My First Day Off!

My modelling was finally going quite well so I decided to take the full weekend off. Now that I have been here a few time I no longer wait for invitations but try and see if I can get something organised, or at least started, myself. So late in the week I asked Selvi what she was planning on doing and she told me she was going to go to Matano village at the west end of the lake as she had dropped her camera during a dive the previous weekend (she is an active scuba diver). So I asked if I could go along!


Before I knew what happened arrangements had been made to rent a "raft" from the village fleet and so it quickly grew to a much larger group. I invited along Younsel Evand Roos, who is very active in photography and has won some awards for his pictures. I also extended the invitation to Rosalyn, Alan Matano, Arham and Anto and their family's. For various reasons only Arham, his wife and their young son made it. Selvi invited some of her friends including her close friend Tuti (short for Pujiastuti - one of the people here who go by a single name). Here is a picture of our raft.





Unlike the ones owned by the expats which are made using steel fuel drums the two hulls, as can be seen, are conventional wood construction. Power is provided by two single cylinder diesel engines directly connected by a long shaft to fully exposed propellers! Note the aquamarine colour of the water, likely due to high levels of dissolved limestone which also make the water very clear.







It took us about an hour to get to our destination which was not to the village at the west end of the lake as it turned out but a small group of islands not too far way. Apparently there are a lot of pottery artifacts in the water off of one of the islands and that is what Selvi had been exploring. When she surfaced she gathered all her equipment together but forgot she had her camera (a Sony digital in a plastic water-proof case good to 40 metres depth) and had inadvertently let it go. As it turned out it didn't take very long for her to swim to the spot and found it lying on the lake bottom. Based on the quality of the case I would say it was pretty expensive so it was no wonder she was happy that she had found it. We stayed there for about an hour swimming then had lunch on board of "padang" - an regional ethnic cuisine noted for for being spicy and typically eaten with your fingers. Many of the Canadian expats, especially the ones from Thompson, usually go to a padang restaurant for lunch every Friday.

Here we have a picture of Younsel, Tuti and Selvi. And on the left is Irada, another geologist working in the exploration and mine development department.









We had a great time! As is typical I got a bit of sunburn - too stubborn to put on sunscreen and always underestimating how much UV gets reflected off the water even when under shade. But no big deal as it is a light burn which for me will soon change to a tan. The scenery from the raft was gorgeous and the weather cooperated very nicely. Fortunately it usually rains only in the afternoons so it doesn't pay to be tardy.

And finally, here is a picture of the "Yacht Club", a place I have mentioned a number of times previously. Rather rough looking but does an excellent job for being a demarcation point for an adventure such as the one we had this day.