Lake Toba
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
When visiting Indonesia to meet up with my girlfriend, who’s there for school purposes, I got the chance to dive in Lake Toba. The lake is situated on Sumatra and is one of the biggest lakes in the world. When looking for information at certain sites, they mention that the lake should be around 500m deep, making that a very deep lake.
During my visit to Lake Toba I visited the Samosir Cottages, which are located on the island Samosir. Our room had a lake view and we could almost jump in from our doorstep. I had to improvise a little to make a freediving-buoy, as there were no buoys of any kind. Only a few local fishermen setting out nets and marking them with a floating bottle. So based on that idea I managed to gather all the equipment to make my own buoy, from a rope (15m), an empty bottle and rock from the lake.
As I still needed to explore the lake, I had to be very cautious in my descent. There could be all kinds of nets and poles underneath the surface. My suspicions were some kind of right, as I was dragging out the buoy I almost got my rock stuck in a fishing net. As I was not trying to upset the local fishermen, I relocated my buoy and found a comfortable 15m deep spot.
The water being 23 degrees celcius, without an elios suit to protect me, made me shiver within the hour making my equalization not optimal. I’ve had this problem with equalization in lake Panheel as well, when Jorg and I made some CWNF dives in swim shorts only. So that be one of the things I want to get sorted in the coming time.
My girlfriend didn’t seem to have any difficulties with equalization and did her first dives in freediving very respectfully, making her dives controlled and without any problems. Her deepest dive in this 1st ever freediving session was 11m and when resurfacing I recall her saying: “I think I’m starting to like this very much!”. At the end of my holiday, I left her my copy of Umberto Pelizzari’s “Manual of freediving“.
We managed to take a few pictures with a underwater-camera I won at the Heemstede dynamic competitions. But the quality can’t be compared to the pictures we usually take with our Canon IXUS & underwater house.
Although the lake didn’t feature any colored fish or nice corals, we managed to enjoy freediving once again. Which states my pleasure in freediving, no matter where I am.
Getting your theory done at the same time!
Also 3:04 static is good to see, how did you ease your mind in this one?