Trip Report Boomerang traveling in Indonesia
Hey folks
I'm back in Indonesia diving with my girlfriend, and still have great things to say about the diving here.
First, a bit about us:
We are two quite advanced and serious divers with over 200 dives each. We left Singapore and have been traveling for 15 months now, and roughly the same number of countries. Being long term travelers, you are always considering the price of things, as each expense is a little less time that you can afford to travel. We had been to Indonesia several timess before and excepting Manado, done dives in many of the sites mentioned. We like Indonesia so much that we had to go back, and here is the result.
We began this trip diving in Komodo National Park out of Labuanbajo. The boat was the Mona Lisa, which is more of a floating hotel than a liveaboard. You take the daily speedboat from Bajo to the ship, the former supplying the latter with supplies and new customers. Previously on LOB dive ops, I'd left the main port on the large boat, coming back a few days later, but since the trip to the Komodo sites isn't really that far(~1hr. By speedboat), it makes sense to keep the big ship out in the park. The advantage to doing it this way, as opposed to day trips from Bajo, is that you sleep at sea, where there are no mosquitos, and you can dive first thing in the morning or late at night.
We were a bit unfortunate, in that the visibility was the worst it had been in a long time, with lowest being about 5m and average being around 10m. The last time I'd been here, aside from Karang Makassar, the vis was more like 20+, so that was a bit of a let-down. It made it more difficult to find the masses of stuff that I know Komodo has. Nonetheless, the diving and the coral was quite spectacular. Batu Bolong is still one of my favorite sites worldwide. Caste and Crystal Rocks didn't have the vis to see everything that they had to offer, but we still found GTs, Napoleons, Bumpheads, Sharks, and a host of macro stuff. Night dives had plenty of octopus', shrimp, crabs, and more active Moreys. We also did a few more sites in the south of the park, like the very impressive 3 sisters and Cannibal rock. I'm convinced that I could spend a month diving in Komodo 4 dives a day and still not see everything that the park has to offer! The highlight was some 40 feeding Manta's at Karang Makassar, including an all black one, which was a first for me.
As wonderful as the diving is in that part of the world, there were a few issues with the operation. Dive staff and captain appeared quite lazy, rarely getting dive gear together on time. The DMs, though quite good with briefings, were overworked. It sounded like one of them had been diving every day for about 50 days at that point, and their fatigue was showing. The boat staff, who took it upon themselves to change tanks for everyone, clearly weren't briefed on how to safely do so. After we once found our personal regs sitting in a puddle in the bottom of the tender WITHOUT DUSTCAPS ON, we opted to change our own tanks thereafter. The preceeding sentence at least partially explains the following sentence. We had 3 rental reg blowouts in the 4 days of diving. While all members of are party were sufficiently experienced to deal with such situations, and no harm was done, this was a safety concern that was not dealt with until the second last day when the owner showed up with 6 new regs. I have to feel that most of these blowouts were preventable, likely caused by first stages being left uncapped in dirty conditions until they began leaking pressure into the second stages, which are not designed for 200bar. There was also no system of organization on the tender boat, and with 8-10 divers on a small boat looking for their mask, weightbelt, fins, etc...we rarely got to the dive sites at the planned time. On the bright side, though, the boat was beautiful, the kitchen staff efficient, and the food both plentiful and tasty.
After this trip, we made our way back to Bali on Trans Nusa, which recently raised prices(grrr) but didn't charge us extra for an obscene amount of baggage(yey). Taking the advice of an Instructor friend of mine, we rented a car, drove up to Tulamben and did a few short dives on our own. Tank rentals were 50000 each and were the best $5 dives I've ever done! We had our own gear and had done dives from Tulamben before, so self guiding made for fantastic value in diving. I must say, if you are in Tulamben, a night dive on the Liberty is an epic experience!
After returning with the vehicle to Legian, we hopped the ferry on over to Lembongan, hoping to do some Nusa Penida dives. It seems that Lembongan prices have increased greatly over the last two years, with dive ops doing exceptionally well despite the global downturn. Being long-term travelers, we didn't handle this added expense well, and did only two dives and some snorkeling. The dives we did do were with Lembongan divers near Ketut's/2000 midway down the beach. The op was professional, with a respectable boat and fresh water between dives. Two dives were bartered down to $65us a person for Manta Point and Toyapakeh. You can get better on a longer dive package, but after the value of Tulamben, we were only up for spending a little bit more. Dives were nice, but after the 40 mantas in Komodo, seeing 4 in murky water was less stimulating than it really should be. Toyapakeh as always, has some really exceptional corals with a lot of holes for things to hide in and very nice visibility. I expect that when all those things come out at night, its a pretty impressive scene.
On Lembongan, we stayed at 2000, which was fine, big room and bathroom on the second floor with a sometimes working hot water system and a good AC unit. The manager was a bit shifty though, always looking to haggle for more of our money, telling us the prices of things were 100% more than their actual, and attempting to pocket the difference.
Moving on from Bali, we hopped a Lion Air flight to Manado via Makassar. Since we had time, we didn't book anything in advance and chose to go see what packages we could find locally. This was a good and a bad thing. Online, it appears that twofish is the cheapest Bunaken dive op for 2 divers, but they were booked solid for a few days, followed by a few days of almost fully booked. Fortunately, I ran into a Bastianos employee(or maybe just a guy looking for a commission) at the hotel and worked out a deal with them. The company was good to deal with and took care of us getting out there and back to the hotel in Manado, without much hassle. The room was fine, the food was of quite low quality, as can be expected on an island.
Since we only had 4 dives in 3 days, we elected to just snorkel the first and last days. The first things you notice are how cold the water is and how damaged the corals are. Snorkeling along the dropoff, you could see were boats had crushed or dropped anchors on the corals near the surface. It was quite sad and discouraging after the absolutely lovely coral of Komodo and Bali. I'm sure it didn't help that the dive boat(and I'm sure a few others in the area) was leaking gas quite severely, effectively allowing divers to only enter the water on one side of the boat. The first dive we did, this poor state coral went all the way down to 30m and our hearts sunk. We had done many trips to Tioman, Aur and Dayang in Malaysia, seeing similar destruction. Had we come all the way to Bunaken to find the same? As we plunged in for the second dive at Lekuan 2, we were reinvigorated to find the state of things vastly improved. Macro was abundant, with nudis, leaf fish, scorpionfish, and boxer shrimp doing some posing for the camera. The next two dives were similar, with Sachiko point being the only one to include big stuff(GTs Napoleons and the odd shark). We did also see the largest Green Turtle that I'd ever come across. Overall, Bunaken was nice diving, but unspectacular. I can't say I'd travel across the world to go there, but wouldn't discourage someone from visiting.
Final thoughts on each place:
Komodo:
-I love this place, pity about the dive operator and the vis. Would really like to spend more time here, especially now that Labuanbajo has been developed to a bit nicer town.
-Even though the currents weren't much on any of our dives this time, I'd still recommend not going unless you have AOW and >50 dives under your weight belt.
-Great value for a 3-5 day LOB trip.
Bali:
-Tulamben on your own is wonderful. Go at your own pace, look at what you want to look at and definitely bring your own gear.
-Liberty night dives are wonderful.
-Lembongan prices have gone up since their very successful year last year, but its still cheaper and more practical to dive N. Penida from here than from Bali. Perhaps next time I'll try to just stay on Penida, rent tanks and a boat and do my own...
Manado:
-Very good macro, certainly not the Best Walls in Asia(2004) but can be very nice for photographers and not too pricey
-Nice that Bastianos has free WiFi, so you have something to do while not diving.
-Distinct lack of pelagics, though quite a few turtles around.
The rest of my pics are here:
indonesia2010 pictures by Thailandrocks - Photobucket
I hope this helps anyone who is considering these sites in Indonesia. I call this the boomerang trip based on the shape I made while traveling. It was fun, and Indonesia is still my favorite backpacking country in the world.
Hey folks
I'm back in Indonesia diving with my girlfriend, and still have great things to say about the diving here.
First, a bit about us:
We are two quite advanced and serious divers with over 200 dives each. We left Singapore and have been traveling for 15 months now, and roughly the same number of countries. Being long term travelers, you are always considering the price of things, as each expense is a little less time that you can afford to travel. We had been to Indonesia several timess before and excepting Manado, done dives in many of the sites mentioned. We like Indonesia so much that we had to go back, and here is the result.
We began this trip diving in Komodo National Park out of Labuanbajo. The boat was the Mona Lisa, which is more of a floating hotel than a liveaboard. You take the daily speedboat from Bajo to the ship, the former supplying the latter with supplies and new customers. Previously on LOB dive ops, I'd left the main port on the large boat, coming back a few days later, but since the trip to the Komodo sites isn't really that far(~1hr. By speedboat), it makes sense to keep the big ship out in the park. The advantage to doing it this way, as opposed to day trips from Bajo, is that you sleep at sea, where there are no mosquitos, and you can dive first thing in the morning or late at night.
We were a bit unfortunate, in that the visibility was the worst it had been in a long time, with lowest being about 5m and average being around 10m. The last time I'd been here, aside from Karang Makassar, the vis was more like 20+, so that was a bit of a let-down. It made it more difficult to find the masses of stuff that I know Komodo has. Nonetheless, the diving and the coral was quite spectacular. Batu Bolong is still one of my favorite sites worldwide. Caste and Crystal Rocks didn't have the vis to see everything that they had to offer, but we still found GTs, Napoleons, Bumpheads, Sharks, and a host of macro stuff. Night dives had plenty of octopus', shrimp, crabs, and more active Moreys. We also did a few more sites in the south of the park, like the very impressive 3 sisters and Cannibal rock. I'm convinced that I could spend a month diving in Komodo 4 dives a day and still not see everything that the park has to offer! The highlight was some 40 feeding Manta's at Karang Makassar, including an all black one, which was a first for me.
As wonderful as the diving is in that part of the world, there were a few issues with the operation. Dive staff and captain appeared quite lazy, rarely getting dive gear together on time. The DMs, though quite good with briefings, were overworked. It sounded like one of them had been diving every day for about 50 days at that point, and their fatigue was showing. The boat staff, who took it upon themselves to change tanks for everyone, clearly weren't briefed on how to safely do so. After we once found our personal regs sitting in a puddle in the bottom of the tender WITHOUT DUSTCAPS ON, we opted to change our own tanks thereafter. The preceeding sentence at least partially explains the following sentence. We had 3 rental reg blowouts in the 4 days of diving. While all members of are party were sufficiently experienced to deal with such situations, and no harm was done, this was a safety concern that was not dealt with until the second last day when the owner showed up with 6 new regs. I have to feel that most of these blowouts were preventable, likely caused by first stages being left uncapped in dirty conditions until they began leaking pressure into the second stages, which are not designed for 200bar. There was also no system of organization on the tender boat, and with 8-10 divers on a small boat looking for their mask, weightbelt, fins, etc...we rarely got to the dive sites at the planned time. On the bright side, though, the boat was beautiful, the kitchen staff efficient, and the food both plentiful and tasty.
After this trip, we made our way back to Bali on Trans Nusa, which recently raised prices(grrr) but didn't charge us extra for an obscene amount of baggage(yey). Taking the advice of an Instructor friend of mine, we rented a car, drove up to Tulamben and did a few short dives on our own. Tank rentals were 50000 each and were the best $5 dives I've ever done! We had our own gear and had done dives from Tulamben before, so self guiding made for fantastic value in diving. I must say, if you are in Tulamben, a night dive on the Liberty is an epic experience!
After returning with the vehicle to Legian, we hopped the ferry on over to Lembongan, hoping to do some Nusa Penida dives. It seems that Lembongan prices have increased greatly over the last two years, with dive ops doing exceptionally well despite the global downturn. Being long-term travelers, we didn't handle this added expense well, and did only two dives and some snorkeling. The dives we did do were with Lembongan divers near Ketut's/2000 midway down the beach. The op was professional, with a respectable boat and fresh water between dives. Two dives were bartered down to $65us a person for Manta Point and Toyapakeh. You can get better on a longer dive package, but after the value of Tulamben, we were only up for spending a little bit more. Dives were nice, but after the 40 mantas in Komodo, seeing 4 in murky water was less stimulating than it really should be. Toyapakeh as always, has some really exceptional corals with a lot of holes for things to hide in and very nice visibility. I expect that when all those things come out at night, its a pretty impressive scene.
On Lembongan, we stayed at 2000, which was fine, big room and bathroom on the second floor with a sometimes working hot water system and a good AC unit. The manager was a bit shifty though, always looking to haggle for more of our money, telling us the prices of things were 100% more than their actual, and attempting to pocket the difference.
Moving on from Bali, we hopped a Lion Air flight to Manado via Makassar. Since we had time, we didn't book anything in advance and chose to go see what packages we could find locally. This was a good and a bad thing. Online, it appears that twofish is the cheapest Bunaken dive op for 2 divers, but they were booked solid for a few days, followed by a few days of almost fully booked. Fortunately, I ran into a Bastianos employee(or maybe just a guy looking for a commission) at the hotel and worked out a deal with them. The company was good to deal with and took care of us getting out there and back to the hotel in Manado, without much hassle. The room was fine, the food was of quite low quality, as can be expected on an island.
Since we only had 4 dives in 3 days, we elected to just snorkel the first and last days. The first things you notice are how cold the water is and how damaged the corals are. Snorkeling along the dropoff, you could see were boats had crushed or dropped anchors on the corals near the surface. It was quite sad and discouraging after the absolutely lovely coral of Komodo and Bali. I'm sure it didn't help that the dive boat(and I'm sure a few others in the area) was leaking gas quite severely, effectively allowing divers to only enter the water on one side of the boat. The first dive we did, this poor state coral went all the way down to 30m and our hearts sunk. We had done many trips to Tioman, Aur and Dayang in Malaysia, seeing similar destruction. Had we come all the way to Bunaken to find the same? As we plunged in for the second dive at Lekuan 2, we were reinvigorated to find the state of things vastly improved. Macro was abundant, with nudis, leaf fish, scorpionfish, and boxer shrimp doing some posing for the camera. The next two dives were similar, with Sachiko point being the only one to include big stuff(GTs Napoleons and the odd shark). We did also see the largest Green Turtle that I'd ever come across. Overall, Bunaken was nice diving, but unspectacular. I can't say I'd travel across the world to go there, but wouldn't discourage someone from visiting.
Final thoughts on each place:
Komodo:
-I love this place, pity about the dive operator and the vis. Would really like to spend more time here, especially now that Labuanbajo has been developed to a bit nicer town.
-Even though the currents weren't much on any of our dives this time, I'd still recommend not going unless you have AOW and >50 dives under your weight belt.
-Great value for a 3-5 day LOB trip.
Bali:
-Tulamben on your own is wonderful. Go at your own pace, look at what you want to look at and definitely bring your own gear.
-Liberty night dives are wonderful.
-Lembongan prices have gone up since their very successful year last year, but its still cheaper and more practical to dive N. Penida from here than from Bali. Perhaps next time I'll try to just stay on Penida, rent tanks and a boat and do my own...
Manado:
-Very good macro, certainly not the Best Walls in Asia(2004) but can be very nice for photographers and not too pricey
-Nice that Bastianos has free WiFi, so you have something to do while not diving.
-Distinct lack of pelagics, though quite a few turtles around.
The rest of my pics are here:
indonesia2010 pictures by Thailandrocks - Photobucket
I hope this helps anyone who is considering these sites in Indonesia. I call this the boomerang trip based on the shape I made while traveling. It was fun, and Indonesia is still my favorite backpacking country in the world.
