Wanting to see whale sharks and having researched the possibilities, we chose to go to Ahe because it seemed a laudable place, developing the local community and creating jobs (rather than a liveaboard which may not have made much contribution to the people of the region and which didn’t allow us to meet local people). Yes, it was a long way to go and the web site and various forums warned of it being basic but we had enjoyed similar trips before and saw it as an adventure.
Ahe is a beautiful tiny island with perfect sandy beaches, lots of birds and wildlife. The accommodation is basic but fine, with mozzie nets, mandi bathrooms, fans, and flasks of hot water for tea. Meals are eaten in a dining room situated over the sea. The meals are simple, plentiful, wholesome and OK. So far so good.
We had one day of diving, three dives, then on our second day we set off on our trip to see the whale sharks, full of expectations. Some forty five minutes later we limped back to the beach having not made much progress. We went to see the rarely spotted manager, Arne Pijnakker, who we had seen on the beach before we left, to talk about our concerns about the safety of the diving, from that morning and also from the day before.
Initially he agreed with us that there were problems but then he suddenly became very angry and told us to leave the island immediately, saying he would give us a full refund. It seemed an over-reaction; we wanted to discuss some points which were important to us. He just kept repeating, forcefully, that we must leave. We went to pack up. Returning to the beach to retrieve our diving gear we found Arne Pijnakker storming around the beach yelling loudly.
We got on the boat and returned to the mainland, stayed overnight and flew back to Jakarta. It was a long way to go, and very expensive, for three dives. So what were our concerns?
The main issue for us was the safety of the diving. No-one on the island has experience of managing a dive centre. There was only one dive guide. The boat did not have life jackets (these were produced after we mentioned this to Arne but then almost immediately disappeared again). Staff were smoking whilst sitting on jerricans of fuel. We set off on a two and a half hour trip to see the whale sharks with one non functioning engine and the other engine misfiring. The one dive guide did not come on the boat with us despite the Ahe rules that you can only dive with whale sharks when accompanied by a local dive guide. There was a guide from Manado who had arrived the day before, had never been to Ahe and had never seen a whale shark- and no-one mentioned to us that there would be no guide. We asked him if he was guiding this dive and he was as baffled as we were that the local guide was not on board; he had just been told that the guide had something else to do. After forty five minutes of not making much progress we asked to return to the island and went to talk with Arne. That was when he blew his top.
We also had other issues:
- Staff left the island at night and returned drunk. Again Arne agreed with this initially then denied they were drunk
- There were problems with safety procedures for diving - boat housekeeping, not following stated procedures about equipment -for example, being handed uninflated BCDs in the water and air not on
- Our friend had arrived two days before us, was the only person on the island and she was terrified by the drunken dive guide harassing her during the night then climbing in through the window of her room. She was traumatised, being alone on the island, but later no-one addressed the safety issues involved (could have mended the shutters!) or asked her how she was. Arne later made lots of pejorative statements about this incident and our friend’s perfectly reasonable behaviour.
Despite our great hopes that Ahe would be a good addition to the local economy and may help the community, we were sorely disappointed. The dive staff are not learning and are not being managed by dive professionals. Yes, we wanted to support the project but we also wanted to get a good safe service; it isn’t a cheap to either get there or stay there. We really felt that Arne’s angry and irrational behaviour isn’t helping the centre to achieve its stated objectives. So, we went home and waited for our refund as promised by Arne on several occasions. We then wrote to him and it became evident from his emails that he had no intention of refunding our money, nor our friend’s money; in fact, he probably had never intended to repay us and it was just a ruse to get us to leave. Our correspondence with him shows his remembrance of what happened to have changed over time; he denies what happened, saying we chose to leave. It didn’t feel like a choice at the time as he yelled at us to get off the island! In subsequent emails he has seemed to almost taunt us by saying he couldn’t refund us then saying he could but he wasn’t going to – no rationale.
It is such a shame. Ahe could be a lovely experience but it needs to be managed properly with people who have diving experience on site all the time. Otherwise the centre will fail and that will be a shame for the islanders. Every place experiences problems but it is how they deal with them that is the true measure. It does seem that there is a strong denial culture at Ahe and they don’t seem to learn from the problems. We were really open minded about Ahe and would consider ourselves to be quite flexible and tolerant of ‘island time’ and ‘island organisation’, but not when it becomes unsafe.
Anyone, and particularly single women, faces unwarranted risks in diving at Ahe. As previous visitors have commented, if you want to see whale sharks in Cenderawasih, book a liveaboard.
Just for information we are experienced divers, having dived with dozens of dive operations, some of which have been very basic, but we have never felt as unsafe as we did at Ahe. Incidentally, there was an instructor from Manado who had come to train some local guys as divers; no-one showed up for his course while we were there…
---------- Post added May 30th, 2013 at 03:24 PM ----------
