September 27, 2017
Today was a looooong drive from Fes to the Sahara just outside of the city of Merzouga. A friend of a friend runs the Sahara Garden. Brahim coordinated everything for us and welcomed us upon our arrival with open arms. Truly an amazing human being. We were welcomed with dinner and singing and dancing around a bonfire.
September 24, 2017
Our second stop in Morocco was the blue city of Chefchaoen. A small city located up on a hill, wandering thru the medina surrounded by so many shades of blue was quite a different experience from Tangier. We stayed at Casa Perleta, a small bed and breakfast recommended by our friend. It was perfectly located within the upper hill area of the medina. The blue hues of the walls of Chefchaoen are believed to have originated when the Jews came while escaping Hilter in the 1930s. The blue is said to serve as a reminder to lead a spiritual life while symbolizing the sky and heaven.
September 11 - 15, 2017
Enroute to our close friends' wedding in Greece we found a cheap flight to Paris via Reykjavik, Iceland and decided to take advantage and do a little stopover in an effort to (fingers crossed) see the northern lights. We decided to restrict our few days to just the southern highlights along the coast. The first thing we noticed was that even though it was supposedly shoulder/low season in Iceland there were significantly more people than when we came the year before in August.
December 5, 2016 - December 16, 2016
With plans for our international travel to come to a close soon, we both decided we had to do another trip on theSamambaia. This time we decided to try for a trip thru the Banda Sea. This post has a ton of photos, so we've separated them into different categories below.
days one hundred and seventy thru one hundred and eighty-one: march 7, 2016 thru march 18, 2016
Oh yes, we're back. It didn't take much convincing for us or even Jonathan's parents, to dive Raja Ampat. Hey, we know what we like, right? Similar to our first cruise, we spent 11 days on the Samambaia exploring the Raja Ampat area with the same crew we've grown to love. We got spoiled again and pretty much had the boat to ourselves - it was us, Jonathan's parents, and our cruise director's parents. Not bad, eh?
Over the period of 11 days, I dove anywhere from 2-4 dives a day. Before the trip, I had been to many places to dive and had honestly been getting a little bit tired of diving, thinking I had seen everything I wanted to see underwater. I was really only in search of diving with the "big" things like sharks (which we did in Fiji), mantas, whale sharks, etc. After reading about the biodiversity that existed in Raja Ampat, I wanted to check it out for myself. The statistics stated that over 1,400 fish species live in the region and more than 500 species of coral. I think it's typical for a one week dive trip, that you would see maybe a handful of really cool things. Well, after the first day of diving in Raja Ampat I had already seen some of the coolest things I'd ever seen and a lot of it had to do with just the immense amount of biodiversity.
Honestly, great photos with the GoPro were hard to come by, but there are some below. Instead, I opted for video to try to capture what I saw underwater. I saw the most "cool" things I've ever seen underwater all on this trip and most of them multiple times on different dives. There was one dive where we were surrounded by a massive school of small fish and watching them move around and between us was absolutely insane. The video just does not do it justice. When I came up from the dive, the first words out of my mouth were, "That was the coolest thing I've ever seen on a dive."
Let's just say...I will be back. And not only that! But Allie decided to try diving and ended up doing not just one, but FOUR dives over the course of the trip. Anyways, here's a video I put together to try to summarize some of the "cool" things I got to see and then some photos below. Enjoy!
days seventy-six thru eighty-seven: december 14 thru 25:
On our first day, we set course thru the Dampier Strait. Johannes spent several years on the boat Pindito (the original live aboard that discovered Raja Ampat for diving), which had a well-known marine biologist on board. He learned how to spot and approach large marine animals. He proved his skills on our first day, allowing us to spend time with a pod of 100+ spotted dolphins surfing our bow wake, several bryde's whales, and a second pod of 100+ spinner dolphins. Definitely a great sign that this was going to be a great trip.
days seventy-six thru eighty-seven: december 14 thru 25:
We decided to break up our 11 day trip into three separate posts. The first is about the boat and the crew, the second highlighting our land excursions and the third specifically diving. Enjoy!
After barely making our flight to Sorong, we were greeted by Gian Paolo, the Italian owner of the Samambaia, the liveaboard we would spend the next 11 days on. Samambaia is a brand new Phinisi, which is a traditional Indonesian wooden sailing vessel.
day seventy-three: december 11, 2015:
After a casual wake up, we had another excellent breakfast at the Temple Lodge and headed to Ubud, where we stayed at an awesome Airbnb. Our host, Heather was from Australia and had built a large modern Javanese joglo overlooking some rice terraces just north of the center of Ubud. It was simply great. It was close enough to the center of Ubud to explore town, but also far enough away to enjoy the peace and quiet of the countryside.
day seventy-one: december 9, 2015:
Traveling from Gili Meno to Bingin was one of the longest transit days we've had. Not just time-wise, but the combination of traveling by boat and by car. First, we caught the 8:50 AM public boat from Gili Meno to Gili Trawangan. There we waited for the 11:30 AM fast boat to Padang Bai. We arrived at Padang Bai around 1:45 PM and boarded a small shuttle for the 1.5-2 hour drive toward Bingin. We somehow ended up in a small van fit for eight passengers, but the driver squeezed ten people in. While in transit, the driver stopped two times and swapped passengers with other vans. Needless to say...it was a cluster.
day sixty-eight: december 6, 2015:
We spent the morning in transit driving to Bangsal to take the boat to Gili Meno. We had found a deal on Agoda for a steeply discounted room at Seri Resort on the northeast side of Gili Meno. I wasn't quite sure what to expect as we took the horse cart from the port to the hotel, but turning the last corner into the hotel, I was pleasantly surprised. Seri Resort is a beautiful resort right on the beach with a pool, the hotel reception and restaurant just behind. After the half day of transit, we spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool.
day sixty-six: december 4, 2015:
Today we rented a scooter from our hotel and explored around Kuta Lombok. We've heard from a lot of people that Lombok is what Bali was 30 years ago. First we stopped in town, which is just a small main intersection with small, simple shops and restaurants leading away from the center. Our friends, Zak and Gena, recommended a small place called The Corner, where we had some great smoothies and sandwiches. After, we headed west and explored three nearby beaches - Mawun, Mawi, and Selong Balanak. The road to Mawun was a small dirt road leading off the main road. We weren't too sure what to expect, but once we arrived, it opened up into an open cove with an incredible beach. There were only maybe five other visitors there and only a few kids trying to sell us pineapples.
