reubencahn:I'm trying to put together a family dive trip for next summer (late July or August). I've run the searches, read every post I could, consulted my Undercurrent Chapbooks for the last five years and pm'd some board members, but I still need some advice. I'm hoping to do about two weeks (excluding travel time) in one of these three places. If it's Komodo or PNG, I would probably split the time between a shorter, one week, liveaboard and land. I'm inclined from what I've read to think that PNG is superior to either Komodo or Wakatobi, but I'm not sure and I remain a bit nervous about resistant malaria in PNG. (One of the divers is my 12 year old son.)
So where would you go? Which has the best diving? Which would be the most fun? And if you say PNG, where would you go?
A hard question to answer it all depends on what you want see. The habits in PNG, Komodo and Waktobi are different have different things to offer. To combine a Diving trip with a great land expereince I would pick Indonesia where the culture is a really great experinece and has excellent land excursions.
For pristine reefs and diversity it is hard to choose between Komodo and Wakatobi both are equally great in theri own right.
Komodo has great diving for macro in Horsehoe bay (Rinja Island) and you could easily spend 4 days diving here with great dive sites like Cannibal rock, Yellow Wall, Criniod Canyon, Torpedo Alley (night dive) the Pinnacle etc etc. Tempreature in the southern part of the park is sometimes 10-15 degrees F cooler than the north part (only 15 miles different. I would always do Komodod by Liveaboard to maximise the diving in the one area.
Wakatobi has an excellent house reef and great wall diving, have not been to the outer wester reefs yet but believe that they are also great.
PNG also has a lot to offer but flights internally can be a real pain at times. But have exellent diving out of Kimbe, Kavieng, Milne bay and even Port Moresby.
So really first I guess you need to determine what it is you want to see first.