Bali, Tulamben

Bali has a lot of nice warm water around the entire island and plenty of good places to dive as well. Looked up what the best place to dive in Bali would be and there were plenty of spots claiming they were. I decided to do a wreck dive at what supposedly is Bali's most popular dive, USAT Liberty.
There were dive trips being sold in the city to take me there with a minibus and other divers, but I had no idea who were doing the dives, for me diving is priority number 1. I contacted a few dive shops with good reviews to see if walk-in dives were possible or they needed a little more preparation. One responded back, the best the town, with reasonable prices and plenty of instructors available, good.
The entire evening was spent negotiating with taxi drivers in the town to take me to Tulamben which was 3 hours drive away. Many drivers were willing to take me there, but not to wait for me to do my dives. I finally found a guy that was a little hesitating, but eventually agreed to take me. After that, somehow we ended up having way too many Mojitos and getting to bad way too late, that seemed to be the theme of Ubud.
Woke up next morning, had a light breakfast and set off. The roads however were so bad that any sleep on the way there was out of the question. After 2.5 hours drive the landscape suddenly changed from lush jungle to bare desert like dry surface. Looked like a volcano eruption had caused lava running down the mountain and just flattened the landscape.
Half an hour later I arrived at the dive shop and checked in with Tulamben Wreck Divers and a young guy called Made. Not more than 30 minutes later we were on our way to the beach. They had porters transporting the gear to the beach, so people were walking to and from the beach only with the wet suit and flippers. On the beach there were maybe 200 people waiting, going to and returning from the water, this was one busy wreck dive site for sure.

The wreck was American transport ship rebuilt for war that was hit by Japanese torpedoes during World War II. An attempt to tow the damaged ship to harbor failed, and instead she was beached on the coast at Tulamben, so that the cargo could be salvaged. Here the ship laid on the beach for more than 20 years, when a volcanic eruption on Bali sent her into the water and down on a sand slop. The wreck starts approximately on 10 meters and the deepest parts are around 30 meters, perfect for divers.
The wreck is only around 100 meters from shore, so boats are not necessary. The beach however consists of big stones, slippery from algae. Add waves to that equation, it was really difficult to get out. I had gotten a really bad mask that leaked like crazy under water. I changed with the instructor and now I was ready.
The hose for the mouth piece was like 10-20cm too short and I couldn't really turn my head to the left. On top of that the rubber was so soft that when biting on it, I could almost not breathe through the mouth piece, not a funny feeling. Under water and 2 minutes later, everything felt into place though, a strange calmness came over me and a few seconds later we were at the wreck.
There were a lot of corals, soft and hard and lots of different fish in all colors and shapes. Lots of dark spots for fish to hide and just really really nice. The visibility was great and I was told after the dive that the visibility is usually a lot better, I have no complaints.
On the second dive another couple was going to join and since one of them didn't have the advanced cert, we couldn't go to the wreck again for some swim throughs to see it from the inside. The instructor proposed we went to a coral garden instead and actually that sounded better to me, I didn't want to get lost inside a wreck.
The coral garden dive was quite interesting, there was a strong current along the coast one way. After struggling up the current for a while, we turned around and from now on it was just a matter of direction, the current took us all the way. They had old airplanes and other obstacles in the water to create artificial reefs for coral growth. I saw a few fishes I had seen before, garden eels and some of the same fish as at the Similan Islands, but also two huge fishes, Napoleon and some other unknown, but they were 1.5-2 meters big. Intimidating to say the least.
Just at the end of the dive, we got an invited visitor, his name was mr Shark. It was around 2 meter long black tip reef shark, that swam right past me and started circling us. It looked hungry with that typical shark mouth, not a pretty sight, especially not underwater. I got a nice video of chasing the dude under water, that was fun.
This must be the first time I have seen that big of a shark up this close while diving. The shark is swimming so smooth underwater with no effort, looking so powerful ready to strike any moment. A very pretty animal