After a whole ten minutes of deliberation, we decided to drive about thee hours to the east and south of Pemuteran up into Bedugal, the mountainous, central highlands of Bali! (Bedugal is only about 30 miles inland from Bali's northern coast, but in that short amount of space, the land goes from sea-level to 4,500 feet above sea level!)
Afterwards, we hung out back at his place for a little bit, then I took a quick shower, said farewell to Faisal, thanked him for his hospitality and laughed about how I'd been at his house in Abu Dhabi TWICE in less than one year...
Check it out! Here's what the Blue Hole looks like shot from space! It's also considered to be one of most fatal diving spots on the planet (so I figured what better place to get my deep diving certification!).
"The Blue Hole is notorious for the number of diving fatalities which have occurred there earning it the sobriquet, "World's Most Dangerous Dive Site" and the nickname "Diver's Cemetery". The site is signposted by a sign that says "Blue hole: Easy entry". Accidents are frequently caused when divers attempt to find the tunnel through the reef (known as "The Arch") connecting the Blue Hole and open water at about 52 m depth. This is beyond the PADI recreational diving limit (40 m) and nitrogen narcosis begins to have an influence. Divers who miss the tunnel sometimes continue descending hoping to find the tunnel farther down and become increasingly narced."
Turns out, without the ferry running I only had two options: Go to the airport and take a twenty-minute flight from Hurghada to Sharm El Sheikh (represented by the two blue pins on the map above). Or, I could take a FIFTEEN HOUR BUS RIDE all the way up north by the Suez Canal, and then across the peninsula and south. (The route denoted by the red path!).
If you're a genius like me, you probably had already worked it out that flying would be WAY faster. So it seemed like a no-brainer until I called the airline and learned that all flights from Hurghada to Sharm el-Sheikh were sold out for the next three days! (Which, if you ask me, is PROBABLY related to the fact that THE FERRY WASN'T RUNNING).
The blue lines on the map represent my guess about the route we traveled, because as you can see on the map, there are any official roads that connect Luxor and Hurghada!
I took a photo of this page because this is the one place in Thailand that my former roommate needs to visit. I think she'd railay, railay like it. Like, a lot.
After the beach I decided to sneak in two more dives - our flight wasn't until late in the afternoon the next day and I calculated that I'd still be safe to fly without having to worry about my heart exploding. (Even though airplane cabins are pressurized, they have much less pressure than sea-level. If you any nitrogen left in your blood that hasn't been aspirated, you might be fine at sea level, but getting on a plane could give you the bends or even a deadly blood embolism!) Anyway, here's a map of my second-to-last dive: Three Sisters!
I took this (bad) photo of the dive map hoping I could reference it on my camera if I go lost! (We were only diving to a depth of 20', so I'd always be able to just surface if I lost my orientation - but that's for cheaters!)
I got up bright and early on Wednesday morning and headed out on the boat for a three-dive trip! The first (and deepest) dive of the day was at a dive spot called "Babylon." Here's our divemaster walking us through a map of the site.
Even though Grand Cayman is the largest of the Cayman Islands, it's still pretty tiny. (It's around 200 sq. km. which is about 2.5 times the size of the island of Manhattan). The airport is the green "x" on the map and Compass Point is the red "x" which turned out to mean that it really was far away from the touristy hotels and was out in the middle of nowhere! It was only about 20 or 25 miles away, but because the only road was really twisty and windy, it took us about 40 minutes to drive out there!
Since August is pretty much the down-season and they had a lot of vacancy, they ended up giving us a double unit that had a full kitchen, living room (with a sleeper bed), 2 bedrooms and two full bathrooms! All of this right on the water with a balcony overlooking the ocean!
For the geographically challenged, the Cayman Islands are three teeny, tiny islands located about 350 miles off the tip of Florida. They're south of Cuba and west of Jamaica.
On the plane I ended up sitting next to Matt (who was the person responsible for organizing the trip) and Lara. Here's Matt busting out a map of Korea to show me the location of the two different camps that we'd be teaching English at.
She and her friend wanted to pose for funny pictures with him, but when her friend leaned in for the pic, she slipped and the two of them ended up falling backwards and...
See, it doesn't look far, right? Looking at the map we figured it would only be a half an hour, but because of the windy coastal roads, took us almost 90 minutes!
7:25am: Lost. We were right on target until the highway we were on turned into this crazy-ass rotary that shot us off in the wrong direction. We stopped at a gas station for directions, but nobody there spoke enough English to be helpful - so we hunkered down with the map and tried to figure it out. (Check out Fatty's priceless "We're lost" expression).
Here's the New York Five, coldlamping in front of our pimpin' rented Blazer. From Left: Grant, Dave "Fatty" Fateman, Colin "Big Daddy" Gentle and Frank "Seven Layer" Picarazzi.
1) My old place 100 Freeman Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
2) My new place (Brian Chamber's old place) at 105 Bowery (between Hester and Grand).
3) Brian Chamber's new place at Horatio and the West Side Highway.
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