Mona

Maumere News

diving, Travels, underwater

I am sitting here in a small room with no fan and nor A/C to write these few lines.  This is one major point which kept me from keeping you all updated during this first week. No WIFI  here, so you have to plug in your Computer in the reception area. An as you can imagine it is not the fastest connection. Welcome to Maumere, Flores 🙂

Let’s talk diving

We leave every morning at 7am or 8 am with a small fisherman boat to the different spots. Maumere is a wide angle paradise. We see reef sharks on almost every dive, turtles and a eagle ray passed by lately too! There is some macro stuff around but it is difficult to find it when your eyes focus on large gorgonian fans, sponges in different colours and other huge coral!

There are still places you can see the damage of the 1992 earthquake underwater but the reef has well devellopped since.

As you can imagine we are the only divers around. This is great!!!

Tomorrow will be our last diving day here with the people from SEA WORLD CLUB. We will go wreck diving.

Well the only moment I put on the macro lens is on the night dives. There is a much dive site here on the housereef. Lots of sand and rubbish and then millions of crabs and other sand critters.

I put some photos together straight from the camera without processing to give you an idea of Maumere underwater

Enjoy!

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Packed and ready to go!

Travels, underwater

Sunset over Komodo NP

Sunset over Komodo NP

All the bags are packed for our 3 weeks trip around Flores island. I think we really reduced our luggage to a strict minimum :
Chris’ and my bags weight 20 kg each!

This includes :

  • all dive equipment such as BCD, regulator, wetsuit, mask, fins, booties,snorkel, gloves, reef hook  🙂
  • strobe arms, housing handles and all cables for the cameras
  • a bit of clothes such as 3 pants and 4 T-Shirts
  • Lots of Anti -Nyamuk!
Ze bags

Ze bags

An Explorer hard case (15kg) contains the 2 Ike housings.

Well, no need to tell you that our hand luggage  goes slightly over the 7 kg we are allowed to 🙂 But with 10 kg in each bag I find it quite reasonable for a laptop, 2 cameras, as for me I take the 18-200mm lens for topside shots. A 60mm and 105mm macro and the 10-17mm Tokina wide angle and 2 Ike strobes. Chris carries a 50mm macro, a 2x TC , his brand new 14-54mm lens and 2 Ike strobes too. I carry a Canon compact camera for the eventual snapshot during surface interval

Here an old slide picture I took in 2003 around Komodo with my old Sea&Sea MII. The image quality is crap to non-existent, but you can see why I’m eager to get back diving there. Healthy reefs and lots of life!

sharkfamily in Komodo

shark family in Komodo

If internet connections allow I will keep you updated on a daily basis on the adventures around Flores.

Splash calendar 2011

calendar, diving, my slideshows, underwater

Last year we started to print a calendar for the dive shop.It was handed out to lots of customers. It was a big A3 sized wall calendar with dark background. We got lots of positive feedback so it was an easy decision to go for a 2011 edition. Last year I focused on macro photography, so I decided to change and chose wide-angle pictures, all featuring one or more divers.

I placed the order for printing 30 minutes ago.

Here is the very first preview. I hope you enjoy. Don’t hesitate to leave suggestions and comments.

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