Continued trip report (Sorido Bay)
Internet connection is continuing to get worse so there will be no photos for this portion.
The food was excellent served buffet style. Coffee, water, and tea are included. Soft drinks are 3 € per can. Wine is available for purchase only by the bottle for about 42 €, average. There is no liquor.
The Diving. For the diving with Papua Divers, they are a fantastic operation. The groups are 2-to-1 up to 5-to-1 divers per guide to start. After a couple of days of watching you dive, they will break up the groups for a more personal experience based on your air consumption and compatability with the other divers.
The diving launches from the jetty, which I posted a picture in my previous post. At the jetty, you are assigned a blue crate that you put your gear into. Each dive, the dive staff assembles your gear for you, then you analyze your nitrox with the guide. Nitrox is free. The crew then loads your gear onto the boat.
After the dive, all your gear is taken off in the water and handed up to the staff. More often than not, there were more staff than divers. There was a captain, the guides, and a deckhand or two. After the first day of diving, I was assigned a private guide, an up-and-coming 23-year-old Indonesian with a passion for marine life and conservation. He was a great guide.
They are very open to your suggestions or desires to see particular animals, and they will look for them for you.
Back at the jetty, the staff will change your tanks and set up again. At the end of the day, they will rinse your BCD, reg, and fins, and you clean your own personal gear. One drawback was the lack of fresh water to rinse any of my gear for 10 days. What comes out of the outdoor faucets and showers is seawater with reverse osmosis, so it's brackish water much like the picture in my previous post.
Round trip transfers are included in the package. The boat ride from Kri Island to Sorong took about 1 hour 40 minutes. It's a small enclosed boat, no a/c, and very hot.
I really enjoyed my stay there. The resort staff and the dive staff did an outstanding job to make my stay comfortable. This portion of my trip cost $4,076 for the hotel only for 10 days. The single occupancy penalty was 23%. I did a la carte diving, which totaled $950. The marine park fee good for one year was $60.
I'll comment about the tipping practice in the next post.