Lost divers - Bali

16 July 2010 - In the early 1990s, we went on a diving holiday along the eastern coast of Bali. Before then, we had always dived with diving schools run by Americans who organise their dives right down to the very last detail. There weren't many tourists and only one local diving school at this magnificent spot on Bali.

Everything was supposed to be in order, but we figured ‘safety first' and so had decided to take our own diving equipment with us. We were glad we did! Although the people were kind and friendly, the club didn't appear to be run very professionally. We left early that morning by boat with a relatively large group of divers and a dive master. We were heading for an island a kilometer off the coast for our first session. Because of the rough seas and poor visibility under water, it was a tiring dive. When, according to our dive master, everyone was back on board, we felt sure that two divers were missing. We pointed this out to our Indonesian dive master but he just beamed at us and nodded his head. "Nice dive, yes, nice dive, very good," he said and told the helmsman to return to the diving club. We again tried to get across to him that we believed two people had not got back on the boat. The entire staff smiled but did nothing. Considering how helpful and friendly the Balinese are, we started to seriously doubt whether we were right. We walked back to our hotel next to the dive shop and decided to spend the rest of day lazing around on the beach. Towards six o'clock we saw two thoroughly exhausted people in diving suits stumble along the beach. Our missing divers! Apparently, they had resurfaced a bit far from the boat because of the strong current. They had done everything to catch our attention but the rough seas kept them hidden from us. They had been shocked to see the boat leave and had then swum in full kit to the closest beach where they dropped their air tanks and fins, and had walked barefoot back to the hotel!