DIVING
Ok, this is a scuba forum, well we are finally down to the diving.
We scheduled a liveaboard that was 7 nights - and did a Raja Ampat North Itinerary. I'm not going to mention the boat because I have some criticisms and I'm not sure if I'm being fair...I'm not ready to publicly trash their name forever on the internet. If you want to know who they are - message me. I may change my mind about this later.
The liveaboard had a fee we paid online (booked through liveaboard.com). They also had a port fees - which had to be paid when you get there in IDR. It was 3,500,000 IDR- (around 220-230 USD per person) per person. This covers your Raja Ampat marine park permit - something I'm accustom to from other destinations - and "port fees". Port fees are something between an unofficial fee and shakedown that the boat gets every place they want to stop/anchor/take you diving. We would go some place and at some point a little outboard boat would come up with some folks from a local village/island community and they would negotiate a fee. It's a weird practice to my point of view, but it is how they do it. I'm not arguing the virtue of why they do it. If you are a local village and you see a luxurious boat coming with 12 people that paid 3-4k USD to be on the boat - and you are looking around saying "hey that's my reef, they are on my villages reef - but my kids don't have good infrastructure for school/healthcare/etc" maybe you get in a boat ride out and explain to the captain that your dive site is going to cost something. --- My approval or not --- this is the custom, and that's what your port fees cover, above the marine park pass: and that's why I bring it up. If you are wondering why this is being charged to you, it's because your operator doesn't wrap it into their fees - and the reason you have to pay in IDR is because those rupiah are going to get rolled to someone while you are out on your trip.
The diving itself. We were there for the new moon. Tides were doing what tides do. The current was brutal most of the time.
I feel like this was the part of Raja Ampat I didn't get a good handle on before the trip. The current. Raja Ampat has all the types of current you can want. Another member posted about a diver that had passed away. That diver death occurred literally the day before I got on a plane to start my trip. So I didn't hear about that event. I read the post when I got back and thought "yep, that adds up."
It's hard to say what the worst current was. The most PIA current I had was something where we called pulled in a current that wrapped around a structure. My wife got thrown into the side of it, but recovered easy enough. I had to hook into the bottom for a moment to turn my head to see that she recovered - and in turning my head the current ripped the regulator 2nd stage off my mouthpiece. Mouthpiece securely in my teeth and first stage flying in the wind. It was rather amazing, all because I turned my head to see my wife slamming against the wall. I didn't actually know until I got a breath of salt water...I thought I had lost my reg, recovered it, looked at it and was like "huh - no mouth piece" took the mouthpiece out of my mouth and instinctively took a sip of air off my 1st stage (it was in my hand, so that represented the most immediate air). I got a slightly wet sip of air which was enough for me to then move on to my octopus. I recovered my wits...though I didn't enjoy the rest of that dive much. Fortunately it was a lateral current, not something that acts like a toilet bowl going down.
As it turns out my first stage took a real beating on that dive when it flew off my mouthpiece it banged into something and broke the ring around the purge. Later on the boat the course director helped repair it using some parts of a similar reg in his bag. I would have switched to rental reg if I had to - but it wasn't necessary.
That wasn't the worst current we saw, but it was the one that shook me up the most.
Now here comes my criticism of the dive operation:
Our boat had 4 groups with 4 guides. 2 Guides were Indonesian...one guide was an older guy, a few years older than me - near retirement - he put it. The 2 other guides were an American guy - the main cruise director, and a French lady - the other cruise director. Later we would find out - they had been with this liveaboard - in Indonesia - less than a year. About 6 months - and in that 6 months the boat had been in Komodo until 3 weeks ago. So the dive guide planning our dives had 3 weeks of time in Raja Ampat. It took a few days to piece together that people were having very different dive experiences based on guide. The older indonesian gentleman had people coming back all smiles and having seen many things. I was coming back happy to have survive. My dive guide liked to go out to the split, in the deepest part of the dive off the reef and look out into the blue for mantas or sharks. Sometimes he would see some - usually the rest of us didn't. The vis in Raja Ampat was 30ft/10meters at best, so at 100ft/30meters depth you have lost a lot of light - and usually the guide was 20ft in front of us - so he would see something out in the deep - come back really excited about it - mostly in those moments I saw his fins. A few times I saw a darkness in the water or perhaps tail fin. This guy was young, 27-29 years old, and was in the kind of shape we usually are in at 27-29. He was leading dives where we would have to follow him and fight the current a lot. Many times in the briefing he would tell us - if you need to - you can climb across the bottom. By the last 2 days my wife switched over to the group with the older gentlemen - so we could compare notes on the same dive site...after comparing my dive to hers on the first day - I joined her and the older gentlemen on the 2nd day, our last day of diving.
Oh - this reminds me - don't forget your swimmers ear preventative - by the end of the week everyone was fighting with ear issues. It felt way more prevalent than anyplace else I've been.
I will never book the liveaboard again. Putting a guide in who has 3 weeks in the area was a mistake. He was a nice guys, a good diver, a questionable leader, but had no business guiding dives in an area he had that little experience in. I don't care how many 1000 of dives you have in other places: local guides know local problems.
Anyway, live and learn - it's something I'll dig into before I ever book another LOB anywhere.
I don't want to undersell the diving. It was amazing. In between exhaustion and frustration I saw Mantas (mostly on Manta Ridge), a few black tips, 2-3 white tips through the week. I saw mobulas on one site. The night muck diving was absolutely my favorite dives - and if you ever go - don't miss an opportunity to do night muck diving in RA. I might consider returning to Raja Ampat one day, after a few other destinations get crossed of the list, but never that boat - and if I found out that guide was on another boat I wouldn't take that one either.
Beyond his local inexperience on the sites he had a bad habit of not giving good briefings even above the water. We did a topside climb on one of the limestone islands - the island was unimproved - no stairs or anything like Piaynemo - so climbing the limestone 'holes' grabbing tree branches. On the briefing he just mentioned a trek - and "ive done it barefooted - so it's easy - we had a guy last week with a disability he did it" -- this is the response of a 29 year old. My wifes knee lit up pretty good on that climb. It's about 15 minutes up and by the end of it she was in a lot of pain. Adding to it - he didn't lead the way up. We got there and he said "who's first" - so I went first and started the climb, there was an old cruddy rope I was told not to trust - so at the end of the rope I called down "keep going straight up the wall after the rope" - he called back "yeah keep going up, you will know when you get there" - 5 minutes later I hear him call out "you guys went the wrong way" - motherF^&* are you telling me there was a different easier way? All you said was keep going up!
Anyway, nice guy, bad leader. I'm sure he will improve with time and age - or I hope he does. I don't need to be around while he does.
Anyway, it was a point of frustration for me.
A real shame - outside of this - the rest of the crew was amazing. I have to wonder if I would have had such hard dives if we had been grouped up with the other gentleman to start with. You never know.
All I know is - before I ever book a liveaboard again I'm going to do more digging on the currents, the tides, and who is guiding the dives (and how much time they have in that area).
Because of current and bad vis I really didn't get as much video as I usually did here were a couple:
- Manta ridge -
- Mantis shrimp trying to catch a meal on a night dive
