Komodo Trip Report: Current Junkies – Last trip of 2019 – Part I (Warning: Long read)

[CarcharodonCarcharias]

First time writing one of these. I guess there is always a first time for everything. I will be as comprehensive as I can before my memory fails me. So here we go.

*If you want to read about the dive trip part, skip part I and go to directly to part II.

Precursory Remarks​

I really wanted to dive South Komodo. I had originally booked with another operation for a trip in July. But after I consulted with few of the experts here on SB, I decided to go with Current Junkies (CJ) and booked the last trip of the year. Although the timing was not my first pick given that I wanted to do the trip during the new Moon or the full-Moon week. However, the half-Moon week that I went on the trip was pretty rocking as well.

Flight:
I usually fly Garuda Airline (GA) as much as I can when I go on dive trips in Indonesia because:

1. Aside from the 30kg allowance (International/ Domestic is 20kg), GA will also give you an additional 23kg allowance if you bring any sport equipment. This is more than adequate for me and my dive friends that have photo gears.
2. GA is usually the most punctual airline in Indonesia. Having said that, I will always allow myself one day before and one day after the dive trip to accommodate any flight delay /cancellation potentials that Indonesia is notoriously known for.

Logistic and Lodging in LBJ:
The airport is only a 5-10 min drive to anywhere in the main part of the town. The taxi should not cost you more than $50K IDR. This price goes for pretty much for any taxi to go anywhere around LBJ central area. The motor bike or bemo (pickup trucks with bench seat and cover) should not be more than $20K depends on where you are at.

I stayed at La Cecile on the top of the hill. Great view, clean room (although basic), and very courteous staff. There are two shuttle services to town center: 9:00 departure/12:00 pick-up and 17:00 departure/20:00 pick-up. You can tell them to drop you off and pick you up anywhere in the town center. Outside of the shuttle service, you can also call or WhatsApp the hotel for drop off and pick-up for $50K. The only drawback for La Cecile is that the outdoor lighting is too bright. If you need absolute darkness while you sleep, you are out of luck. The food is decent and the beer is cold but not much to write home about. After all, this is LBJ. I got other friends that stayed at Blue Marlin, Sea Esta, and Sunset Hill. They seem to be quite happy with their accommodation.

Food in LBJ:
LBJ just opened a new Marina Square and now there is a Starbucks and a soon to open KFC. Other than that, I’ve eaten at Blue Marlin, La Cucina, Bajo Taco, La Cecile, Bajo Bay Fisherman’s Club, and the nightly fish market called Kampung Ujung. Everything is pretty decent with the exception of Bajo Bay Fisherman’s Club. I would recommend to stay away from Bajo Bay Fisherman’s Club – small portion, expensive, and the food is not fresh. The fish market offers a great variety of seafood diet prepared local style. Please do remember to haggle and make sure you walk away if the price is not to your liking. To eat at the fish market, you will have to get a top up card first. The card will require a $20K deposit and you can add whatever amount you want into the card. The merchants and food stalls are only allowed to be paid via the card. Once you are done, you can return the card and the authorities will refund you the $20K deposit and whatever balance is left inside the card.

 

[CarcharodonCarcharias]

Dive Trip​

Current Junkies run the trip from Monday through Saturday. It is a 6D5N dive trip and bypass the higher Sunday Komodo National Park fee which is $350K IDR while the fee for Monday though Saturday is $275K IDR per day. The dive trip consists of 14 dives – 1 dive on day 1, 3 dives per day for day 2,3,4, and 5, and there will be a last dive in the morning on the last day before returning to LBJ. There is no pre-planned dive itinerary. The cruise director will make up the itinerary based on:

1. Guests’ inputs on what they want to see (fauna) and preferred dive sites that they want to dive.
   
2. Weather/Current/Dive conditions to determine the optimal dive experience.
3. The guests’ skill level and comfort level while diving.

Hence, nothing is carved in stone and there is a bit of flexibility with the dive itinerary. During my trip, we changed the dive plan couple of time based on dive conditions.

I am not an underwater photography guy and neither were the other dive guests. We had one GoPro between the three of us. CJ do tend to recommend guests to shy away from heavy photo equipment given that some of the dive conditions that might not be ideal for having heavy photo equipment.

The current conditions during the trip were manageable. We did have to call off a dive once and over half of the time we were required to do negative descent.

Boat:
Busy Girl is quite a small boat. It is only about 15M long and there is not much space to go around (So you better make sure you like your dive companions). There are two cabins for the guests and the crew sleeps pretty much anywhere they want on the boat. There is no A/C in the cabins but there are fans (albeit a bit noisy). There is also no hot shower on board. It does not have many of the creature comforts and to a certain degree, you are roughin’ it. During my trip, there were only three guests on the boat. Good thing was that we all got along and the dynamics of the personalities turned out well. Originally, the no A/C in the cabin was a deal breaker for me, but after the experience, the situation was mostly manageable even though we were diving during the hottest time of the year in Komodo.

Food:
The food on the Busy Girl was good. Handy (the chef) did a great job of mixing different cuisines and ingredients to kept me and the other guest fed every day.

Crew:
The crew onboard were awesome. It is a small ship hence there were only four in the crew: Captain, engineer/deck hand, chef, and cruise director/dive guide. The skill level of the crew members was top notch.
Emma, the cruise director/dive guide has got to be one of the best in the business. She knows Komodo like the back of her. I am still thoroughly impressed by her knowledge on the dive sites, its conditions, and especially currents. Prior to every dive, she took the skiff out the site and free dive first to check out the current and water condition. Then she came back to tell us the dive conditions, current condition, and whether the site was dive-able currently or now. She made diving in Komodo easy and I would not hesitate to recommend my friends and family to dive with her.

Day One:
*Out of courtesy for CJ, I will only mention the dive site names that I’ve seen other dive boats diving the same site.

It was a Monday and I met Emma and the rest of the dive guests at Scuba Republic to take care of the payment and paperwork. Then we boarded the skiff at around 12:30 to get to Busy Girl. As soon as we boarded the boat, after 10-15 of boat briefing and we were off to Komodo and do our first dive/check-out dive.

Dive #1 – (Siaba Besar)
It was meant to be a check-out dive so I did not expect much. I was also more focused on getting used to my new Poseidon fins which I’ve never tried underwater.

Visibility was around 15-20m during the dive. Warm dive with the temperature of 26c. We entered the water at around 15:30 and the lighting was a bit dim underwater. Not much current and could not see much colors. There were few reef white tips and managed to see some huge cuttlefish guarding their eggs nestled in the corals.

Day Two:
Dive #2 – (Police Point)
We stayed in Central for day two of the dive trip. Police Point was the first dive of the day. Slow currents with murky water hence the visibility was not that great. Lots of nice corals on the underside of the overhang and it was teeming with life. We saw some shark egg sacks but given there was not much of a current, no pelagics on this dive.

Dive #3 – (Tawata Kecil)
This dive was the surprise dive of the day. The reef was a bit more active on this dive and with the sunlight penetrated through the water, the colors were a bit more popping. The current was going a bit and there some reef white tips and black tips. Although the surprise of the dive was this oceanic manta that glided right by behind us as we were turning the corner. I happened to just turn my head around the see what is out in the blue and then this magnificent creature came behind my left shoulder and glided by. Saw a couple of Napoleon Wrasse as well.

Dive #4 – (Mauan)
Another warm dive. All three dives on day two were warm dives with water temperature hovering between 24-26c which was unseasonably warm for Komodo during this time of the year. There was a Pacific warm front that refused to budge and kept the water warm. I only wore a rash guard and shorts.

Mauan is a relatively “shallow” dive site and we were there to search for more manta action. Visibility was ok at around 20m. But the sun was out in full-force so it was bright underwater even though it was a 15:00 dive. We dive manage to catch a reef manta and a oceanic manta hovering and circling during the middle of the dive. It was great to just watch them going around in circles. Saw a barracuda and coupe of turtles along the way. Current was kicking up along the way back. But it was not much.

Day Three:
Dive #5 and #6 – (Manta Alley)
Finally, the moment that I was waiting for: Diving South Komodo. We spent the first two dives of the day at Manta Alley. The Aggressor boat was anchored next to us as well. We were warned of the water temperature and the currents. It was good to finally get a taste of the currents in Komodo. The temperature was a cool 24c and the visibility was 20m. The first dive we got dropped off before the alley and drifted into the alley then hooked into the rock. The currents were not that strong but we wanted to stay low as the mantas where hovering right above us. There were at least 20+ mantas passed by and one even managed to drop his/her excrement on top of us. After 15min of this, we unhooked ourselves and went to the south side of the rock to see if there were any mantas at the cleaning station. Thanks to the cold swell surge, the water got murkier and the temperature got down to 20c. I only had a 3mm full suit with a rash guard underneath and it was cold! We stayed in the south side with the cold water surge and saw 1 huge oceanic manta and 2 reef mantas circling and feeding for the rest of the dive. The water was too cold for my liking but it brought hope for the 2nd dive because cold water with currents in Komodo always means you might be in for a surprise.

We got dropped off at the south side of the cleaning station and the water was murky. It was a plankton soup and I could actually see krill swimming all around. It was an ideal condition for manta watching because the mantas would congregate, feed and never leave with so much nutrients in the water. But then came the bad news: The water temp went back up to 25c and so my hope of seeing mola2 and hammerheads was shattered. It was still pretty awesome to see the school of mantas feeding around us. I also saw the largest bumphead parrot fish that I’ve ever seen with a couple of reef white tip sharks and Napoleon wrasse.

Dive #7 –
We were supposed to dive at location A for the last dive of the day. But the currents were not co-operating and we were given the choices of to either wait out for the currents to drop its intensity; or dive at location B. Given that it was 15:30 already and I made the executive decision to dive at location B. The new location was calm and with a bit of slow current for comfortable drift dive. To my disbelief, it almost felt like an endless wall of sloping reefs with pristine and untainted carpet of soft corals. I was quite astounded. The colors were flamboyant and the conditions of the corals were simply amazing. I could not help but kept wowing via my second stage. It was magically sensational to simply drift through the dive over this uninterrupted carpet of colorful and healthy corals. As the sloping reef turn into a vertical wall around the corner, we saw on top of us, a school of mobula dashing across the top of the ridge in the shallow with all the reef fish underneath it. And the sun lights broke through and it looked like the mobula were gliding in front of an amber gold canvas. It was a magnificent sight I will never forget. As I turned around to check the blue, I was confronted by a curious shark. There were 4-5 of them and I thought it was a school of grey reef shark. After we surfaced, Emma told us it was actually a school of silky shark. It was an awesome experience because I’ve never seen a silky shark in water before.

To wrap up the day, Emma took my other dive mates to go “skurfing”. Basically, it was water skiing with the skiff and instead of skis, they used a surfboard. Looked like loads of fun but I decided to relax and just happy to spectate.

 

[CarcharodonCarcharias]

Day Four:
Dive #8 – (End of the World)
Hoped for the cold water surge to return, the first two dives of the morning were at the southernmost tip of the Komodo Island. On the way to the dive spot, it was interesting to see all the geological formation of the cliff walls courtesy of mother nature. “End of the World” was a great wall dive. The water temperature was not as cold as we had hoped for and the visibility was around 20-25m. There were some down currents but mostly, it was more of the swaying of the tidal surge that would rock you up and drop you down as it swayed against the wall. It was a drift dive with a beautiful teeming with reef fish. Aside from a juvenile Napoleon wrasse followed us 10 meters lower than our depth, we did not see any big fish action.

Dive #9 –
It was the most exciting dive of the trip. We were told the site is one probably the most notorious site in Komodo for currents. Emma did a fantastic job on this dive. There was small window for us to get into the water and fin down via the leeside. The area of the leeside was quite small and we had to do a negative entry, finned down to the dive site via the leeside in a single file line, and then hook on to the rock and just enjoy the current brushing against your face. The corals at the dive site were quite pristine (you can tell no too many people dive the site) and yet quite flat and small due to the constant barraging of currents. We hooked in and let the currents took over. The currents were not really that strong but it was strong enough to send you suspended in water once you put some air in the wing. Schools of trevally constantly flew by. There were two big potato groupers hanging out below us. There were 3-4 tunas went by and I even managed to see a Spanish mackerel. Unfortunately, we did not see any shark or large pelagic. But we had no doubt that they were lurking out there in the blue. The visibility was not that great. It was a good and exciting dive nevertheless.

Dive #10 – (Golden Passage)
After the previous dive, we waved goodbye to South and began to set sail for the North. We were given the options to dive at Manta Point or Golden Passage. The choice was easy for me given that I wanted to getaway far from the maddening crowd. Manta Point was like a circus everything with all the day-trippers from LBJ, snorkelers from the Lombok boats, and other scuba divers. The heavy boat/skiff traffic and the vast amount of people in and under water made me cringe. It was not the best place to be in terms of safety to say the least.

Golden Passage dive was quite relaxing. Not much current and it was drastically different from the previous dive. The water was 26c so we were back in the warm water again. The sun was hiding behind the cloud and it was the last dive of the day, so we did not really get the visual of the golden passage that the site is known for during our dive. Aside from the reef fish, we saw few white tips and black tips. Couple of turtle glided by and the bat fish were surprisingly uninterested in us during the entire dive.

Day Five:
Dive #11 – (Castle Rock)
The warm Pacific front was still in place and we were diving in the warm water again. We were told that Castle Rock is the shark mecca. That got our blood going early in the morning and we were expecting to run into some currents. Once again, we got into the water via negative entry and finned quickly down to the leeside. And then we realized there was no current. What was supposed to be a current dive ended up with a rare condition where there were virtually no currents in the water for the whole dive. We passed by Cauldron on our way over and the water movements were quite active at the Cauldron but at Castle Rock, it was quite still. But the amazing thing was there were sharks everywhere. Even without currents, there were reef white tips, black tips, and grey reefs. Trevally, rainbow runners were out in full force and we also had a 4-foot Napoleon wrasse joined us for the ride. It was a great dive to kick off the day.

Dive #12 – (Cauldron)
Having witnessed the water movements of the Cauldron on the way to Castle Rock, I was thinking to myself that we might have to work for the second dive of the day. But to my surprise, the Cauldron was pretty tame as well. We drifted for a bit the plan was to hook onto the rocks at Shotgun and see if there was any large pelagic to be spotted. We did hook onto the rock for a bit at Shotgun but we unhooked and drifted off because there was not much of a current and the conditions were not conducive to see the pelagic.

Dive #13 – (Crystal Rock)
This was the only dive that we had aborted. The currents were too strong for us to swim down to the vertical side of the pinnacle. We got stuck up on the top of the rock for about 15 min and the currents were going bonkers – the directions of the currents were going everywhere. We hooked on to the rock and stayed in the shallow to see if we could wait out for the currents to subside. But the whole time I felt I was on a mechanic bull because the currents were coming at me from different directions. We then decided to call off the dive, swam to the blue and proceeded to surface.

Day Six:
Dive #14 – (Siaba Kecil)
The last dive of the trip. Due to my request to see dugong, we ended up diving at Siaba Kecil to see if we can catch the jack pot. It was a relatively small dive site for drift dive. Even with a mild current, it could be a really short dive and that was what happened. We drifted along the wall for a bit and 15 min later, we’ve reached the end of the site which is at the top of the reef and again, with a carpet of soft corals resembling a wheat field in the Midwest and patches of hard corals. We ended up circling around the shallow water to look for dugong for the rest of the dive. Lots of reef fish and we saw a couple of moray eels and a turtle. It was a nice, relaxing, and colorful dive to wrap up the dive trip.

Rinca Island Dragon Hike –
The very last activity before we set sail for LBJ. Saw few Komodo dragons and hiked up to the vantage point. It was a hot day hence we hurried down the hill to go back to the boat and headed back to LBJ.

Conclusion
Komodo is truly a gem of a dive site. I will certainly go back again and finish off all the other dive sites that this dive trip did not cover. I will not hesitate to go with Current Junkies again, especially diving during the new moon or full moon week. I had a fantastic experience and I would definitely go back to finish off the dive sites that I did not get a chance to dive this past trip. I would certainly recommend Current Junkies to anyone that wants to have a customized/tailored trip for exhilarating dives in Komodo.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Thanks for the excellent report. I almost felt that I was there.

 

[Goingforsound]

Thanks for the report. I would suggest you combine the 3 parts in one single thread.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Thanks for the report. I would suggest you combine the 3 parts in one single thread.

I helped put it together.

 

[CarcharodonCarcharias]

I helped put it together.

Thank you!

 

[drrich2]

Busy Girl is quite a small boat. It is only about 15M long and there is not much space to go around (So you better make sure you like your dive companions). There are two cabins for the guests and the crew sleeps pretty much anywhere they want on the boat. There is no A/C in the cabins but there are fans (albeit a bit noisy). There is also no hot shower on board. It does not have many of the creature comforts and to a certain degree, you are roughin’ it. During my trip, there were only three guests on the boat.

Enjoyed your report! Quite good! Any idea how many guests they take out max.? How much rocking of the boat was there? Anybody complain about motion sickness? I'm guessing on a relatively small boat that could be more an issue.

 

[CarcharodonCarcharias]

Enjoyed your report! Quite good! Any idea how many guests they take out max.? How much rocking of the boat was there? Anybody complain about motion sickness? I'm guessing on a relatively small boat that could be more an issue.

Thank you!

The boat will take up to 4 guests per trip. But if you do a private charter, i believe they are willing to accommodate up to 5 guests.

There was not much rocking with the boat during our trip and no one complained about motion sickness. But you are absolutely correct that with stronger surge and a bigger weather front, the smaller boat will be more affected by it.

 

[CJS]

Very grateful for this report. Going with these guys in October.