In October we spent 10 days at Alycastre Dive Resort which is a small, French owned Dive Resort on Pemana Island.
We flew from Paris to Bali via Guangzhou with China Southern Airlines, then on with Nam Air to Maumere.
Our 10 day package was prebooked with transport from Maumere. The journey to Pemana Island took about 45 min with the resort own speed boat. Highlight during the transfer, a pod of melon headed dolphins.
Resort: 4 bungalows (number 5 was being built when we were there). The resort looked stunning, however as the days passed we encountered a few problems. First off the toilet in our bungalow was in the room itself with a little bamboo screen divider. Not ideal, but doable. The shower was outside and was reached via a small walkway from the room.
As far as the resort itself goes, quite a bit needs to be done in my view to improve functionality vs optics alone.
At the time of our stay, we were the only 2 divers in the whole resort. The dive shop had not yet been finished and no rinsing for our photo equipment was available at first. In the end we were given a small bucket/crate to rinse our equipment. The water was not automatically changed every day but was changed when we asked for it.
Survace intervall is back at the resort.
Dive equipment can be rented, but we always travel with our own. Rinsing of the dive suits etc is only at the end of the day and again the water was not changed daily.
Fresh water is brought in by boat and then pumped to the tanks since the resort currently has no fresh water access.
Dive equipment can be rented, but we always travel with our own. Rinsing of the dive suits etc is only at the end of the day and again the water was not changed daily.
Fresh water is brought in by boat and then pumped to the tanks since the resort currently has no fresh water access.
Diving: Most of Pemana's Macro is found in the walls, small crabs, nudis, ornate ghost pipe fish and the star of the show : a Lembeh Sea Dragon .
Apart from Macro, Manta Ray, silver tip shark, white tip reef sharks.
There are quite a few dive sites around the island. Unfortunatley we were not able to see the ones further away as we were told by the dive guide that it was too expensive to go with the speed boat as it was only 2 of us....
We did one trip to Maumere (with surcharge for the boat) to dive the black sands with a lot of macro.
The reort has 1 dive guide which is a good spotter.
Food: Fish for lunch and dinner apart from Chicken twice with either salad and vegetables. Salads were often with too much vinegar.
Breakfast was good with homemade bread and fresh fruit,a fruit juice every day. There was also the choice of pancake/crepes or eggs
We flew from Paris to Bali via Guangzhou with China Southern Airlines, then on with Nam Air to Maumere.
Our 10 day package was prebooked with transport from Maumere. The journey to Pemana Island took about 45 min with the resort own speed boat. Highlight during the transfer, a pod of melon headed dolphins.
Resort: 4 bungalows (number 5 was being built when we were there). The resort looked stunning, however as the days passed we encountered a few problems. First off the toilet in our bungalow was in the room itself with a little bamboo screen divider. Not ideal, but doable. The shower was outside and was reached via a small walkway from the room.
As far as the resort itself goes, quite a bit needs to be done in my view to improve functionality vs optics alone.
At the time of our stay, we were the only 2 divers in the whole resort. The dive shop had not yet been finished and no rinsing for our photo equipment was available at first. In the end we were given a small bucket/crate to rinse our equipment. The water was not automatically changed every day but was changed when we asked for it.
Survace intervall is back at the resort.
Dive equipment can be rented, but we always travel with our own. Rinsing of the dive suits etc is only at the end of the day and again the water was not changed daily.
Fresh water is brought in by boat and then pumped to the tanks since the resort currently has no fresh water access.
Dive equipment can be rented, but we always travel with our own. Rinsing of the dive suits etc is only at the end of the day and again the water was not changed daily.
Fresh water is brought in by boat and then pumped to the tanks since the resort currently has no fresh water access.
Diving: Most of Pemana's Macro is found in the walls, small crabs, nudis, ornate ghost pipe fish and the star of the show : a Lembeh Sea Dragon .
Apart from Macro, Manta Ray, silver tip shark, white tip reef sharks.
There are quite a few dive sites around the island. Unfortunatley we were not able to see the ones further away as we were told by the dive guide that it was too expensive to go with the speed boat as it was only 2 of us....
We did one trip to Maumere (with surcharge for the boat) to dive the black sands with a lot of macro.
The reort has 1 dive guide which is a good spotter.
Food: Fish for lunch and dinner apart from Chicken twice with either salad and vegetables. Salads were often with too much vinegar.
Breakfast was good with homemade bread and fresh fruit,a fruit juice every day. There was also the choice of pancake/crepes or eggs
The "normal" ground is black sand when not covered by white sand. It is possible to take a dip at low tide, you just have to walk a bit further. The bottom is lava rock on one side and sea grass and sand on the other. The resort itself is fairly secluded. There are 2 villages either side of the resort. The small one can be reached by foot on low tide, the other by boat.
