The good days are almost over and I wouldn’t mind if a sudden ice age closed FRA for the next two or three years, but I fear that’s only wishful thinking. Before I set sail here’s my last update:

• well, we finally got our divers’ licenses, and the same day we got it we went straight into the next-best tours office in order to use it. However, no one seems to care if you really have one, you only have to sign a paper stating you could dive. The bad thing is they’re as lenient with the equipment as they’re with the certificates. It took me ten minutes or so to find out that my depth meter didn’t work. I was, however, in good company: my buddy’s meter was broken as well, so we both just followed the dive master and hoped that at least his gauge worked
• I’m tempted to say that a SPG (the thing that tells you how much air you have still left in your tank) can be quite a decent relaxation trainer. When you see how much air goes out when you take a couple of deep breaths you try to stay as calm as possible, trying not to be the ‘bad guy’ that ruins the trip by running out of air first.
• what we have seen (excerpt of my diving log): Barracudas, Clownfishes, Sergeant Majors, Bat Fishes, Flounders, Parrotfishes, Butterflyfishes, Sea Cucumber, Fusilier Fishes, Orangutan-Crabs, Giant clams, Starfishes, Lion Fishes, an Eagle ray (unfortunately I’ve only grasped a shadow, the others had seen it more clearly) and dozens of plants I can’t even describe, some of them were several meters in size
• we’ve been told that if we were lucky there could be sharks around, but we haven’t seen any (I suppose when they learned that we got our licenses they moved into safer territories), same for turtles
• by the way, we have also been told that like 90% of all diving accidents happen at surface level. I second that. My head still hurts from the metal bar I banged against when leaving the boat at the jetty.
• speaking of head banging: my favorite (local) song in the radio played over here (Meet Uncle Hussain feat. Black – Drama King), makes me fantasizing racing over jungly serpentines to the beat of the music with the sun in our backs (not that we would have ever done that, and especially not several times …)

In addition to diving and songs there have also been a couple of other things and places I haven’t blogged about, most notably:

• the Tip of Borneo. Took us a four hours ride to get there and we started rather late. Had to fight the clock in order to reach it before the sunset; but it was worth it. There you can not only enjoy an adorable end of day, but you will also have a beautiful view at the stars and the milky way afterwards while lying on the warm stones, slowly dreaming away to the sounds of the waves as they break at the cliff below.

So much more to say, so little time. Boreno, I’ll miss you, but I will come back.