Amed, Bali:
In May 2017, while spending several weeks in Bali, we stayed in the village of Lean, near Amed, in the east of the island of Bali. Amed is really a stretch of small fishing villages, rather than one place, and it’s known for its excellent diving, of COURSE we went there!
Naturally we checked out Travelfish for recommendations first, and booked to stay at Life in Amed, which is a charming boutique hotel on the beach.
We were also delighted to find that Stu and Sam, founders of Travelfish, were staying at Life in Amed. It was great to meet them 🙂
We stayed at Life in Amed for a week while diving, and found the hotel very comfortable, with friendly, helpful staff. The regular cottages have a double bed downstairs, and a twin bedded room upstairs. Our room was cool and dark, which suited us just fine, after diving! Our a/c worked fine, but upstairs was very warm. We enjoyed the outdoor shower 🙂 Staff were a delight, always friendly and helpful. We ate in the hotel restaurant most of the time, and found the food to be very good. Drinks were imaginative and fun, food was tasty and very plentiful. I especially enjoyed the chicken satay lilit. The beach in front of the hotel is black volcanic sand, not dirty, as some people have commented!
We booked our diving with Euro Dive. There are plenty of dive shops in the area, and we enjoyed our time with Euro Dive. They were very organised and safety conscious. We were picked up and dropped off each morning and evening, and we kept the same divemaster, Roda, which was great, as it meant we got a chance to get to know each other’s diving styles. Dive groups are small: there was only Chris and myself on our dives! Roda has a great eye for finding small things underwater – check out the pink pygmy seahorse, that it took me ages to see, after Roda found it!
The sites are very close to shore, many of the sites don’t require a boat, and you wade straight out from shore. This can be challenging, for example the beach we used to dive the wreck of the USAT Liberty – a very popular dive site – is not a sandy beach. It’s covered in round stones, just big enough to produce some spectacular bruising, if the waves are a bit strong and push you over when getting in or out of the water (as I discovered!).
Everything is extremely well organised. When the dive bus had parked above the beach, we were swarmed by a group of local porters who work here. They carried all the gear down to the beach, and put it all in “our” place on the beach. Part of our dive fee goes towards paying the porters.
The diving is glorious!
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Another way to get to the dive sites is by jukung, the local fishing boat. We used this at the Pyramids dive site. Our DM Roda, local fisherman, and Chris and myself, all piled into the very narrow boat, with our gear, motored out for a few minutes, then threw all the gear in the water!
Well, it was a bit more organised than that. Roda jumped in first, then one at a time, we dropped our equipment into the water, and jumped in after. With Roda holding things steady, we climbed into our gear and set off to see what was waiting for us!
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If you know me well, you’ll be surprised to see these stunning photos of sunrise from the beach outside our hotel, but it had to be done, it really is a beautiful location!
More beautiful underwater scenes:
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Extraordinary, almost invisible, pygmy seahorse:
Another fabulous dive at the USAT Liberty wreck:
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Me joining the fish!
Below is a juvenile Sweetlips. It’s about 6 cm long, it was writhing and dancing around like a crazy thing… scroll down…
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And these are the adult Sweetlips. Completely different!
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Moonrise on Lean beach:
Lush greenery to the ocean:
NOTE: we were happy to pay the full, fair, market price for our hotel and our diving. We always do!
From Amed, we headed north and west to peaceful Munduk.
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Ohhh this post brought back wonderful memories of our time in Amed. We are not divers, but we love snorkeling and this place was absolute heaven. Being able to walk in and see wildlife witin feet of the shore…no boat needed, was heaven. We rented a cheap underwater camera which did not suffice, but the memories…Your photos are absolutely magnificent. That gorgeous seahorse! The colors!!! The shapes!!!! Of course one can get so much deeper while diving. (The whole oxygen tank thing seems so scary to me). Thanks for sharing these treasures of the sea.
Peta
Hi Peta, thank you so much for your kind comments! Diving is truly my happy place 🙂
It certainly was scary for me, learning to dive, but if you think you might want to do it, I strongly recommend a course over a longer period of time, to get you used to everything, rather than what seems to be popular now, doing it in 3 days. I needed the extra time to get used to the whole scary thing! But now (20 years later!) I still LOVE it! 🙂
Just shared this photos with my husband Ben. He could not believe the amazing colors and shapes. Being colorblind one of tge few places where he can actually see colors, is underwater. There is one HUGE fish on the ocean floor. Scary as shit!! Haha
Here was our post on Amed:
http://www.greenglobaltrek.com/2016/02/exploring-coral-reefs-and-coves-in-northern-bali-amed.html
Peta
Hi Peta, WOW, I didn’t know that some people who are colourblind can see colours underwater, how amazing, how wonderful for Ben! I enjoyed your post on Amed, and have subscribed to your blog now 🙂 Great to “meet” fellow wanderers!
Thanks so much!
Wow, it’s so great. I haven’t seen such beautiful image before. So nice.👌👌
Hi Avinash, thanks so much for your kind comments! 🙂