Diving in Padang Bai, 11.03.-15.03.2020 (Day 40-44)

Today it's time to get up early again, because we have an appointment at the dive school at 08:30 am.

Yes, even on vacation you can have appointments, if you have decided at short notice to take a diving course on site 😊

We have already made good progress online and prepared ourselves for our courses. At least we hope so 😊

For the first time in 40 days, we will spend the days apart, because we will be assigned two different diving instructors. It's kind of strange, considering that we were always together before.

What is also strange for me is to go diving without Steven. It feels kind of strange.

Because so far I have always dived with him.

But after three days, we both passed our diving certificates with flying colors.

I now have my AOWD and Steven has his Rescue Diver in his pocket.

As a reward, we will go to Manta Point near Nusa Penida Island the next day.

Wow, what breathtaking animals. How easily the mantas glide through the water. Simply unbelievable. We could watch these animals for hours, but of course we can't because of the air we need for diving. Eventually, every tank runs out of air and after just under an hour we unfortunately have to resurface 😔

But we will not forget this impressive experience of having almost 7-meter-long sea creatures swimming around us.

The days at the German diving school Paradise Diving in Padang Bai were wonderful, but the time is over and we are taking a speedboat to the neighboring island of Nusa Penida.

After checking into the hotel, we book a guide for the next day to explore the island. Because we definitely don't want to ride scooters here. The island is not yet fully developed for tourism, the roads are super narrow and the edges are more than damaged.

So we'd rather not.

After a delicious dinner, we want to retreat to our room, but then the events unfold.

We have been traveling for 6 weeks now. Of course, we have seen someone wearing a face mask here and there, but apart from the WhatsApp messages from our loved ones at home in Germany and reading some news on the internet, we haven't really been aware of the corona madness.

Until now 😔😔😔

Unfortunately, the madness has now arrived here in Indonesia as well. The islands are supposed to be closed one by one, and there is also talk of closing the airport.

We actually planned to stay on Nusa Penida for 3 nights... but now we both want to sleep on it overnight and then think about what to do tomorrow...