to buy a thesaurus of superlatives if it continues like that, because I am running out of words to describe this wonderful world out there, the great company, the joyful village of Bunaken, the days in the sun and the evenings at the fire, being free and being exactly in the places, where moments and longing rhyme.

When I find myself in seventh heaven, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom Let it be….

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