Pygmy Seahorses and Giant Olivers

       Tonight is our first night back in Thailand so, as always, we celebrated with a trip to the night market for pad thai, spring rolls, fruit shakes, mango sticky rice, and banana roti. Amazing. Our last week in Bali was a blast. We took our rented moto up and around almost all of Bali. Our first big leg of the trip across half the northern coast line took three hours and was spent nearly entirely in a torrential rainstorm..not very fun on moto. We arrived at our final destination in Lovina late that night and after two hours of bargain hunting found the best room. We went on a morning, 6AM, dolphin watch on a tiny Balinese boat and saw two dolphins for a total of 3 seconds. The more entertaining part was watching the 40 other boast zoom around in packs every time one boat appeared to have seen a breach. After that we took our moto to the NE corner of Bali to look for Oliver, who we knew was docked somewhere off the Menjangen Resort bay. Two hours of motoring and we found ourselves at the beach looking out at his ship the Mir. I stopped to help some locals and a westerner fix an anchor while we waited to try and figure out how to get to the boat. Turns out that westerner was Laser, the owner and captain of the Mir, and the mooring we were getting ready was for his ship. Soon after, we found ourselves aboard the Mir with Oliver and the rest of the crew, enjoying some lunch and an amazing view of mountains, volcanoes, and ocean. We ended up spending the entire day on the Mir, helping with daily chores and mooring the ship. We had dinner and left around 9 to get back to Lovina for the night. Our next two days after were spent in the most amazing world ever. We went diving, four dives in two days, at Menjangen Island, which is known as one of the best dive sites in the world, especially for coral. It was incredible. Our first day was highlighted by spectacular hundred meter walls covered in every color coral and every color fish you could imagine as well as five black tipped shark sightings (The Mir had seen two sharks on twenty some dives so it was very lucky). While I thought it would be nice to get a closer look at them, Stef, Wide eyed with terror, went torpedoing in the opposite direction. Day two was highlighted by equally amazing coral  and the sighting of the pygmy seahorse (three) which is the smallest seahorse in the world, about 1cm long. The big time divers come from all around the world hoping to catch a sighting of these guys in this area, often with no luck at all. A frog fish, also very rare, and another shark topped off a great trip. We spent our last day and a half meeting up with Oiver back in Ubud and saying our goodbyes at Yayasan. I will definitely miss Bali, but am excited to get back to Thailand as well. Hope all is well back home, Love Mas