Dear friends,

I’m writing today’s letter from the bus. If I ever write a travel memoir, it’ll be called “Waiting for the Bus” as that sums up about 65% of my travel experiences. Anyway, as I sit on this bus that has been delayed four hours, I want to tell you about North Sulawesi, Indonesia.

After Borneo, it was my dream to dive in Indonesia. I chose to skip Bali due to rumors of over tourism and head to other islands I’d heard less about. Sulawesi is the 11th largest island in the world and comprises four peninsulas; I spent time in Sulawesi Utara on the Minahasa Peninsula, staying near the Lembeh Strait, a site renowned for modern muck diving.

My friend Fernonika, whose family runs the wonderful Rumah Selam dive center in Bitung, is the one who educated me on the history of muck diving, a phrase coined by a fellow Texan. This type of macro diving prioritizes searching for small critters within the mud and muck, and the Lembeh Strait is one of the most revered places for it in the world. Muck diving isn’t for everyone, but if you want to get close to some weird and wild creatures, it’s a diver’s paradise.

I reached out to Rumah Selam, a dive shop who uses Indonesian diving boats (Prao Menyelam) and even provides a home cooked meal if you sign up for an afternoon dive with them. Fernonika was quick to respond and helped me get a discount by sharing the boat cost with two divers/ underwater photographers from China and France. We saw tons of tiny wildlife including the flamboyant cuttlefish, which we all were hoping to spot at least once during the trip.

After two days of excellent diving, Fernonika set me up with her friend Ina, a ranger at the nearby Tangkoko National Park. Tangkoko is special because it’s the only place in the world where you can find the Sulawesi black macaque, a mischievous animal with a red heart-shaped butt. The park serves to protect the macaque, which was nearly hunted to extinction and also hosts a variety of colorful birds including hornbills and Maleo birds. My diver friend from China and I followed Ina on a two-hour trek through the jungle, searching for the wide-eyed spectral tarsier, the smallest primate in the world.

In North Sulawesi, you’ll find the male tarsiers at the top of the hollows of giant fig trees while his mate and children are protected from predators inside the trunk. Spectral tarsiers mate for life, so the family stays together and is quite social, engaging in play, cuddling, and even singing “operatic duets.”

We were also lucky to spot, not one, but two Sulawesi bears, or cuscus! These shy, endemic marsupials live high in the trees and are related to the koala bear. During our trek, we walked through a torrential downpour, but Ina gave us makeshift umbrellas made of giant leaves littered along the jungle floor.

There’s quite a lot to do in Sulawesi Utara. You can hike one of the area's volcanoes including the active Mount Soputan or Mount Klabat, the highest mountain in North Sulawesi. Some people visit the infamous Tomohon Market or travel to nearby Bunaken Island for more exceptional diving.

I appreciated learning from Fernonika, Ina, and the folks at Rumah Selam who were informative and much more affordable than an expensive dive resort. If you love diving, nature, or want to avoid the tourist crowds, I absolutely recommend a trip to North Sulawesi.

Until next week,

Ash