Liberty Wreck

The next day after Uluwatu we left Jimbaran to make our way to Amed on the East of Bali so we could try out the wreck dive which we heard about during our stay on Mabul island. USAT Liberty was a United States Army transport ship torpedoed by Japanese submarine in 1942 and beached near to the shores. In order for us to get there we negotiated with Awan, our driver from the trip to Uluwatu, to take us. It cost us 450,000 RP which is about £30 and the ride would take about 4 hours. The idea would be to get to Amed at 11am so we could dive the wreck and stay over one night before getting the speed boat to Gili Islands.

So we left Jimbaran quite early to make sure we could reach Amed in good time. The trip started off not so well because Awan turned up in a different car to the day before which didn't have any seat belts which we instantly were not happy with especially with the type of the driving that you witness but there was nothing we could do about it. Basically in Bali its the norm to drive down the centre of the road only swerving back into your lane when on coming traffic gets close, sometimes not paying any attention to whether anyone has come up on the inside, so at times it was a bit of a white knuckle ride!

As we left the south of Bali we began to see that a lot of the island is countryside with small Banjar's dotted along the coastal road, it was a nice scenic route. The ride didn't seem that long and we made it to Amed with time to spare. We checked in with Adventure Divers and fortunately they provided lunch in the cost of our dives so we tucked into some Nasi Goreng and waited to meet up with our dive master.

The guy who turned up was a local who liked to be called 'brother', and he was really friendly and we later found out that he had been freelancing for a while but had at least 20 years experience diving. We signed the waivers and in no time we were jumping in the mini-van to make our way to Tulemben, which is the bay that the Liberty Wreck is located.

We couldn't stay at the dive centre as their accommodation was full but luckily one of the ladies who works there had a Homestay and a spare room for us and we would drop off our bags on route. I left Sarah to go look at the room and she came back with a big smile so I knew it was good but didn't know how good... More on that later.

Moving on from where we would be staying we drove for about 20 minutes and came to a car park just a short distance from the bay. The entry to the dive was going to be a new experience for us as we had always gone from a boat but in this case you just walk off the beach into the sea with your dive gear on. The locals helped with taking all the gear from the car to the beach area for us so it was a really easy setup as a customer. Once we were geared up we did the standard buddy checks and then we were off walking into the sea!

At first the visability was not that great and it took while for things to appear but as we went deeper approaching the wreck from the stern we came upon some regulars that we have seen and some not so regular. The marine life was very diverse.

It took a while for the wreck to appear, I had expected there to be a ship like shape in the water to follow but seeing as this had been torpedoed it was split up and there was large parts of the ship pertruding from all angles. What was cool to look at was the way the coral life had adapted around it and almost made it unrecognisable.

You could only see bubbles come out of small holes in the wreck and you knew that someone was diving inside the wreck.

We saw these garden eels for the first time.

Spot the fish...

On the way up for our 3 minute stop we were shown this Mantis Shrimp who didn't take to kindly to having a rock put down his front door, and quickly pushed it back out again... Well lets be honest you wouldn't either!

Brother used our first dive to see how our diving was before taking us further into the wreck, so it wasn't until our second dive that we got a chance to go into the wreck itself and see its actual size inside the hull.

On the way we found a wheel!

This fella came out of the wreck to the surpise of Sarah.

We found a big gun!

Going theough the wreck was a great experience and also helped us improve our diving skills in terms of buoyancy and control through smaller areas.

After travelling back from Tulemben to the dive shop we chatted about what we saw and filled in our logbooks and were fortunate that we could upload the photos from the dive instantly as a girl who was staying a the dive center had the apple connector to allow us to take it straight from the camera. We chatted with David who was one of the main guys for Adventure Divers and afterwards we walked back to our homestay and I got to see why Sarah was so happy with what we got.

It was a room that had just been built behind their house to great standards, with a view out over the sea and only about 10 paces from the black beach and stunning views of Mt Agung! Very impressive and amazing value for money.

We opted to have dinner next door where there was a band playing and it was good food and ok music, but after our long day we went back to our room and got some rest knowing we would be on our way to Gili Islands.

Its all go!

Stay tuned for more tales

Dan