Independence Day and Theater!

We decided to squeeze our annual trip to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival into the Independence Day holiday season, so we'll get four days of theater with only two days off work. We drove up last night after work, and had a quick, easy drive.

This morning we learned that the house where we're staying is practically at the starting spot for the Ashland Independence Day parade, so we headed out to watch that. It was great fun, in a small town celebration sort of way. Pretty much the whole town seemed to be out. By the end, since we were about halfway to the Shakespeare Festival, we just walked the rest of the way into town, grabbed a quick lunch at one of the booths serving food (tasty gyros), and then split up for the afternoon, with me going to watch "Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella" with my mother-in-law, and the rest of the family checking out the rest of the celebration in Lithia Park.

The play was about as strange as the title implies. They are literally performing (most of) three plays simultaneously on the same stage. The point is that they have some similarities of both structure and theme, but truly, I think it's a bit of a reach. There are some very clever moments and some good performances, so it was a worthwhile afternoon.

For dinner we had hoped to go to Caldera Tap House, but they had closed for the holiday. So we checked out the Standing Stone Brewing Company instead. We had tried it a few years ago and weren't that impressed with either the beer or the food, but this visit was better. The beer was still just OK, but the food was quite good. The key was letting the server list their extensive specials for the day, which included a fish burrito, a crab cake salad, a local bison burger, and a filet mignon. We had the burrito and the burger, and were quite pleased.

Evening we again split up. I went with my daughter to see "Animal Crackers," which she found quite delightful (and which I enjoyed a lot, too). My wife and her mother went to see "The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa," which I will see later this trip (Saturday, I think) while they see Animal Crackers.

It was a fun first day, and we managed to get more exercise than we usually get here. Never even took the car out at all. Good stuff.

Tomorrow we get breakfast instead of a parade, and some friends will be flying up to join us for the remainder of the trip. Somewhere along the way we checked and found there were a few tickets available for one of the shows that had been sold out when we ordered, so we added another play. I think somehow I will end up seeing eight plays in four days. Yow!

Theme Park Madness

I think I have recovered from the extended family vacation enough to write about it.

Don't take that the wrong way: It was a great trip. But there was a lot of it. A whole week with the extended family in the Greater Orlando Area. Which means theme parks, mostly. A lot of them. I suppose it was fortunate that it was late winter, so the parks weren't open terribly late and we could actually sleep and recover.

I'd been to Orlando before, but never for recreation, so this was my first chance to experience the plethora of parks available. We managed to hit a different park every day, which was pretty cool. Here's the overview:

Sunday: Universal Studios Florida. I had been to the California version of Universal Studios many years ago, but this seemed much more developed, both thematically and in the overall detail of the attractions. Unfortunately, it was a windy day, so the one big roller coaster was not operating. Most of the rest of the rides are variations on "motion simulators," basically moving seats with immersive movies. I quite liked the Disaster ride, which is set in San Francisco, but the most impressive ride overall was the Simpsons ride. It's long and funny and very true to the show.

Overall I have to say this park appealed more to the older members of the crowd, but everyone had a pretty good time.

Monday: Universal's Islands of Adventure. Quite a variety here, ranging from stuff for the little kids based on comic strip characters and Dr. Seuss stories to adventures like Jurassic Park and the Lost Continent and the thing people really wanted to see, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I was really impressed with the attention to details in all of the areas. We managed to score early-admission tickets, which enabled us to get to Harry Potter first, before the lines got long.

Tuesday: Disney Magic Kingdom park. It's kind of disorienting for a group like ours that's very familiar with Disneyland, because it's similar, but different enough to be a bit confusing. It was a big treat to ride Space Mountain again, and we rode Pirates of the Caribbean several times. Big Thunder Mountain was closed, though. And there's no Matterhorn! On the plus side, they have the old Carousel of Progress ("There's a great big, beautiful tomorrow....") and the Country Bear Jamboree. Good memories.

Wednesday: Break from theme parks for a day. Some of the party went fishing in the flats on the Atlantic coast. The rest of us slept in, then headed over to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge where we had a nice nature walk and went to see some manatees at Haulover Canal. Then off to the beach for a bit and dinner at the famous Dixie Crossroads restaurant in Titusville, where we ate a LOT of shrimp.

Thursday: Disney Animal Kingdom park. This is a fun park, very different from the Magic Kingdom, and at least partly aimed at a wider age spread (i.e., a little older). First thing in the morning we ran to ride Expedition Everest, which is a very good roller coaster. My daughter and I hit that four times in a row before there was any line to speak of. Good stuff! Nice animal exhibits. We had a good, full day here.

Friday: Epcot. I have kind of mixed feelings on this one. It's meant to be sort of a future-oriented simulated world's fair. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to make anything futuristic that doesn't get out of date really quickly. I did quite like Spaceship Earth (the big golf-ball thing), and the Energy Adventure was a really interesting ride. Most of the other rides were fairly unimpressive, and the Test Track really didn't do much for me at all.

Saturday we only had part of the day before flying home, so we hit Islands of Adventure again to get a farewell cup of butter beer and enjoy some of the bits we had to rush through before.

Another Dramatic Day

Following another delicious breakfast at Morning Glory (I had a coconut almond waffle with lemon butter...wonderful!) we headed off to a last busy day at the Shakespeare Festival. First was the afternoon with "All's Well that Ends Well." This was a good production, although not entirely to the liking of our 8-year-old. She got it, though. She and Grandma had done some studying last night while we were off seeing Henry VIII, so she knew what to expect. Some bits (particularly when the French king got a bit long-winded) were not really able to hold her interest.

I thought the play was pretty well done. My favorite actor was probably Lafew, who had wonderful stage presence and great, expressive eyes. The repertory aspect was in view again, as the Clown/narrator (an invention of the director, which worked well) turned out to be none other than Don Quixote from our first play of this trip. He was amusing in this role, and worked very hard, too.

After a brief stroll through the art and craft fair along Ashland Creek, we had some ice cream at Mix, then a quick visit to the Tudor Guild gift shop, as we wanted to pick up a couple of items.

We then dropped off Grandma and our daughter for a visit with some cousins, and Jan and I went to dinner. We started with a little wine tasting at the EdenVale Enoteca, but weren't too impressed with any of the wines. So we stolled off to dine at the Ashland Bistro Cafe, which was quite good. Jan's scallop carbonara was particularly good.

Then to the final play of this trip, "Equivocation." In many ways this was the perfect conclusion to the trip, and it particularly helped to have seen Macbeth and Henry VIII beforehand. All in all, it was outstanding, with a cast of six players, five of whom play many, many roles. I believe we had seen all of them in other productions during the week, notably Anthony Heald (who we'd previously seen as Mayor Shinn in The Music Man and Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII) as Shagspeare and Jonathan Haugen (Gardiner in Henry VIII) as (mostly) Robert Cecil.

Intense, thought-provoking, and clever, I thought this was the best play we saw overall, and probably worth the trip all by itself. Two big thumbs up!

Now the theater part of the trip is done, and we're driving home tomorrow. I doubt I'll have anything to write about that, but one never knows.

Wandering Through History

Today was largely a day off, with free time to explore town. Since we didn't have theater tickets until evening, we spent a leisurely morning at the house, then headed across town to try breakfast at Brother's. The breakfast was okay, nothing really special, but the hot chai was quite excellent and the house-made scones were stellar. Tomorrow we'll probably be back at Morning Glory, mostly because of proximity.

Since we were in town after breakfast, we decided it was time to venture into some of the used book stores. First stop, Book Exchange, which is my kind of bookstore: unpretentious, and obviously staffed by bibliophiles. All four of us had a grand time shopping around, and I think each of us came out with at least two books. I found a Fred Pohl book I was previously unaware of, and another book by Allen Steele. I definitely need to read more science fiction!

Next stop was a pilgrimage to the Dagoba Organic Chocolate outlet, just outside town. Dagoba makes tasty organic chocolate, and they have quite a bit out for tasting. The woman running the tasting room was friendly and knowledgeable, and went out of her way to give us tastes of a couple of things that were not already set out. We bought quite a few bars of different flavors, several of which we were previously unaware of.

On from there to what bills itself as the world's biggest, best-stocked game store, Fun Again. I guess they have a well-stocked warehouse behind the retail section, but the store itself is not huge (though it is very well-stocked). Ultimately we didn't decide to buy any games, but it was fun to look around.

Then across the parking lot to yet another (mostly) used book store, Bookwagon. I thought they had less overall selection than Book Exchange, and not nearly the ambiance, but we did manage to find several more books to buy. My favorite, which I stumbled across on the new arrivals rack, was a copy of John Muir's The Velvet Monkey Wrench. I learned most of what I know about automobiles from Muir's classic "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive," so I've always been intrigued to read his Utopian prescription for living. We'll see how that turns out.

After a brief stopover at the house to rest up and change clothes, we ventured out to dinner. Somehow, after brunch and chocolate tasting, no one was all that hungry, but we knew we wouldn't survive the evening's play without sustenance. So we decided to try Greenleaf restaurant. The food was pretty ordinary, but might have seemed more impressive had we chosen to sit outside, along the creek. The BLT was worth eating, though.

And at last, off to the theater, where Jan and I saw "Henry VIII" at the Elizabethan Stage. It was quite impressive. We had to overcome a little cognitive dissonance, as the early scenes featured Buckingham, who last night was Professor Harold Hill, and Cardinal Wolsey, who was last night's tongue-tied mayor. Of course, this is both one of the joys and one of the drawbacks to a repertory company. It was momentarily distracting, but ultimately fine.

It's quite a staging of the play, majestic and full of pomp. In the end, I suppose the play is really more about Wolsey and Queen Katherine than about Henry, really (though he's obviously an important part). And more than any of the characters, it's about England and the struggle between the Catholic church and protestantism, which would quite literally tear at the fabric of the country for at least a couple more centuries. Of all the Shakespeare histories, this one might be the most complex in that it deals with such recent events at the time of its writing. (Forgive me if all this is obvious; I hadn't read or seen this play before tonight!)

Anyway, some very strong performances here. Wolsey was particularly good in the second act, when he's largely in monologue mode. He had some trip-ups in the first act with dialogue, but really shone in his solo spotlights. Katherine was quite powerful (although I thought he deathbed scene was probably the weakest part of the play). And Henry had his moments. I thought his silent scene during Katherine's speech at her trial was particularly good. He really conveyed a lot by his physical reactions.

All in all, a very worthy effort. We really enjoyed the play, and it hardly seemed to take an hour, much less two-and-a-half!

We ended the evening with a quick visit to Zoey's Cafe for ice cream. Very tasty gelato. I had the mystery rotator tonight, which was a chocolate and marshmallow with coconut. Very yummy!

One more long day tomorrow, with two plays, then we head home Sunday.

A Study in Contrasts

Nice day today. A little cooler than yesterday (though still quite hot by my coastal standards). Yet another breakfast at Morning Glory, where I learned that gingerbread waffles are indeed as good as they sound on the menu!

Best news of the day is that my daughter's bee-stung foot is much, much better. Indeed, she's bouncing around as good as new. This makes for a much happier day for all!

Today was a two-play day for some of us, which is a lot of sitting in the theater, but the two plays couldn't be much more different, so that helped.

The afternoon play was "Macbeth." Macbeth and I go way back. I read it in high school English class, and have seen it produced a couple of times since, most memorably in the outdoor glade at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, back when I lived down that way. An outdoor, nighttime performance is a great setting for Macbeth, with all its witches and general mayhem.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's rendition of Macbeth is somewhat updated, at least in costuming. And I frankly had a little trouble following all they were trying to do with the costumes. But the power and intensity of the play really comes through. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were tremendous, and gave a depth and variety to their performances that was intriguing and kept one's interest focused.

I should add a note about the superstition surrounding Macbeth. I gather some in the theater believe the play to be jinxed, and refuse to say the name of it out loud, just calling it "The Scottish Play." I find this amusing. I learned about the superstition from some friends in conjunction with another, while sitting at a baseball game. I made an oblique reference to the fact that a pitcher had not allowed any hits by the other team (I think it was about the fifth or sixth inning by then), and was soundly admonished by a neighbor that I was not to refer to such things, as I would jinx it. Another neighbor, overhearing, suddenly burst out with "It's the Scottish play! It's the Scottish play!" Took me a while to get the full explanation, and I was surprised to learn of this supposed jinx.

For what it's worth, I have still never seen a no-hitter live, and I'm sure some will blame the fact that I am willing to talk about the possibility, even while the game is still under way. But I don't believe in jinxes. Sorry for anyone disappointed by that.

In between we went to dinner at the Standing Stone Brewing Company, which has very good beer and quick enough service that we were able to make it up to the show with time to spare. The burgers were OK, but nothing special. We liked the sweet potato fries, of course.

In the evening we all went to see "The Music Man," which is obviously much lighter and more fun. The actor playing Professor Harold Hill was quite good, with a strong voice and good stage presence. He makes a fine con man! His counterpart playing Marion Paroo has a lovely voice, though perhaps not as clearly articulated as I might want (though I know the songs well enough that I didn't lose much). I have to say she also seems just a bit...well...old for the part. She's meant to be 26, and I peg her for quite a few years more than that. As Jan put it, a bit old to be playing the ingenue.

But the play just works. I like the staging, despite being a relatively small stage (indeed, the exact same stage on which we saw Macbeth just hours earlier). They manage to fill it without making it seem crowded, so the small town of River City seems fairly realistic (within stage conventions, of course). I also really liked the way the started with the whole town and its people being entirely gray and drab, with little bits of color introduced as Hill and his scheme take hold in town. By the end, the whole town is a gay festival, and the contrast is quite striking.

This is our first venture into Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but I gather that musicals are relatively rare here. If that's true, then I thought they did it quite well. The music was good, and most of the singing quite good. I thought the adaptation of the space to include a spot for the conductor to poke up was well done and unobtrusive. All in all, I really liked the way they were able to pop different scenes in without breaking the flow of the play.

So it was a day of very stark contrast between the plays, but interestingly, I found myself drawing more comparisons between Music Man and Don Quixote than with Macbeth. In part, I suppose it's because they touch on somewhat similar themes, each dealing with the difference (or lack thereof) between reality and imagination, or the ability of imagination and belief to shape reality. Ultimately, I guess that is a theme that resonates with me more than Macbeth's venture into ambition, prophecy, and gore. I thought Macbeth was the best performance of the three shows we've seen so far (with three more to go), and it will certainly stick with me. But I like the other two a lot more, if that makes sense.

All in all a good day, but a tiring one. Tomorrow is an easy day, with only an evening performance of "Henry VIII" for a couple of us. Then Saturday will be another two-play day. So I better get some rest!

Hot as Hell in Ashland

We drove up to Ashland, Oregon, last night because we have a bunch of tickets to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This is a particular treat, not only because it's our only family vacation for the summer, but also because Jan and I have been meaning to come up here for years, and only this year managed to arrange it.

So, first a few road trip notes, then we'll talk theater.

The drive up isn't too bad. We made it in 6.5 hours, including a stop for dinner and refueling. The first part is pretty much rote for us, as it's the same route we take to go skiing, but then branches northward through the central valley, and that was territory I've never driven, and only been a passenger on long, long ago. Might have been prettier in the daytime, but it was certainly cooler in the evening.

After an uneventful drive (with a soundtrack of the books-on-CD of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"), we arrived in Ashland just before 1:00 am, greeted enthusiastically by our daughter, who has been off traveling with Grandma for a couple of weeks. She gave us the grand tour of the little house we've swapped for, and eventually we all settled down and headed for bed.

Needless to say (I hope), we all slept in quite late in the morning, and after checking a few recommendations from my Facebook friends, headed out for the short walk to brunch at the Morning Glory Restaurant. That was a great find, especially as it is only about two blocks from the house. On the plus side, great food (marionberry syrup!!!) and nice service. On the minus side, it was flippin' HOT out. I mean, well into the 90s (F). Obnoxiously hot, really. No wonder they call the place Ashland--it's obviously all burned up long ago. Sheesh!

It being hot, some of us thought we ought to go out and find some way to cool off in the afternoon (and perhaps work off some of the big brunch). After checking out the nearby city park that has a small water play area (it looked way too hot, despite the water) we decided to head up to the reservoir outside town. The water level's pretty low, but it was a fun little swim for those (unlike yours truly) who had remembered to pack swim suits. I sat under a shade tree and read a book about avalanches.

All was well until after the swimming, when our daughter ran afoul of a bee or two, and got stung on two toes. Ouch! We managed to get some first-aid help from the park ranger, but decided it was best to head home, where some ice and rest seemed to make things better.

As we headed out to get some dinner before our first play, it became clear that additional first aid was necessary. The nearby Safeway pharmacy had nothing helpful, but we had ten minutes to get to the real pharmacy downtown, and we made it. They had some helpful salve and dressings, and all seemed in order. We got to the festival area, found a quick bite at Martino's (lobster ravioli!) and made it into the play with a few minutes to spare.

Tonight we were seeing "Don Quixote" at the open-air Elizabethan Stage. It's a nice theater, and I'm looking forward to seeing some actual Shakespeare there later in the week (Henry VIII, I think). It would be really hot in there in the daytime, but for an evening show it was great. Never having read or seen Don Quixote or any of its derivatives (I've heard the soundtrack to Man of La Mancha, but never seen it), I wasn't sure what to expect. And the more people told me, the more I questioned bringing an 8-year-old with us.

As it turned out, she didn't like it, and got quite bored early in the first act. She and Jan went out at intermission to explore the neighborhood, so Grandma and I watched the second act without them. They had a grand time checking out places, including the sweet shop, and met us at the end of the play with some cupcakes they'd gotten for free at closing time!

So, about the play. It's quite an interesting presentation. It captures well the difficulty of distinguishing reality from imagination, especially where fiction is involved. Many of the imaginary bits are played with puppets, many of which are clever and cute. The players walk a tight line between the clownish and the sincerely comical, and for the most part it works well. The character I found most interesting in many ways is the one labeled "The Cervantes Avatar," who keeps returning in various incarnations, often making awful puns.

It was fun (in spite of the boredom of the younger generation), and a fine introduction to the festival. Tomorrow we have two plays: Jan and I see "Macbeth" in the afternoon, and the whole family will see "The Music Man" in the evening.

The Long Ride Home

[Note: I'll update later with some pictures!]

The last legs of this trip are all in the air. From Makassar we fly to Bali, have a brief stopover, then off to Taipei, another stopover, and then home to San Francisco. Because of our friend the International Date Line, the trip starts in Makassar on Thursday morning, and after about 24 hours in transit, it's Thursday evening in San Francisco.

The hard part, of course, is figuring out how to do the trip without ending up hopelessly jet-lagged next week at work. So we'll try a combination of staying awake (my favorite solution to jet lag), and the homeopathic No Jet Lag pills. I've got books to read, and we'll see what fine cinematic treats China Airlines has in store.

Much later...

And it all turns out fine. Jan wasn't feeling too well, so she slept much of the trip. Christopher and I managed to stay awake most of the way, and the airline showed us some decent movies (unlike the trip over, where the "highlight" was a TV movie called "The Librarian"): Madagascar II on the Bali-Taipei leg, then Quantum of Solace (not my favorite Bond flick, but diverting enough for a plane) and Slumdog Millionaire, which I actually wanted to see, on the long transoceanic leg.

On the layover in Bali, we did a little shopping to use up the last of our Indonesian money, then ate lunch at the same Japanese restaurant we went to last September before catching our flight home. That gave us a chance to say goodbye to a few of our friends.

During the stop in Taipei, we had time to walk around and see some of the shops, including a gift shop from the national museum. Unfortunately, we also found shark fins for sale at several shops. But there was also nice tea, art, and some cool electronic gizmos. So that kept us busy. Another intriguing aspect was some rest areas they had decorated to resemble some of the natural areas one might visit in Taiwan. Kind of an interesting way to advertise, and a pleasant little respite from the commercial and travel facilities.

Oh, and they had a bunch of decorated art cows. The decorations were by school children. They were very bright and colorful and very cool looking!

All in all, our very long travel day passed relatively quickly, and the great reward came when we arrived in San Francisco, where we were greeted by our very eager, happy daughter. That was a most welcome end to a great trip.

Interlude in Makassar

Because of domestic flight schedules, we got to spend about a day in Makassar. We had flown through Makassar on the way to Raja Ampat, but this time we got to go into town and stay overnight.

Several interesting points. I noted on the way through the first time that the city and/or the airport seem to have two apparently interchangeable names, Makassar and Ujung Pandang. Some quick Googling now tells me that Ujung Pandang was a somewhat short-lived official name of the city at the end of the 20th century, but it is now Makassar again. I should note that a lot of the place names in Indonesia seem to change now and then. The province of Papua, which includes Raja Ampat, was at some point Iryan Jaya. But not anymore.

Second, Makassar is a commercial and shipping center, but not a tourist destination. It is practically at the geographical center of the Indonesian archipelago. We had a nice hotel, the Imperial Aryaduta. Nice facilities, but it's odd to be in a place where even the hotel staff speaks fairly limited English. Makassar definitely is not set up to cater to American tourists.

Third, this is our first stop in Indonesia where you really get the feeling of how deeply Muslim this country is. There are mosques seemingly everywhere, including one right across the street from our hotel. This means we can hear the call to prayer five times a day (and the hotel room has an indicator to show us where Mecca lies). The hotel information book includes a prayer-time schedule for the entire year.

Going out to lunch was a bit of an adventure. Aside from the fact that we had a bit of difficulty understanding the verbal directions from the hotel staff, we also didn't have any clue where we were going. So we found a restaurant and decided to go in. The menu was only in Indonesian, and the wait staff spoke only a tiny bit of English. Luckily I had learned enough of the names of food items on the boat that I could identify chicken, fish, rice, noodles, and a few other items. And beer. We perhaps didn't expect eight big bottles, but it was a hot day, and they went down great. The food was really tasty, and cheap. No complaints.

Dinner was pretty amusing, too. In the basement of the hotel there is a Brazilian-Mexican Pub and Restaurant called Salsa. The homesick Californians decided to see what Indonesian Mexican food is. We're still wondering, because the menu had no Mexican items. At all. Go figure. So we mostly ordered pizza!

I guess most important, the hotel had Internet service for me, and massages for Jan. Something for all of us, and a nice little experience that served as a transition on the way home.

Diving Recap

Wow...it's over. Lots and lots of diving, and it's done. So let's look back at what we've done:

43 dives, and I think Jan and I were the only ones who did them all. I spent nearly 52 hours under water, or an average of about an hour and twelve minutes for each dive. And Jan averaged about 7 minutes more per dive, which adds up to almost a full five extra hours under water over the two weeks. Amazing!

I guess we're kinda seriously waterlogged by now. But it's OK. A few days ago I was concerned that my ears weren't going to be happy with a dive trip this long, but they seem to have made it through just fine.

So, short summary is that we've done more diving on this single trip than we've ever done at one take before. Was it worth it?

I guess the obvious answer is, "Duh." I can't believe we'd have spent that much time if we weren't enjoying the dives. Although I have to say, we did a night dive the other night that was just dismal. Even the cruise director called it "crappy." And we were still down about an hour. So I guess it's plausible that we might have done a huge amount of mediocre diving, especially having traveled halfway around the world to do so.

Fact is, Raja Ampat and the surrounding area are amazing. I have never seen the sheer variety of corals and colors as we observed here. Just spectacular. And fish! Large numbers of fishes, big schools, great variety, and so on. And the reefs were quite healthy and robust.

Even in those cases where we didn't have spectacular conditions, such as the last few days in the north where the visibility was murky, we saw some great stuff (and could tell that in good conditions, it would be truly awesome).

Looking back, I realize I haven't said much about the dive boat. We sailed on the Archipelago Adventurer II, of the Archipelago Fleet. And I believe the cabin shown in the little slide show on the page is the cabin we actually stayed in. I have to admit to having some mixed feelings about the operation. I can break it down into three separate areas: the diver operation, the business, and the boat itself.

The dive operation is top-notch. The dive guides are terrific (especially Ali and Made), they know the sites and conditions very well. The tenders, tender crews, and deck crew are great. We had some issues with the management of the operation--how they chose sites or limited dive times--but that didn't mar the diving itself. The cruise directors are relatively new on the job, and this is their first time running a liveaboard.

On the business side, I was really impressed with Archipelago Fleet. They arranged all our domestic transfers and lodgings, and all that worked very smoothly. I don't think we could have managed all that by ourselves. It was particularly helpful to have locals there to negotiate all our baggage transfers and fees at the airports. This was all a cut above what I've experienced with other dive companies.

Lastly, the boat itself. The website describes it as "newly constructed," but frankly, it's a bit run down (and I'm told it's going into dry dock in June for some much-needed repairs). The public areas are nice. Both of the dining salons (one of which is used as the camera and TV room) are pleasant, and the dining deck outside the upper dining salon is lovely. The sun deck has no covering, so it's really a SUN deck. Really, it's too hot up there most of the time, so we ended up either indoors or at least under cover on a lower deck. Several of the cabins leaked when it rained. Some of the fixtures and finishing in the cabins were in less-than-perfect repair.

Overall, then, I'm a little conflicted. On the whole, I liked the dive operation and the boat crew and the business operations. On the other hand, the boat itself isn't really up to the standard of other "luxury" liveaboards we've been on.

So Raja Ampat gets a big thumbs-up for the diving. Archipelago Fleet really impressed me as a company and overall operation. I have real reservations about the Archipelago Adventurer II, though. So I would certainly consider going back, but would want to see that the boat had gotten some real upgrades. There are other boats operating in the area, and I would have to look at them, too.

Return Engagements

I've always been of the school that says great experiences aren't repeatable. Your second trip to Disneyland can never be as magical as the first. And if you win the lottery, you should stop buying tickets.

Along those lines, the passengers on our boat last night chose to head back to the sites where we dove with manta rays and under the piers the other day. In the light of not-so-favorable conditions where we'd been diving, the group elected to bypass the signature dive site of the region in favor of sites that had given us great dives. The danger, of course, being that it might not be as good this time. Indeed, I mentioned to Jan last night that we could sit and wait for mantas with no luck, or find that the fish had abandoned the piers and a current was ripping through or something. Ever the optimist, no?

So we arrived early at Manta Sandy to check for favorable currents and such, planning to dive at 8:00 am. Of course, another boat shows up and drops their divers in at 7:30. So we rescheduled to 8:30, so as not to overcrowd the site.

At 8:30 we dropped in, and lo, there are mantas at the cleaning station already, and we had as many as six at a time swooping through for the next hour-and-a-half or more. Marvelous! As good as the first time, and maybe even better in some ways.

Getting back on our boat, we learned that the other boat that had jumped in ahead of us had waited 40 minutes before seeing any mantas, and then had only three. So we definitely got the best of that exchange! They were coming back to the site as we left, so maybe they had something good later.

Then on to the piers, where we dropped in and...no fish. Really. Just desolate. Ghost town. We poked around the reef for a while, finding some pretty nice fish and things, and eventually headed back to the piers. The anchovies had returned, as had the school of trevally jacks that like to hunt there. But no sign of the scads that were so plentiful the last visit.

On the plus side, someone found a little farm of giant tridachna clams (Jan counted 19 of them), including some quite large. Always nice to see big, healthy giant clams.

All in all, it was worth coming back. No great disappointments, and the mantas were at least as good the second time around. We were fortunate.

Great Expectations

All trip long we've been hearing about how great the north was going to be: great visibility, big fish, and so on. And indeed, it's quite different from both the early muck diving we did and the reefs as we worked our way up here.

On the other hand, conditions have been somewhat poor, with unusual currents bringing in murky, yellow water much of the time. The nutrient-rich water is great for the reefs and the critters who live on and around them, but it makes the diving less than spectacular. It's nice to see a school of 100 fish, but frustrating to know that you could see 1000 or more if the water were clearer.

This suggests that perhaps our cruise director should have been a little more circumspect about what we would find here. Yes, we're all experienced divers and know that the conditions are at the whim of the ocean. But we can't help but get our hopes up when we constantly hear how great it's going to be.

It's a little disappointing, but we are still seeing some great stuff. No complaints about the diving; it's just not quite what we'd been led to expect.

Personal Bests

One thing that fascinates me about diving is that the longer I do it, the more I learn about myself. I have, over the years, learned to slow my breathing to the point that I could almost always make a standard tank of air last for an hour under most circumstances. Earlier this week, I faced a challenge, in that some of the folks I was diving with were pushing for longer dive times, up to and sometimes exceeding an hour and a half.

And I utterly surprised myself by managing to do it, too. It was a stretch at times, and I came up with nearly empty tanks a couple of times, but darned if by the end of the trip, I'm not finding 80-90 minutes a very reachable goal nearly all the time. And a couple of times I got to find out what happens when my dive computer runs out of digits to count the dive time. It only uses two digits, so when we aimed for 100 minutes a couple of times, I was curious to see what it would do.

Turns out I can't dive more than 99 minutes on my computer. It just stops counting at 99 (or at least, stops displaying additional time. This seems bad, as it's really, really important to know how much time has elapsed. It was one of a couple of limitations I ran into this week with my old computer. I think I'm going to have to invest in a new one before we do another serious dive trip. Luckily, that gives me a little time to save my pennies.

Reef Encounters

Neat stuff today, in rather unexpected venues. First dive in the morning was a manta dive at a site called "Manta Sandy." As the name implies, it's a sandy sea mount with little coral, but one area is a known cleaning station for big manta rays. And after we sat there for about 15 minutes, here came several big rays. The first ones, I'd guess, we maybe 8-12 feet across their wingspans. Later we saw some that must have been more like 15-18 feet: just massive. They come in, swooping and swirling, with remoras attached, so the cleaner fish can do their jobs. Truly fun to watch, and we had about an hour of that, so it was definitely worth the wait.

Next stop was at the pier at a little island called Airborek (or maybe Air Borek). The main attraction is huge schools of little bait fish (scads, mostly, but also anchovies) that hang out under the pier. Those were spectacular: fun to swim with a great photo and video subjects. The big surprises awaited us on the coral heads nearby. Ali, one of the dive guides, found two pygmy seahorses that he hadn't known about before. Then one of the divers, Mary, found a little blue-ringed octopus.

Basically, I had very low expectations for both of those dives, and both turned out to be great. This is one of the reasons I almost never skip a dive: you never know what you might miss. There's always risk with going to a spot to see one particular thing, since it might not be there. On the other hand, you could always see something great you didn't expect!

Mixed Results

One of the biggest changes in diving since I started almost 15 years ago is the common adoption of mixed-gas diving. It used to be that the tank on your back held compressed air, and while that is still sometimes true, on most of these tropical dive boats the tanks are mostly filled with Nitrox now.

"Nitrox" is a generic term for "enriched air" which is air with more oxygen added. Oxygen is generally very good for your body. We've all see tired athletes breathing oxygen to recover, and various kinds of patients breathing it under a doctor's care.

Divers have tried lots of modifications of breathing gas over the years. Ultimately there are two (or three) issues they are trying to solve:

• Air contains 79% nitrogen (versus 21% oxygen), and nitrogen bubbles can cause "the bends." The less nitrogen, the better.
  
• Oxygen at high pressure can be toxic. So not too much of that in the mix, especially as you dive deeper.
  
• Breathing too much pressurized oxygen over the course of a day can also be toxic (but in a different way).

I'll spare you all the science behind all this. Suffice it to say that it's desirable to displace some of the nitrogen in breathing gas with another gas. Under many conditions, oxygen is a good choice, but if one is diving very deep (and therefore under very high pressure), that could be deadly, so an inert gas such as helium or argon is generally used instead.

I remember vividly seeing film of divers years ago in a bathysphere breathing a gas with lots of helium added. The resulting "helium voice" was quite memorable. There is still "heliox" in use, but divers more commonly use the heavier (but also inert) argon now.

Fairly recently, recreational divers started using Nitrox (air with additional oxygen), which for most diving provides a margin of safety and comfort.

The drawback for me is that one needs a special dive computer to handle the necessary calculations for allowable depth and time given a particular mix of gases. Most modern dive computers handle this pretty elegantly, but my rather outdated one requires that I set it for the percentage of oxygen in the Nitrox for every single dive. And if I should forget, it defaults to assuming I'm using a 50% oxygen gas for my next dive, rather than the more reasonable assumption that I'll be using whatever I used the last time (usually between 30 and 32% oxygen).

So of course, I have now twice forgotten to set the computer before a dive on this trip, and it has been a huge hassle. I think I've handled it well and responsibly, by occasionally lying to the computer and telling it I was breathing plain air instead of Nitrox, so as to balance out the calculations. But I should not have to do this.

Before I do any more serious diving, I will probably need to invest in a new dive computer. Not that I mind new toys (especially computers!), but I basically like the one I have, but for this one thing. Annoying.

Misool Eco Resort

Been so busy diving the last couple of days, I haven't gotten to write at all! Diving's been really good, though.

This afternoon a few of us had the chance to pay a brief visit to a new dive resort here in Misool, the Misool Eco Resort. To say it's beautiful is an understatement. It's a lovely lagoon, and actually incorporates a small island in the lagoon via a wooden bridge.

The idea of the resort is the be as "green" and sustainable as possible. Thorben Niemann, who designed and built much of the resort, gave us a little tour and pointed out many features, such as the fact that all the wood used in construction was driftwood. They capture and use waste water for gardening. And they will soon have solar panels to generate much of the daily electricity (though not enough for, say, the air compressor in the dive center). And they've created a marine preserve around the resort, so there's no fishing and the like. We saw fish and small reef sharks swimming right in the lagoon.

It's quite beautiful and impressive. My pictures don't do it justice; you should click through to their website which does a much better job. I did get one cool shot of the inside of the roof at the resort's restaurant, though my little camera doesn't do it justice:


All I can say personally is that in the brief time we were there, we were accosted by some of the largest mosquitoes I have ever seen. They were fierce! We had forgotten to put on any repellent, but I have to say it would be a very different experience staying at the resort than on a boat as we are (with no mosquitoes!).

But it's really nice to see someone creating a very different kind of resort.

Motoring from Ambon

After our night dive tonight, we pulled the anchor and started on our way north. Tomorrow morning we'll be at a small island with a fringing reef north of here. We'll do a couple of dives there, then around noon we'll head for Raja Ampat itself, specifically the island of Misool.

Raja Ampat literally means "four kings." It refers to four native kings who controlled the spice trade back in the 17th century. They divided up the spice islands, including the area we're going to now.

Raja Ampat includes one of the largest marine protected areas in the world, and should be quite spectacular. It is known for having the greatest diversity of both coral and fish life of any area known on the planet.

Diving in the Muck

Today's diving is what we call "muck diving," which means searching for creatures (usually small ones), often amongst rubble, sand, or detritus. In fact, some of the best substrate for muck diving is human flotsam, such as bottles, discarded clothing, and such.

We have already seen, after only two dives, some very cool stuff. One highlight is that we've found several pairs of small cuttlefish, and have observed them both eating and mating. Wow! I'd only seem that on video before. We've also encountered more stonefish than I've probably ever observed before. Stonefish are very hard to see, as they blend in with their surroundings. But they pack a punch: very toxic spines that can kill humans. So it's good to know there are a lot of them around, if only to make us really, really careful.

Frogfish Update

Just had a chat with James, one of the cruise directors. He says the much-anticipated psychedelic frogfish hasn't actually been seen by anyone in about a year. As noted in my earlier post, it was first found some twenty years ago, then "misplaced" until last year, at which time it was seen a fair amount for several months, but not since.

We've declared a bounty on finding this fish: free beer for the remainder of the trip for whoever locates it. If that doesn't find it, nothing will!

We did a nice dive this morning, kind of a check-out dive, but we saw good stuff.

Off to Ambon

Today was a transit day. We said goodbye to Bali, and headed off to Ambon, where we would meet the dive boat. One of the joys of flying different airlines these days is the varying restrictions they put on baggage. For example, on China Airlines to get over here, they restricted us to two checked bags each, with a weight limit of 20 kg per bag. That's a pretty tight restriction for divers, especially for those bringing cameras and lenses and underwater housings and such.

Then this morning we took our first flight leg from Bali to Makassar (or Ujung Pandang; I need to learn why the place has two names) on Garuda Indonesia. Their limit is 20 kg per passenger. So now we're facing excess baggage fees. Luckily, they discounted a bit, as we were about 10 kg over each, and they only charged us for about 10 total.

Then we had to change airlines to get from Makassar to Ambon, so we got to do the whole baggage dance again with Lion Air. They, too, wanted to limit us to 20 kg per passenger, and again we were over, but again we got a bit of a discount.

At some level it begins to feel like kind of a racket, designed to charge one for the same overage, over and over. Unfortunately, to get to the particular corner of Indonesia we want, we have to take different airlines for each leg, so we have to cope.

Also at Makassar, we met up with the rest of the group we'll be diving with for the next couple of weeks. That includes old friends like Liz and Josh, the trip organizers from Undersea Productions, and also some new acquaintances who will soon be friends, too.

Arriving in Ambon we were told the airline hadn't been able to include all of the checked baggage. This meant that three of the bags for our group didn't make it. Luckily, all of Jan's and my bags showed up. Some other people will be a little short of fresh clothing, or in one case, short a camera housing, until we can get the additional bags in the morning.

Boarding the boat was interesting. We had to take taxis for 45 minutes or more to get from the airport to the harbor. I was quite impressed with the quality of the road the whole way. Ambon is not exactly a major metropolitan center by global standards, but it has a good main road, at least. Certainly better than many we've encountered in some other countries.

And a good thing, too, because midway through the ride, it started to rain. And we're talking major tropical downpour, with water running down the streets, kids floating boats in the gutters, and sometimes little visibility from the car. But it never felt dangerous, despite the closeness of the traffic, including the ubiquitous scooters.

The dive boat was docked (perhaps "wedged" is more accurate) between a cement barge and a tanker of some sort, so they had rigged “gangplanks” (just boards,really) to get us onto the barge, and from there onto the dive boat. It was a bit precarious, especially as it was still raining, but the crew was very helpful and we all made it aboard without incident.

And they greeted us with fresh coconuts to drink the water from. This is going to be great!

"Holiday, No Problem"

As planned, a quiet day around the resort. Got up at a reasonable time, which bodes well for adjusting to the 20-hour time change. Complementary breakfast buffet was pretty good: lots of fresh fruit, fresh bread for toast, eggs, bacon, Tater Tots...you name it.

Then everyone else in the group went off to the spa for various "treatments," so I headed out to the beach to relax and read. All the nice, shady spots were already claimed, so I found a decent spot near the pool and read for a bit. The sun eventually got a bit strong so I headed over by the lounge where they have computers, Internet, and wifi, and got on the net to read a few e-mails.

Lunch was a decent cheeseburger (figure we might not see another until we get home), then a little more lazing about. We took a late afternoon stroll along the beach walk, which went by some other resorts, lots of beach bars and restaurants, and some pretty scenery. We got back just as it started to rain.

Then it rained some more. I know I wrote a bit about the rain in Ubud when we were here last year. Boy, when it decides to rain, it really rains. Welcome to the tropics! We got good and soaked on our way to dinner. Our friends decided not to even go out, just stayed in their room. I guess this will be a good test of my new deck shoes (made by OTB), which are supposed to drain well (they do) and dry fast (we'll see).

Christopher's Austrian friend who is currently living in Ubud for a couple of years drove down in the rain to visit. They joined us as we were finishing dinner, and ordered drinks. When the waiter brought her mineral water, it was too cold, and she asked for one "not cold." His response summed up the day for me: "Holiday, no problem." He brought her another, not cold.

So I've decided that's the theme of this trip for me. I'm on holiday, so I'm not going to let anything be a problem. I will let other people take care of things that might otherwise be problems. I'm just going to enjoy.