Raja Ampat Liveaboard - has anyone 2022 experiences with La Galigo RA south tour?

[AndreasMUC]

Hello,

My wife and myself are planning to visit Raja Ampat a second time in Oct/Nov this year after having been there in 2018. We will stay in a resort in Dampier strait for a week or so and are considering to go on a liveaboard after that. La Galigo fits best in our schedule, but there are very different reviews of other divers on this boat. Can anyone share recent experiences with La Galigo boat and crew? Has anyone been to southern Raja Amat, in particular Misool - is it worth going?

 

[SaltyWombat]

I can share my experience. In November & December 2022 I spent about 10 days at 2 resorts in the Dampier Straight and then 11 days on a liveaboard. Overall, I had better diving from the land-based resorts. I don't recommend doing both a resort and a liveaboard back-to-back in Raja4. Instead, my preference is to do a land-based resort in Raja4 and then a liveaboard elsewhere.

My best dives were in the Dampier Straight, easily reachable from land-based resorts. The liveaboard went to many of the same sites I had been to the previous week.

The liveaboard also went north to Wayag and south to Misool. The experience topside in Wayag is fun since the islands are so beautiful there. However, the diving was just average, not as good as in the Dampier Straight. The diving in Misool was very much below average due to poor visibility, perhaps 3 meters.

Note: I have zero experience with La Galiga. My thoughts are on resorts vs. liveaboards in general.

 

[AndreasMUC]

Thank you very much @SaltyWombat , this is really helpful! I was in doubt on whether or not it is a good idea to go on the liveaboard in addition to our resort stay, this drives me to look into other locations for the second part of our trip.

However, if anyone has experiences with La Galiga I still would be interested in hearing about these.

 

[SaltyWombat]

This fellow was recently on La Galiga:

.

He has an IG link there. Maybe you could message him.

 

[AndreasMUC]

Thank you @SaltyWombat, will do so!

 

[carono6333]

Thank you very much @SaltyWombat , this is really helpful! I was in doubt on whether or not it is a good idea to go on the liveaboard in addition to our resort stay, this drives me to look into other locations for the second part of our trip.

However, if anyone has experiences with La Galiga I still would be interested in hearing about these.

Our experiences with La Galigo were not great, as they changed the itinerary so significantly we did not get the tour we expected. Instead of ‘Raja Ampat North’ (the title of the tour we booked), we got mostly a Central tour.

It’s in this review - see point number 5

Trip Report - Raja Ampat [10 weeks diving with 9 different operators]

My wife and I had the good fortune to have 10 weeks of diving in Raja Ampat, starting end of October 2023 with our last dive on the 3rd January 2024. We did approx 100 dives with nine diving operators, consisting two liveaboards, two dive centers, and five diving homestays: Liveaboards: You...

scubaboard.com

 

[carono6333]

Sorry just realized this post is a year old, not recent. Admin feel free to delete my reponses