OP
nippurmagnum
Contributor
Glad you found it helpful! I envy that you got to see Bali back in the day. I don't have that frame of reference for Bali, but I do for Bonaire, and it's sometimes heartbreaking to see the tourism boom there. Still, I read quite a bit about Bali's history before this trip, and I'm not sure that it was ever the unspoiled paradise that everyone imagines it to be. And there are some undeniable creature comforts in Bali that might not have been around 20 years ago. Even in Tulamben there were some really excellent restaurants -- I highly recommend Slice and Brew, which has phenomenal Indonesian and Western food, and a full size pool table.
Anyway, yes, I would absolutely recommend Tulamben for muck diving, with the right guides. I kept laughing out loud underwater on our first morning's dives in Tulamben, at the Melasti muck site. All of these pictures are from that first morning's dives:
And the diving is SO easy there. Aside from having to negotiate some large boulders on the entries/exits at some of the sites, it's an absolutely valet experience. Your tanks are loaded onto a truck by the dive guides, and offloaded by villagers that carry them to whatever the most convenient place is for you -- sometimes right at the water's edge. You discuss with your guide what you are most interested in, and he points things out as you go along. (My wife and I had a private guide on every dive, at a cost of just a few more dollars, except when we wanted to join another diver and share the guide -- but really, it was always best to have a private guide.) If you see something that catches your eye, your guide waits patiently for you to be done with it, and then immediately points two or three other cool critters that he's found. When you're done, you come out and your guide helps you take off your gear, and swaps out your tank for the second dive, or has your gear whisked away back to the truck. They rinse your gear back at the shop, and then it's just a matter of deciding where you want to dive next. (Everything I'm describing was my experience with the Wonder Dive shop. Your mileage with other shops may vary.) As for the rocky entries, if you have thicker booties, I definitely recommend using them. I brought both 3 mm and 7 mm booties on this trip, and the 7 mm with the thicker soles were much better for the boulders.
Anyway, never been to Lembeh and can't compare, but it's hard to imagine much better muck diving than what we had in Tulamben. To my mind, muck diving is the reason to dive the Tulamben area, much more so than the Liberty wreck.
By the way, I like underwater photography, but I'm not a serious photog, I just use an Olympus TG-6 with a couple of SeaLife dive lights, and I don't aim for National Geographic quality, nor do I get it. To the extent that these pictures are any good, they are a testament to how good the muck diving is in Tulamben.
