Diving in Bali Amed with Bali Dive Trek

Return to Bali Amed for Scuba People the scuba diving magazine. This time we put our palms at Bali Dive Trek, a French-speaking center but not only, since within the team we can find a real melting pot of French, English, Indian and of course Indonesian culture!

Antoine, a Frenchman who has been based in Indonesia for several years, began to dive as early as the age of 9. He grew up abroad in Africa after having gained a great experience in recreational diving, but also in diving tek. Antoine has set up Bali Dive Trek with several associates who are as passionate about diving as he is, and who are part of this category of people who appreciate life.

Bali Dive Trek

Antoine therefore welcomed us to Bali Dive Trek, a nice little resort built by them. The resort is slightly extra pole from the village. Located just at the entrance of Amed to get there you have to take a small exotic path. Amed has a very different microclimate from the rest of Bali, you can feel it as soon as you approach it. We really appreciated the attention to detail with which Bali Dive Trek was thought out. The bungalows are traditionally built with straw roofs, which have a typical appearance with excellent comfort. The swimming pool is large, well maintained, the restaurant has an excellent and varied menu. Very soon, a "chill out" area will be available on the terrace.

As for the diving center, everything is well organized: Alexis takes care of inflating the blocks and gas mixtures you want. The spaces are clean and well defined. A classroom, a room for tools, a room to store your photo equipment, another to store the CCRs and of course rinsing bins and boxes to keep your equipment! The little extra, very nice, there is even a small crane to rinse heavy equipment without getting tired. A very appreciable innovation especially when you are a teak diver.

Diving Tek in Bali Amed

Bali Dive Trek is very well run on the daily diving dive leisure. It differs from other centers of Amed thanks to the tek. Antoine Martin and Marc Crane are two references in this universe, whether it's open circuit diving, sidemount or rebreather training. These subjects no longer have any secret for them. They are rigorous trainers, specialized in the recyclers, they can train on various machines: AP diving, Revo, JJccr, Poseidon mk6 and 7 and very soon the newt which for our part entirely seduced us.

Amed is mainly known for his macro dives. When we got in touch with Antoine and discovered that we could dive into CCR with our submatix mini carbon In Bali, we were extremely excited to be able to discover this part of the island of the gods from a completely different angle than we could know.

Bali Dive Trek is fully equipped to accommodate tek divers regardless of their needs for CCR or open circuit. You will be able to find lime, bottles for CCR and the bottles of decoration or bail out which are necessary to your palanquées.

Dive sites

The deep sites are apparently numerous and in a few days we have not been able to explore all of them. With a bit of luck, we can cross schools of hammerhead sharks, molas molas, loaches of good size, schools of jacks and ignobilis barracudas bench. We are very far from the spots only macros that make the reputation of Amed.

Antoine also wanted us to rediscover a much more classic site known in Tulemben, the "Liberty" ...

Liberty by night:

The Liberty is an American wreck of the 2 World War I that was stranded on the beach at the end of the war. The wreck is broken up into several pieces, which makes it possible to explore by divers of all levels. The site is usually a factory for divers who take the site of assault. At night, it's all the opposite. We found ourselves alone with the steel beast which is of rare beauty.

There are magnificent gorgonians, whose colors stand out even more in the semi-darkness. We were also able to meet humpback parrot fish, which came to take refuge in the structure for the night. We found ourselves face to face with 2-3 individuals in the middle of the wreckage, they were not very happy to see us and their size did not make our movement in these small spaces very easy.

Diving the liberty in CCR is also a real comfort, no worries or fear of having to do long bearings. Thanks to the JRC it is possible to take the time to drag what is always a pleasure during such dives.

The next day we left for another site, Gili Sellum:

Small islets located at the end of Amed. Antoine explains very quickly that the site is technical, because of some descending currents and sometimes even small whirlpools that can be created. So we have to leave with a scooter for comfort and safety, but also, to navigate through the current on the various drop-offs.

The departure is from a small bay, where we put all the equipment on a Banka. For those who do not know, these are small local boats dug into a trunk with 1 float on each side. We were equipped with 2 CCR, 2 bailout, a scooter and my camera with flash on this frail skiff. Once the launch was done and after doing 2-3 security check, we could see that everything was in our favor, there was very little power. However, we launch the scooter to advance to a large plateau, on which we cross a bench of tuna dog tooth that passes and passes several times visit us. We end up finding a turtle, so I decide to photograph it from every angle.

When suddenly, I hear Antoine call me behind me. An incredible show happens. I'm hunting a jack-jerky school, but to my surprise we were sitting in the middle of the bench, it was incredibly beautiful.

We finished the dive with bearings on a nice little reef sheltered. Even if on this dive we did not meet Manta or mola mola or hammerhead shark, the site lends itself to it. Despite a fairly high level of difficulty (especially when the currents are strong), this is a site that you really need to be prepared for. You must plan your dive beforehand. A perfect planning that Antoine can organize for any diver who wants to venture to tek on Amed.