For those of you who REALLY know me in person – I’m the type of person who plans (relatively) well. Especially for vacations, where usually certain significant amount of money is involved. It really makes me more serious than global warming ha ha… I did my research when is the best time to visit, best value for money budget hostels, itinerary, etc.
Based on my research – now is suppose to be a sunny bright summer in Bunaken. Err well, it rains a bit when we arrived the 1st day. But I wasn’t worry that much. It’s typical to get tropical shower every now and then. But when that “now and then” becomes “raining every day after lunch” that’s a bit of a downside cause you can’t do outdoor activities in the afternoon. But when mother nature decided to rain for 36 hours non stop – it’s more challenging to keep smiling.
That morning is more gloomy than usual. More cloudy. I like grey (for God sake, my wedding dress was silvery grey) – but I’m not too keen seeing it on sky. We rent a small 2 engine boat to visit a nearby island. People say the corals there are still well kept with strange creatures. So it’s should be good. We negotiate the price first before we left. Everything’s good. So far.
For those of you been to the sea, it’s one of those places on earth where the weather just changed quicker than those Nike ads on TV. When we took of, there are still some spots of blue in the sky so we were kinda hoping it will still be dry although the sky is a bit dark. Then the first bad news. First engine dies. And the sea is suddenly becomes rough and wavy. The boatman said that his boat cannot take us to the destination with only one engine and that condition.
So he dropped us to a place WHERE WE JUST VISITED THE DAY BEFORE. Gosh. The place might be pretty but if you do it 2 times in a row, it’s not cool at all. Boring. I think I still mumbling unhappily going down. Not enjoying at all. I try to take pictures but it doesn’t come out right. My body was tossed around by the wave which is evidently bitchier than the day before hence difficult to take sharp pictures. Another side effect of the wave is no matter how hard I swim, kick, paddle or whatever, I’m still within 3 m radius from the small boat. Plus, with no sun the corals just looked like an old black and white movies.
And then it start to drizzled. Then it becomes foggy. The visibility above water is less than 5 meters. After 20 mins or so we climbed back to the boat and call it the day. It’s not fun anymore. I was thinking in the back of my head to ask for discount. It’s not fair to pay full price under this condition.
When I asked to go back to our resort, the boatman said that let’s wait until the rain cool down a bit. I was like… errr… Okay. About 30 mins afterwards, (and the rain becomes harder btw) the boatman finally becomes tired on waiting. So he start up the engine. We were moving very very slow cause the wave is taking us to the other direction. After 5 minutes of struggling, it becomes very quiet. I asked Ian, why do we stop? And then he said, errr… THE OTHER ENGINE DIES as well. WHAT???
The next 1 hour is spent by paddling. We can actually see the island, but it’s just a struggle to get near. Ian was shivering cause it’s soooo cold plus our clothes are soaking wet. My hands are wrinkled like 800 years old lady. After paddling and paddling, the boatman screamed at us to get out of the boat and help him push the boat to the shore ha ha ha… I startled for few seconds, thinking it was a lame joke or something. But he’s serious ha ha… So Ian and I jumped out, still strap to our safety jacket and push the damn thing to shore. I’m serious! See the picture proof!
Well that’s not over. The boatman had to fix or borrow another engine from the village. So he told us to wait at his house (also not lying, see picture). Errr, thank God I’m going with my partner. Otherwise it’ll be really scary. Another 30 mins or so, he finally announced he found the engine to borrow (NOT that the boat is fixed). It’s another 15-20 mins I guess before the boat is declared to be working again. Finally we reached our hotel it was almost 2 pm and we were only in the water for 20 mins (not including time to push the boat ya). The day before we went snorkeling and took 700++ pictures and was back to the hotel by 1 pm. And surprise surprise, we need to pay FULL PRICE.
Well, I didn’t have the heart not to pay full… I mean, when we wait in his house, I can see that his not asking that amount of money because he’s greedy. He has to support like 6++ family members, which is a lot… Plus he actually works harder from the day before (pushing, paddling, etc). So… We just gave the money. We’ll make money elsewhere.
Wet, cold, no air con, no TV, cloudy, humid, etc. It’s so easy to count what’s not working. So easy to hate everything. But then, it could be worse. One of the guest we met there flew from Holland to dive – but the week before he fell from a cliff and got some serious injuries, needs some stitches and his wombs should not even get wet at all (so no diving, no snorkeling, not even playing on the beach I guess). So at least Ian and I was healthy – if you don’t count the mental trauma ha ha… (nah kidding).
We did get stuck in the storm for couple of hours, but we got to see (and picture) some flying fish that’s jumping around the water surface. Plus, we’re still alive to share the story ha ha…
And for myself, seeing how calm & smiley Ian was handling the situation and how he still sincerely hug and console me when I got all snappy in such a bad day - it gives me a very good feeling that our relationship would sustain a very very long time... If we can survive such a perfect day to hate each other, I’m confidence we can survive lots of other things ^_^
|  | 
|
