Continued Report
Arrival at Sorido Bay. Now that I’ve arrived and settled into Sorido Bay Resort, I’ll give you the lowdown. The “package” I purchased from them included the round trip transfer from Sorong to the resort, which entailed a pickup by a Papua Diving driver from my hotel in Sorong to the ferry. It’s a 2-hour, 20-minute ride to Wasai. The ferry tickets are purchased by SBR in the VIP section of the boat, which means you have a seat with A/C instead of the area with no A/C, plus your luggage is in the same area you’re seated in and not the general holding area. Once I arrived in Wasai, another Papua Diving team met me at the ferry dock, then walked me over to their speedboat for a 45-minute ride to the resort. That was about a 5-minute walk. I also happened to be sharing this transfer with two other guests staying at Kri Eco Resort.
Getting on and off the ferry was chaotic, so I’m glad I had an escort from Papua Diving. Once we arrived in Wasai, it was a free-for-all with everyone exiting and entering at the same time and luggage was flying around everywhere, so I was grateful to have my bags secured with me in visual sight. The porters were very handsy with our bags, and we told them to wait a minute. We found our Papua guy and he gave them permission to handle our bags. They work for tips, so they charged us 200,000 IDR, which is about $6 USD. It was worth every bit because the walk from the ferry boat to the speedboat is dirt, gravel, broken blocks of asphalt, and you’re sharing the road with cars, scooters and pedestrians.
Now here’s where I will caution you for the next step. While you’re standing at the boat dock, there’s a government registration office that you have to pay the marine park fee of 1,000,000 IDR unless you’re with Papua Divers, which means you pay the resort the fee, not the government office, but I wasn’t informed that I’d be approached for payment. A gentleman told the Papua guy that we had to make the payment there, so I said we don’t pay anything because the resort takes care of it. I told him I’m not paying anything. After some back-and-forth between the Indonesians, we were allowed to get on the Papua boat. Apparently, the government people know that SBR pays the fee for their guests, but they try to make you pay twice by saying you have to pay there. I stood my ground and it worked.
If you want to feel like you’re on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, well, you’ve arrived! The property is located oceanfront amongst a dense tropical rainforest with a canopy of trees to envelope you. I received a nice welcome and a tour of the property and briefing on how it all works. Very thorough. There is new management that’s only been here three weeks, and the existing manager, Chris, is onsite helping to train the new folks. This hasn’t affected my stay; however, if you are considering coming here, there will be a formal transition in mid-December.
The Bungalow. This is a huge room with a king bed, a sofa, desk table with two chairs, a drinking water & coffee station, a large counter area for your camera and dive gear, and a very nice-sized bathroom with a walk-in shower with plenty of hot water and good shower pressure. There is no fresh water on the island, so drinking water is brought from the mainland. Since there hasn’t been enough rain, for the first five days, the water coming into the room was well water mixed with salt water. Then we got some rain, and they switched it to rainwater. What a relief that was! Nothing ever feels clean when you're bathing and rinsing gear in partial saltwater. You can see the color of the water in the photo attached. The A/C works very well, and the bed is firm but comfortable with mosquito netting.
And speaking of mosquitoes, I’ve already gone through one spray can of insect repellent. I brought plenty. It is very hot and very humid, and the mosquitoes are out in full force. There’s bats at night flying around the property eating those up, but it’s still a problem if you’re like me and are a human mosquito attractant.
I’m going to pause here and post some photos.
To be continued…
