Being Overly Prepared

Intern’s Journal: Being Overly Prepared

Today is the end of my first month in Bali. Looking back, the last weeks have been really exciting and a lot of things have happened.

Because of working in a diving school, I thought it would probably be a good idea to start diving as soon as I get here. Unfortunately, my clumsiness threw a spanner in my plans by falling down with the scooter. On the first day. Twice. At exactly the same spot. The result was a big wound on my foot, so I wasn’t supposed to even touch the water for three weeks. That was a really tough time, I did acrobatic feats to keep my foot dry while showering and just could say hello to the ocean from far away.

But finally, last Thursday, it was the big day: I went on my first trip snorkeling in Nusa Penida! Even though it was “just” snorkeling, I was super-duper excited and annoyingly bragged everybody in the diving school. Most of them just replied “Well… Snorkeling is nothing compared to diving, my dear!” but that couldn’t stop my enthusiasm. I even googled how to snorkel – it really seemed to be easy.

So in the morning, everybody gathered at the diving school and our snorkeling guide told us the plans for the day. The destination was Nusa Penida, a little island in the southeast of Bali, where we were supposed to snorkel at three different spots. After meeting my snorkel mates, we headed to the beach and boarded the boat. I was excited until I realized that the boat ride will be 45 minutes. My last boat ride was two years ago (it was a actually a big cruise ship) and I was clearly out of practice on being on a boat!

After reaching our first spot, Manta Point, the snorkeling in Nusa Penida began. Unfortunately it wasn’t my lucky day to see Mantas but nevertheless, it was just awesome to get an insight in a complete new world and explore it. After that, we had lunch and my stomach finally decided to cooperate with me which made things a lot easier.

The other two spots were awesome as well and marine life was amazing. But since it was the first time in a while for me to be underwater, I was just too absorbed in the whole experience and could not focused solely on each beautiful fish that passed by. All I see was colorful fishes, corals and reef… maybe next trip I will listen carefully and learn the proper name of each one of them!

At around 3:30 pm, we returned back to the dive center – satisfied and tired. Snorkeling was more exhausting than I thought; it is definitely not only chilling the ocean and watching some fishes. But nevertheless I have to admit: Googling was unnecessary for it! 😉

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