I did a Raja Ampat live aboard from Dec 23 to Jan 2 on the MV ****Kira. Many many super thanks to Marcia at Gekko Divers in Phuket Thailand for finding me this trip at the last minute and helping me with all the logistics of payment and travel. I would not be writing this report had it not been for her. Will definitely call her for my next big dive adventure.
Getting there
Even coming from Bangkok, getting there was a pain in the butt. I took a midnight flight to Jakarta, slept outside of the domestic wing, then took a 5AM flight to Makassar. Domestic Indonesian air travel is a far cry from international travel I’ve become accustomed to. The check in gate opened late, the lines were long, the overweight luggage charges can get high, not sure what you can do about it, just budget it in if you are bringing lots of gear. My next leg was form Makassar to Sorong, each leg of my journey I was going to progressively less developed areas. The Sorong airport was concrete with rebar sticking out. The baggage claim was a most hilarious scene, with people just jammed around a pile of bags. If there were some live farm animals, it would have been perfect. I actually enjoyed the adventure and I kept telling myself that if Raja Ampat was easy to get to, it would be swamped with reef kicking OW students. Anyways, a sense of humor and adventure is needed to for the journey.
The Boat & Crew
It’s a wooden ship that the nautical types should enjoy, but that means it creaks occasionally. The boat had 7 cabins with ensuite heads for 14 passengers. It wasn't luxurious, but it was clean and comfortable. I shared a small room with bunk beds which lay perpendicular to the keel. There's only hot water showers on the dive platform, the showers in the cabins have no water heater. I found it only an issue the first morning, a very trivial inconvenience. The food was ok, not nearly as good as Thai live aboards, but there were not many complaints. Pretty much every meal was 1 western, 1 asian-ish dish, with one item always been fried. The crew was all locals, and only Arnold spoke some English. Personally, I prefer it this way… I’ve always preferred local guides as I have found them to be the best critter spotters. Everyone was very friendly, cheerful and helpful in the good useful way and not in the smothering sort of way.
Diving
The dive briefings were limited to general site description, which way the current should be going, and which direction we’ll start going in (right or left shoulder). The guides let us do your own thing, but they were very good fish spotters (especially tiny pygmy sea horses) that it wasn’t a bad idea to be near them. This is the type of diving I most enjoy.
The diving was spectacular, less than 5 minutes into the checkout dive I saw the first of many wobbegong sharks. If you love coral reefs, then this is the place for you. Endless fields of pristine coral… I have never seen so many ginormous and unbroken sea fans. Not a single sign of human activity. None of the smashed corals from anchors being drug around, or fields of demolished coral from dynamite fishing, no fishing traps and nets, no knocked over sea fans from OW noobs that is now prevalent in the Similans. I wonder if the diversity and density is one of the reasons why I rarely saw any sea urchins. I also didn’t see that many lion fish come to think of it. My dive book is just dense w notes. I got in 30 dives and every single one of them was a perfect dive. But I think my all time best dive had to have been at Manta Sands. As the name suggests, they have mantas… lots of mantas. And they have this awesome system where a line of rock and dead coral has been laid out a distance from the boulder’s the mantas circle and people stay still there as the mantas circled endlessly ahead. Then I noticed that there were critters around me. There were a pipe fishes, leaf fish, mantis shrimp and a pegasus sea moth all within a few meters of me. It was as if all the little things were trying to get people’s attention. We stayed as long as we could and on our way out, one of the big mantas pulled up…then shot straight to the surface, fully breaching and landing with a loud shudder. The single most awesome thing I’ve seen while diving.
Raja Ampat will forever be to me the most ridiculous diving I’ve done. Every dive there was something amazing… night dives were full of the most bizarre creatures. The weirdest of crabs (I saw one that looked liked it was fried tempura, any idea what that is?), sharks that walk… I got video of a conger eel catching a fish. Sea turtles every day, hump heads, unicorns, massive schools of jacks and barracudas. On average, I saw 2 sharks a dive, mostly wobbegongs, but plenty of white and black tips as well.
The only complaints I have is that the boat lacked nitrox. Though in honest, I spent most of my time in the 16-20meter range that NDLs were rarely the limiting factor. But it would have been nice to have for a 30 dive series.
Getting there
Even coming from Bangkok, getting there was a pain in the butt. I took a midnight flight to Jakarta, slept outside of the domestic wing, then took a 5AM flight to Makassar. Domestic Indonesian air travel is a far cry from international travel I’ve become accustomed to. The check in gate opened late, the lines were long, the overweight luggage charges can get high, not sure what you can do about it, just budget it in if you are bringing lots of gear. My next leg was form Makassar to Sorong, each leg of my journey I was going to progressively less developed areas. The Sorong airport was concrete with rebar sticking out. The baggage claim was a most hilarious scene, with people just jammed around a pile of bags. If there were some live farm animals, it would have been perfect. I actually enjoyed the adventure and I kept telling myself that if Raja Ampat was easy to get to, it would be swamped with reef kicking OW students. Anyways, a sense of humor and adventure is needed to for the journey.
The Boat & Crew
It’s a wooden ship that the nautical types should enjoy, but that means it creaks occasionally. The boat had 7 cabins with ensuite heads for 14 passengers. It wasn't luxurious, but it was clean and comfortable. I shared a small room with bunk beds which lay perpendicular to the keel. There's only hot water showers on the dive platform, the showers in the cabins have no water heater. I found it only an issue the first morning, a very trivial inconvenience. The food was ok, not nearly as good as Thai live aboards, but there were not many complaints. Pretty much every meal was 1 western, 1 asian-ish dish, with one item always been fried. The crew was all locals, and only Arnold spoke some English. Personally, I prefer it this way… I’ve always preferred local guides as I have found them to be the best critter spotters. Everyone was very friendly, cheerful and helpful in the good useful way and not in the smothering sort of way.
Diving
The dive briefings were limited to general site description, which way the current should be going, and which direction we’ll start going in (right or left shoulder). The guides let us do your own thing, but they were very good fish spotters (especially tiny pygmy sea horses) that it wasn’t a bad idea to be near them. This is the type of diving I most enjoy.
The diving was spectacular, less than 5 minutes into the checkout dive I saw the first of many wobbegong sharks. If you love coral reefs, then this is the place for you. Endless fields of pristine coral… I have never seen so many ginormous and unbroken sea fans. Not a single sign of human activity. None of the smashed corals from anchors being drug around, or fields of demolished coral from dynamite fishing, no fishing traps and nets, no knocked over sea fans from OW noobs that is now prevalent in the Similans. I wonder if the diversity and density is one of the reasons why I rarely saw any sea urchins. I also didn’t see that many lion fish come to think of it. My dive book is just dense w notes. I got in 30 dives and every single one of them was a perfect dive. But I think my all time best dive had to have been at Manta Sands. As the name suggests, they have mantas… lots of mantas. And they have this awesome system where a line of rock and dead coral has been laid out a distance from the boulder’s the mantas circle and people stay still there as the mantas circled endlessly ahead. Then I noticed that there were critters around me. There were a pipe fishes, leaf fish, mantis shrimp and a pegasus sea moth all within a few meters of me. It was as if all the little things were trying to get people’s attention. We stayed as long as we could and on our way out, one of the big mantas pulled up…then shot straight to the surface, fully breaching and landing with a loud shudder. The single most awesome thing I’ve seen while diving.
Raja Ampat will forever be to me the most ridiculous diving I’ve done. Every dive there was something amazing… night dives were full of the most bizarre creatures. The weirdest of crabs (I saw one that looked liked it was fried tempura, any idea what that is?), sharks that walk… I got video of a conger eel catching a fish. Sea turtles every day, hump heads, unicorns, massive schools of jacks and barracudas. On average, I saw 2 sharks a dive, mostly wobbegongs, but plenty of white and black tips as well.
The only complaints I have is that the boat lacked nitrox. Though in honest, I spent most of my time in the 16-20meter range that NDLs were rarely the limiting factor. But it would have been nice to have for a 30 dive series.
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