My last week in Bunaken has been a real rollercoaster of activities, involving a Project Aware beach clean up, lots of fun dives, a hair cut (!) and my snorkel test to celebrate finishing my course.

One of my last missions was to arrange a beach clean up. So I talked to the team and our guests and got quite a big group together: guests, dive guides, instructors and boatmen joined in and over a 500m stretch of beach collected about 55kg of rubbish. Luckily, most of it was found outside of resorts and areas other than Two Fish. Why? Because we regularly collect anything we find along our beach and make sure it stays clean and healthy. The accumulated rubbish will be sent to Manado for separating and recycling.

Next up – a haircut! Having not had a haircut for over two months, I was begging the dive guides to help me out. After a couple of weeks, Fery gave in. The deal was that I would owe him a beer if I liked my cut and he’d owe me one if he messed it up. Suffice to say, I wasn’t expecting great things, but I do owe Fery a beer now.

Towards the end of the week, there was plenty of time for fun dives and I made the most of that to see more of Bunaken’s walls.

Last, but not least – my snorkel test. It’s a bit of a rite of passage and at Two Fish the team likes to test your Divemaster demonstration skills one last time, only this time it involves being blind folded and there might have been a drop or two of palm wine also. The picture of instructor Dion and me really says it all.

While I’m headed for the cold weather of England for now, I’ve already got another trip planned to Two Fish for next year – can’t wait!