Raja Ampat Resort / Land Based Dive Options / Recommendations

[John Trecker]

It has been some time since there has been a thread on recommendations and input for Raja Ampat / R4 resort and land based dive options.
Am planning a trip in Dec / Jan for 2 weeks and have been a bit surprised at how limited the options are.
Many places are booked up for large parts of the year (Misool Resort is completely full for all of 2022 with prior rebookings).
Any recommendations, suggestions, hints, concerns, or other input appreciated! Please feel free to add in other input. Thank you everyone!

1. Location / Dive Site Access: Are diverse sites close / far? Long boat rides? House reef?
2. Dive Ops / Team: Safety / boats? Especially any recs for good guides / spotters.
3. Dive Equipment : Considerations on Nitrox / tank size / type, etc. Concerns with quality?
4. Accommodation / Food: Basic / Luxury / Value? Aircon? Food quality / variability. Recs on room type / location?
5. Wifi / Mobile Access Experience: Especially in these days of remote work.
6. Overall Impressions / Recs: Would you go back? Good value? Cater to serious divers? Anything you would do differently?

PS: Of course any input is in the context of Covid 19 pandemic and related impacts which we all know obviously has affected and will continue to affect ops, but his is not intended to be a posting to discuss Covid 19 (such as entry requirements) which has been covered in depth elsewhere.

 

[outofofficebrb]

I am putting together a spreadsheet with info that happy to share eventually including

1. Aircon availability
2. Nitrox Availability - surprisingly many do not have
3. Dive Days - many take days off for 'drying'... not fun after flying 30 hours to be stuck. Many say you can 'dive the house reef' but are curiously silent on what exactly that means and how that would work (dive by yourself with no guide I guess?)
4. Dives Per Day - Some of the more commercial resorts only have 2 dives guaranteed a day; one required 6 divers to do a night dive (good luck with that)
5. Transfer Days - this adds tons of complexity and costs and it seems to be set up as a gotcha to get you to pay more.
6. Private Guide info.

Dry time was always very quick in the Raja Ampat region in April/May and Sept/Oct particularly if it’s not raining and there’s also sun. The main thing is flipping the wetsuit inside out. My boots never dry completely on the inside even if I do more than 24 hours less time and I’m okay with that.

House reef diving at Papua Explorers was always guided, even if just 1-2 people were interested.

I wonder if you have any idea what it takes to run a resort on the Raja Ampat islands.
1. it takes at least 1 running high capacity generators to have the rooms equipped with aircon. These machines take 250 USD per day in fuel. Fuel which is often hard to get and have to brought in by boat. The days that only 1 or 2 bungalows are occupied the costs are almost the same.
2 . Oxygen tanks are hard to get and need to be transported. This makes a continuous blending system useless. (need 1 x 40 liter oxygen tank to fill 15 dive tanks) A membrane system takes more investment, maintenance and power. And do not under estimate the risks of down currents.
4 any resort which can effort it not to be commercial? You work for free?
5 transfers in Indonesia have always been expensive and are becoming much more expensive now. Keep in mind that for example a car is much more expensive here than in the USA or Europe. Fuel seems to be cheap. But does not help if you cannot buy without paying much extra.

Many businesses went under during the pandemic. The ones who survived did this often by using all financial reserves they had, borrowing money from friends, selling parts of their property or getting another loan. ZERO support from the government. Nothing for the company and nothing for their employees. They are trying to start up again now. Dealing with all delayed maintenance and replacements. Often they have only a couple of guests at the time. And still much uncertainty what next year will bring.

All resorts would like you to dive as often as possible. Why would they want to restrict that? That is how they make a living.
Maybe you will now understand a bit better ?

And…in speaking to a few managers at multiple resorts in the past 6 months, there has been consistent mention of gas costing 2.5-3X what it did before so that overhead cost has increased significantly.

 

[drrich2]

And…in speaking to a few managers at multiple resorts in the past 6 months, there has been consistent mention of gas costing 2.5-3X what it did before so that overhead cost has increased significantly.

Yesterday I got notice of a $15/night fuel surcharge on a liveaboard for Raja Ampat, and my dive travel agent told me a lot of liveaboards have been charging a fuel surcharge due to the large increase in fuel costs, and this rate is just under average of what they were seeing from all the boats.

So, $150 for a 10 night trip.

 

[DroolFool]

I am putting together a spreadsheet with info that happy to share eventually including

1. Aircon availability
2. Nitrox Availability - surprisingly many do not have
3. Dive Days - many take days off for 'drying'... not fun after flying 30 hours to be stuck. Many say you can 'dive the house reef' but are curiously silent on what exactly that means and how that would work (dive by yourself with no guide I guess?)
4. Dives Per Day - Some of the more commercial resorts only have 2 dives guaranteed a day; one required 6 divers to do a night dive (good luck with that)
5. Transfer Days - this adds tons of complexity and costs and it seems to be set up as a gotcha to get you to pay more.
6. Private Guide info.

Am planning a last minute 5 day dive trip to Raja Ampat in Mid April 2024.

And the excel sheet would be super helpful. If you are done, can u please share it with the rest of us? Thanks a bunch.

 

[beccaaa]

thanks for this! Quick questions - how humid did the rooms at Papex get? I have trouble sleeping when it's humid and no aircon...

see my thread: Question - Could you sleep in an overwater bungalow with no A/C?