Four days before we were supposed to fly to Flores, Sati mentioned the Alor Archipelago, a chain of islands in East Nusa Tengara, just north of West Timor. After reading what little was written about Alor in our guidebook, we spent the next few hours in a travel planning run-around like only Indonesia can conjure. The next day, we were on a propeller plane headed east.

Our one night in West Timor was spent in Kupang, the capital. We walked to the night market at the harbor and sampled delectable food while teenage boys dj’ed through dvd players, selling their crazy selections of hip hop, techno, r&b and Indonesian pop CDs.

The next day we arrived on Alor. The approach to the tiny airport was a 360 with all views from the windows looking down at the waves a stone’s throw below us and touching down, downwind. Exciting.

We headed straight for Kepa, a tiny island just of the coast in hopes of a bungalow at a homestay and dive operation called La P’tite Kepa. All bungalows had been booked, but as our luck would have it, the deluxe bungalow had opened up for three nights after a cancellation that morning. Sati and I fell in love with the place immediately as we walked down to the first of three deserted beaches that we had to ourselves for our entire stay. Amazing. We snorkeled on an incredibly abundant reef just off the middle beach and were amazed at the amount of life we saw.

All meals there are eaten together, family style, and the food, as in all of Alor, is all local fare and eaten with tea. Almost everyone at the site was a diver, and the meals followed the dive schedule. At each meal before we went out on the dive boat, the other guests and dive masters and Cedric, on of the owners, told stories of the diving and looked through the books to identify the nudibranchs and fish they had seen that day. The group of guests included at least four dive masters and divers with extensive experience and hundreds of hours underwater. I would playing with the big boys here. There would be no hand holding.

Sati and I went out on the dive boat for one day. I had done a refresher course and two dives in Lembongan and felt comfortable with diving again. But this was the first operation that I’d ever been diving with that was not also a school. No one checked my equipment until I asked, but they were happy to do so. Just before we got in the water at the first site on the coast of Pantar, Cedric said, “We are first going to 38 meters. You can do this?” I should point out that Cedric looks like a bouncer, or maybe a wrestler, but is a softie. 38 meters? Deeper than I’ve ever gone. “Yes, but if I have problems, I’ll let you know.”

Then, we descended on the most beautiful coral reef wall I have ever seen. I was awestruck. Just stunned by the beauty of this place. It was so full of life, so featured a wall and just absolutely massive. The wall extended down below us much further than we could see and to both sides as we swam along. The divers searched for and pointed out minuscule, rare pygmy seahorses and nudibranchs. Sati snorkeled above and had the sea level view of this amazing wall which teemed with life right from the surface. A column of hundreds and hundreds of yellow and black fish cascaded from the surface to the deep blue right in front of me. Animals from the blue came into view at a distance of no less than 35 meters. Wow.

For all our diving friends… let’s do an eastern Indonesia dive trip someday. Alor, Raja Ampat Islands, Togian Islands and Bunaken. It’s crazy good.