I was recently diving in Pulau Weh...

…. and I put my impressions a bit on paper, for those who are interested:

I took a plane from Jakarta to Banda Aceh via Medan (which cost me as much as the 12 dives I was to do), and went by boat from B. Aceh to Pulau Weh, the trip by speedboat takes approximately 45 minutes. At the harbour of Pulau Weh, I got on a Minibus to Iboih, my final destination. The trip was pretty much straight forward, less complicated than what I had heard before.

Ismayudi, son of the owner of Rubiah Tirta Divers in Iboih and DM himself, with whom I had been in e-mail contact prior to my arrival, had booked accommodation for me at Oong’s Losmen where I stayed in a simple bungalow on stilts, with a spacious porch hanging over the turquoise water (in the morning, waking up just before six, I only had to open my eyes to see the sun-up over the sea… before rolling over and snoring a bit longer ). The next morning, from the porch, I was able to have already a first impression of what expected me – I saw angelfish, Moorish idol, surgeonfish, etc. while I was sipping my coffee…

And then, the diving…..
For most of my dives, I dived with the same gear (of the dive shop), which made me feel very comfortable since I didn’t need to get used to different BCD etc. each time...
Water temperature was always around 30°C, visibility 30 – 40 metres.
I think, what makes Pulau Weh so exceptional is the diversity of fish and above all the huge number of fish. Once I was hovering in front of a small crevice, trying to see what was hiding inside but I didn't see properly because there was too much fish swimming around in front of my mask if you see what I mean.... The most stunning moment was when, after Guillaume, my buddy, once requested my attention, I turned away from the reef to look at him and at a distance of one or two meters there was a big school of giant travelly passing by.
We saw quite a few schools: barracuda, tuna, Tille travelly, Moorish idol (I know they are pretty common, but when you see some 50 or 60 of them together…), blue fin travelly; families of lion fish and fire fish, bumphead parrotfish, Napoleon wrasse, clown triggerfish, orangespine unicornfish, razor fish.
And lobster, moray eel, zebra eel, starry eel, black blotched eel, juvenile and female ribbon eel; turtles, white and black tip reef shark, eagle ray, blue spotted stingray, octopus, oriental sweetlips, Harlekin sweetlips, giant sweetlips, spotted boxfish, yellow boxfish; spotted porcupinefish, curious wormfish, cowfish, huge batfish, longnose hawkfish, Leopard Blenny, ornate ghost pipefish, cleaner shrimp, peacock mantis shrimp, cowries, crabs, oyster, and all the other beauties that I cannot even name…. I wish I could add a few pics….
However, I have not seen many nudibranches though I'm usually good in spotting them, and I still have to see my first see horse….
There are around 15 dive sites, my favourite dive sites were the Canyon and Batee Tokong.
Batee Tokong was an easy dive site. On the surface, it's a small rock next to Rubiah island, which goes down to 35 m, forming terraces. At 35 m depth, you can dive some 20 meters North to the so-called shark reef. We did that but didn't see any sharks around, so we returned to Batee Tokong…. where we were greeted by two black tip reef sharks, most likely they were very amused about how they had managed to trick us…
The Canyon is more advanced diving, mainly due to the currents that can occur. They made me realise once more that I need to work on my thighs’ muscles a bit….
The canyon itself is about 5 meters wide, left and right you have the walls going up, corals, fish, etcetc. I thought about bringing a deckchair and just sitting there, in the middle of the Canyon, watching….until the 50 bar of air are reached…. But I could maybe have brought a spare bottle then, if I didn't move much!?

I did most of the dives with the same DM (Guillaume), and most of the time, it was even only the two of us since the dive operator has the policy to have one DM diving with each pair of buddies and Guillaume always managed for us to "sneak away". So Guillaume was free to concentrate on me what helped me to improve my diving. It also looks like my air consumption is getting better, yesss…. My longest bottom time was 79 min, when we surfaced, I had 40 bar left. Guillaume's air consumption was obviously better than mine and therefore he always beat me by 20 - 30 bar, though I did have the advantage of a small lung volume.

So all in all, I did 12 absolutely awesome dives, and I can't wait to go for my next dive trip. But before, I need to buy two things: a under water housing for my camera and a dive computer (it's gonna be the Suunto Gekko)… and new fins, with booties the ones I have now are fine for snorkelling but definitely too small for diving, and they are rubbing after a while. And a BCD…. But….first of all I have to rob a bank, duh….