Capturing the Moment

 After three days inland in the temple filled rice fields of Ubud, Heidi and I headed to the coastal town of Tulamben to meet up with our friends, Phoebe and Erica, and to get our first taste of diving on this trip. Tulamben is a small fishing village where a huge U.S. military transport ship was beached after being torpedoed. A subsequent earthquake caused by the 1963 eruption of nearby Mt. Agung volcano shook the wreck back into the water where it lies today. The deepest part lies down slope about 110ft, whereas the top part is only 15ft below the surface. It is a beautiful place to snorkel, and easy to get to being only 50 yards from shore, but the real beauty is in exploring with scuba.  Phoebe and Erica inside the massive wreck of the US Liberty in Tulumben, Bali Tiny pygmy sea horses can be found 100ft down while huge bumphead parrotfish rest at night in the shallows next to the wreck. Brightly colored nudibranchs can also be seen on the wreck, but it is almost imp...

View from the pool. Mt Agung in the background Liberty Dive Resort  After spending three and a half days surfing our hearts out on the southern peninsula of Bali we finally had a period of small swell. This gave us the opportunity to switch things up, go exploring, and see some more of Bali. We booked a night at the Liberty Dive Resort located only a couple hundred meters away from the famous U.S.T. Liberty ship wreck at Tulumben beach. We only had one night and the drive from Padang Padang took around 3 hours so we had to move fast. We ended up fitting in an afternoon muck dive and a night dive on the wreck our first day and then a sunrise dive on the wreck and a late morning dive on the wreck before zipping back to Padang to catch the next swell. So many colors Anticipation builds on our way to the wreck  The shipwreck has a very interesting history. I researched it in depth the first time I dove here and you can read that blog post here . The short story i...

This is a clam attached to the wreck  One of the most famous scuba dive sights on the island of Bali, Indonesia is a huge shipwreck called the USS Liberty. I remembered these WWII Liberty ships being built in several shipyards near where I grew up in Savannah and Brunswick, GA. So I looked more into this wreck to see if I possibly came from the same place halfway around the world and what I found was very interesting. In fact the USS part of the name is a common misconception. It should be USAT Liberty. This stands for U.S. Army Transport. She was built in Kearny, N.J. in 1918 for WWI and then survived until an ill fated day in 1942 during WWII when she was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-166 while transporting railway parts and rubber. Other boats tried to help tow the damaged Liberty back to shore but eventually had to be beached at Tulamben, Bali. Not finished moving yet, a 1963 volcanic eruptions moved the ship off the beach into the water about 25 meters offshore. ...