Lembeh - Returning after 10 years

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Immeriswas

Contributor
Messages
123
Reaction score
97
Location
Germany
# of dives
200 - 499
After the ocasional muck dives in Ambon, Halmahera and Salibay in the recent years, which we both liked a lot, this year there was the time for a "muck only " part on our regular trip to Indonesia.
Enjoing Lembeh 10 years ago during full day trips from Bangka and Pulisan and beeing located near Siau , the second and main part of our journey, the only question was : which resort?
No easy job with over 20 to choose!
Finally Rob Sinkes Divers Lodge Lembeh was the draw, not only due to many good reviews ( others had the same amount or even more ) , but also due to the pleasant stay in 2016 at Weda - one of his other resorts.

The accomodation in spacious bungalows some with AC scattered over a hill on the south end of Lembeh island provides you with a beautifull view and a nice breeze, which makes the AC not absolutly necessary and kept the mosquitos away.
The ones on Top with the best sights are the bungalows with the most exercise as well, the restaurant being at the bottom part of the resort.
Our medium sized Kura Kura was close to the restaurant and equiped with a spacy desk for the Foto work, with sufficient pluggins, overlooking the beautiful stinger bay at the back.
Nice to look at, but with potentially deadly box jelly fish.

Food is served at a long comune like table , so that is like a big family meeting , with interesting conversation - not only about diving.
The kitchen did a great Job ! A lot of variety and always suffiecient.
Vegetarians like me and not so spicy lovers are well taken care of.
Free laundry service was a nice treat too.

The plastic covered beach with the kind of improvised pier made of old tires, to reach the clearer and deeper part of the house reef , where is the dive site for Mandarin fish as well, is the only small drawback to the whole place .
Especially if you are only up for two dives a day or sick or just love to go snorkeling for a change , there are better places in the strait.

Now to the most important part : the diving.
It is very well organized and sort of customized for everybody.
The boats are fast and spacious with a toilet. Normally two tanks in the morning starting at 8.00 ,back for lunch and one afternoon dive at around 15.00 to 15.30 .
The daily offered night dives, which I almost attended every evening, were just great or even amazing.
First one usually at the house reef including the mandarin site and from then on the next nights with the boat to places near and further away in the strait. I liked the place "Kuda laut" the most.
Rental gear partly brandnew is in a very good condition. Nitrox and large 15 l tanks are available.
The first dive is normaly around 60 to 70 minutes and the second, shallower one up to 90 minutes.
During the surface Intervall the boat goes to the second place and depending on the distance there is sometimes a chance for snorkeling.

For the marine life Lembeh delivered as we had hoped and more.
There were only a few of our personal buckt list left after the 12 days.
In the morning you were asked what you would like to encounter and in 90 % the guide choose the dive site accordingly.
Especially the " hairy " things all appeared : frogfish, shrimp and - lucky as ten years ago - Oktopuss!
Beeing equiped with a new wide angle lens ( a new challenge after years of macro , mainly for Siau so ! ),
I hoped for calm weather and not too much peer pressure from the muck fraktion of the guests, to head to the east coast of Lembeh island for corall and wall diving.
So one day I was the only diving guest and the two sites "Pulau Dua" and "Sausalino island" were just fantastic. Healthy corall, many fish and quite good visibility.
A nice alternative after muck, muck,muck for a week or so.The same to say about the only left wreck in the middel of the strait.
Beeing a newbe to wide angle, you have to excuse the mediocrate pictures .

Obviously I didn 't researched intensive enough to get the information about the possibility of "Black Water Diving " at the NAD Resort. A thing I had in mind a long time already.
Rob might have it organized during our stay, but he had to attend some important meetings at his other resort in Weda for a whole week. And his team understandably did not want to risk something by trying out something completly new..
And to swop the place just because of that was out of question especially having the option again in Siau. .

As lucky as I was with the marine life as unlucky I was with my camera equipment.
First dive, only with the housing to test the waterproofnes, but with a Gopro as a backup: the little camera flooded!!
Day four or five the strobe gave up : the photosensor for the slave mode was not working. Irreparabel at least here in Lembeh.
The next day one of our torches also broke.
So I did most of my pictures with the video light, which luckily kept going, but the outcome of the pictures was a bit different.
I tried to order a new strobe in Jakarta, Surabaya and Bali.
But unisono the shops told me it would take too long to reach Lembeh before our departure towards Siau.

Here the link to some pictures

P. Lie




 

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