A German tourist was successfully evacuated from Nusa Penida, a small island to the east of Bali, after being stranded for nearly 24 hours.
Sieglinde Kaspar, 44, had been on a snorkeling boat trip with 11 other tourists around Nusa Penida on Saturday afternoon.
Waters seemed calm enough at the popular snorkeling spot Manta Point when Kaspar got off the boat, but conditions apparently changed drastically in minutes as strong waves pushed her up against steep cliffs.
Thankfully Kaspar’s guide was attentive and noticed right away that she had been pulled out. The incident got reported to Basarnas (Search and Rescue) Bali.
However, even as the rescue team was deployed and found the German tourist quite quickly, Kaspar still had to wait quite awhile, reportedly hiding on a rock, under a cliff because currents were too strong for the team to approach. So they had to take a different strategy.
“Since the current was so strong, the team aimed to carry out the evacuation by land. Based on our monitoring, the victim was still healthy. The position of the victim was under a cliff and stuck on a rock. The waves below the cliffs were quite large, so we were not able to evacuate the victim by sea. We then tried evacuation by land with rescue efforts including ropes and buoys,” Nusa Penida Police Chief I Gede Arianta told Tribun Bali on Sunday.
“The evacuation process was quite difficult, involving 10 Nusa Penida Police personnel, four water police, and Basarnas by deploying one helicopter unit and a boat.”
After about 21 hours later, Kaspar was finally rescued from the rock and rushed to a clinic in Nusa Penida for a medical exam.
A picture published by Tribun Bali shows Kaspar smiling, apparently thrilled to be freed from her rock prison.
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