The River is the location of a river during the rainy season that brings fresh water, sediment and nutrients from the mountain to the sea. The river has been dry every time we have been there, but here and at some other sites around Tulamben, you can often see swirling streams of cool fresh water bubbling up out of the black sand. It has been speculated that this is one of the things that helps make this area so rich with life. Going straight off the diver staging area at the River gets you to a slope of coral, rubble and sand, which continues to the left toward Paradise Reef. Following the slope to the right brings you to a rocky reef stretching straight offshore with the eastern side a vertical wall. This extends out, gradually getting deeper. We have been to the dropoff a couple of times, but usually when we visit this area, we work the sand and rubble slope looking for the usually plentiful nudibranchs. As this is one of the more widely popular sites at Tulamben, after the wreck, there are usually quite a few other dive groups here.
Snack shop.
Ketut setting up for the next dive.
This is one of the areas where you can see the famous Tulamben dive porters at work. These are typically petit Balinese women who carry tanks and gear for divers, sometimes all the way to and from the resorts around Paradise Reef. Walking in sandals over wobbly lava cobblestones as much as a couple of hundred meters balancing one or even two fully rigged scuba tanks on one's head cannot be as easy as they make it look.
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