anchochile
Contributor
TRIP REPORT
I’m just wrapping up four weeks and 24 dives in Bali with my wife, her mother, and our 9-month-old, thanks to my company’s moderately generous (by U.S. standards) parental leave policy. This was my first time diving in SE Asia, and I owe a huge thank you to this forum, especially @Luko, @UFOrb, @billt4sf, @chillyinCanada, and @Dan, for excellent advice as we planned the trip.
TULAMBEN - Last week of October
We decided to start in Tulamben because my wife is a brand-new diver, with only 6 logged dives before this trip – we thought the easy shore diving with minimal current, warm water, and the option to pick any depth profile would be a great way for her to get more comfortable underwater, and also great for me as a newbie u/w photographer. We spent 8 nights here, with 7 days of diving (I lost one day to Bali Belly, oh well!).
We chose Liberty Dive Resort on the advice of this forum, thinking that the option for a private guide and setting our own dive schedule would be perfect given that we were also traveling with a non-diver (my mother-in-law) and a baby.
Lodging:
As lodging, LDR was fine in most respects and great in some.
What was great: Liberty sent a driver and van to the airport to pick us up. He was cautious and safe, a huge relief on the chaotic Bali roads with a baby in the car for 3.5 hours.
The resort grounds are lovely. There are beautiful pools around every corner, where we would spend every afternoon with the baby – a great way to keep him cool without having to stay cooped up in the air conditioned room. We’d been told that the Balinese people go crazy for babies, and it was true – our son became a mini-celebrity. At every meal, the restaurant staff would immediately swoop him out of our arms and take turns holding and entertaining him – within our line of sight – until our food arrived. I’d say they were probably better at keeping him happy and entertained than his parents most of the time.
What was ok but not fantastic: we opted for the deluxe family villa, as it is the only two-bedroom unit with a common living space at LDR, so it would allow my wife, I, and the baby to have one room and grandma to have another. The rooms were clean enough and functional, but definitely on the worn and tired side. The indoor space was also quite dark, with minimal windows and lighting – it wasn’t really a nice atmosphere to spend time in other than sleeping, so we spent most of our time on the shaded back deck or in the pools. From what I saw, some of the other rooms looked newer and cheerier, so next time we’d probably opt for two separate rooms rather than the villa.
Food was not amazing but perfectly acceptable. We stuck mostly with Indonesian food, and definitely got bored of the menu after several days, but it did the trick. We didn’t venture out to other restaurants for several reasons: none seemed to promise especially better or different food, lunchtime was too hot to walk 10-15 minutes around the village with the baby, and dinner was close enough to the baby’s bedtime that we wanted to keep it quick & efficient.
My non-diving mother-in-law was able to do some great snorkeling, which kept her from getting bored out of her mind in an area where there is pretty much nothing to do out of the water. She could walk 5 minutes from the resort to snorkel the wreck (the portion of the stern that is shallow enough to snorkel is small, but beautiful), and on other days, the resort gave her rides on their diver trucks to Coral Garden and Drop Off, which both had plenty of good stuff at snorkeling depths.
Diving:
The diving was great – our first dive on the Liberty Wreck was a perfect introduction to SE Asian diving for my wife and I – color upon color, hard and soft corals, sponges, tons of fish, exactly what we were excited to experience. I know there's much better to be had in Indonesia, but as a couple of rookies, we were very happy.
We opted for a private guide, for an extra charge of $12/dive, who was on-call all day every day to dive with either of both of us. After each dive, we would decide when & where to go for the next dive and agree on a meeting time. This could not have been more perfect given our parenting responsibilities. It meant we could do a mix of diving together, while grandma looked after the little one, and doing extra dives on our own while the other was on parent duty. Typically my wife only did one dive per day, together with me in the morning (she’s a not as dive-obsessed as I am), and I would do one or two additional dives in the late morning or afternoon.
On top of this, the dive setup is super efficient – we would set a meeting time, gather at the central dive staging area of the resort, put on wetsuits while the staff load our assembled gear onto the pickup truck, hop in the truck and drive 2-10 minutes to the dive site, put on our gear and walk into the water. We were generally underwater 15 minutes after our meeting time, and back at the resort 10 minutes after surfacing. This meant that I leave the room to dive and be back on dad duty 80 minutes later. This flexibility and efficiency couldn’t have been more perfect for our group, especially when you think about most dive locales where a dive outing means 4-5 hours on a boat, minimum.
Our guide was Uji – a super nice guy, great in the water, and an incredible macro spotter. Generally our morning dive (with my wife) would be on the wreck or a different reef/coral site, and then my later dive(s) would be macro sites, as viz tended to deteriorate throughout the day.
Besides the wreck and macro sites, we dove Coral Garden, Drop-Off, and Kubu reef. We liked Coral Garden ok (some neat critters that we didn’t see elsewhere), had horrible viz at Drop-Off (<10 meters), and liked Kubu Reef, but decided the wreck had them all beat and stuck with that for our morning dives for the rest of the week.
The early-morning Bumphead dive on the wreck was great – we were underwater at 6am and had the wreck and the bumpheads nearly to ourself. Peaceful and magical. The other days, we started around 8:30 or 9am. There were definitely lots of other divers but the wreck is big enough that it didn’t have a huge impact on our experience, despite what we’d been warned of.
The other highlight of the wreck for me was hanging out just 15-20 feet deep at the stern. With a light current hitting the wreck, there were tons of fish hanging out there, and at that shallow, sunny depth, it was a riot of color, and a great place to practice my ambient-light wide-angle:
I would have liked to see some of the other recommended coral sites that are further away – Japanese Wreck, maybe a boat dive – but didn’t want to take the extra time away from my wife & mother-in-law who were already taking on a lot of child care to enable me to get plenty of diving in. Those will have to wait for another trip.
For macro sites, I let Uji choose. We did the wreck slope twice, Melasti, Seraya, and Agung Resort. It was a great crash course in macro for me, and my learning curve was steep – I even managed to get some halfway non-atrocious images out of the experience.
As far as conditions, viz was mixed, and never stellar. At best, we had maybe 15 meters on a few morning dives, with lots of large particulate in the water. More typical was 12-15 meters in the morning, dropping to 10 or less in the afternoon. Temperatures ranged from 81-83F (27-28C). We didn’t bring our own wetsuits (gotta make some compromises on an extended trip with an infant!) and it turned out LDR only rents shorties. I was ok in a shorty but definitely got a bit chilled towards the end of the week, and my wife runs quite cold so Uji managed to dig up a 3mm full suit for her. But heads up, if you want something more than a shorty in 27-degree water, bring your own! (This theme was repeated in Padang Bai…)
There was a new moon during our visit, and as a result, we had more current than is typical for Tulamben. Most dives were pretty mellow, but we had to fight some moderate current on a few dives, and my one night dive (for macro at Wreck Slope) featured washing-machine-like currents – one way for a few minutes, then calm, then the other way, then up, then down…and often too strong to kick against, leaving us hanging to the sand by our muck sticks. Not exactly the best conditions for a new photographer trying to do macro…at night…while my photo subjects are getting blown around by the current. Uji found a few good subjects and I even got a couple decent shots before calling the dive when it became clear that the whole endeavor was ridiculous.
In sum, LDR was a perfect place for a couple of SE Asia newbie divers, a snorkeler, and a baby to spend a week. I managed 14 dives over 6 days – not bad for vacationing with a baby. If we hadn’t had grandma around to babysit while dived together, we could have still easily fit in 2 dives per day each, alternating while the other was on baby duty.
After Tulamben, we headed to Candidasa for diving out of Padangbai. To be continued...
I’m just wrapping up four weeks and 24 dives in Bali with my wife, her mother, and our 9-month-old, thanks to my company’s moderately generous (by U.S. standards) parental leave policy. This was my first time diving in SE Asia, and I owe a huge thank you to this forum, especially @Luko, @UFOrb, @billt4sf, @chillyinCanada, and @Dan, for excellent advice as we planned the trip.
TULAMBEN - Last week of October
We decided to start in Tulamben because my wife is a brand-new diver, with only 6 logged dives before this trip – we thought the easy shore diving with minimal current, warm water, and the option to pick any depth profile would be a great way for her to get more comfortable underwater, and also great for me as a newbie u/w photographer. We spent 8 nights here, with 7 days of diving (I lost one day to Bali Belly, oh well!).
We chose Liberty Dive Resort on the advice of this forum, thinking that the option for a private guide and setting our own dive schedule would be perfect given that we were also traveling with a non-diver (my mother-in-law) and a baby.
Lodging:
As lodging, LDR was fine in most respects and great in some.
What was great: Liberty sent a driver and van to the airport to pick us up. He was cautious and safe, a huge relief on the chaotic Bali roads with a baby in the car for 3.5 hours.
The resort grounds are lovely. There are beautiful pools around every corner, where we would spend every afternoon with the baby – a great way to keep him cool without having to stay cooped up in the air conditioned room. We’d been told that the Balinese people go crazy for babies, and it was true – our son became a mini-celebrity. At every meal, the restaurant staff would immediately swoop him out of our arms and take turns holding and entertaining him – within our line of sight – until our food arrived. I’d say they were probably better at keeping him happy and entertained than his parents most of the time.
What was ok but not fantastic: we opted for the deluxe family villa, as it is the only two-bedroom unit with a common living space at LDR, so it would allow my wife, I, and the baby to have one room and grandma to have another. The rooms were clean enough and functional, but definitely on the worn and tired side. The indoor space was also quite dark, with minimal windows and lighting – it wasn’t really a nice atmosphere to spend time in other than sleeping, so we spent most of our time on the shaded back deck or in the pools. From what I saw, some of the other rooms looked newer and cheerier, so next time we’d probably opt for two separate rooms rather than the villa.
Food was not amazing but perfectly acceptable. We stuck mostly with Indonesian food, and definitely got bored of the menu after several days, but it did the trick. We didn’t venture out to other restaurants for several reasons: none seemed to promise especially better or different food, lunchtime was too hot to walk 10-15 minutes around the village with the baby, and dinner was close enough to the baby’s bedtime that we wanted to keep it quick & efficient.
My non-diving mother-in-law was able to do some great snorkeling, which kept her from getting bored out of her mind in an area where there is pretty much nothing to do out of the water. She could walk 5 minutes from the resort to snorkel the wreck (the portion of the stern that is shallow enough to snorkel is small, but beautiful), and on other days, the resort gave her rides on their diver trucks to Coral Garden and Drop Off, which both had plenty of good stuff at snorkeling depths.
Diving:
The diving was great – our first dive on the Liberty Wreck was a perfect introduction to SE Asian diving for my wife and I – color upon color, hard and soft corals, sponges, tons of fish, exactly what we were excited to experience. I know there's much better to be had in Indonesia, but as a couple of rookies, we were very happy.
We opted for a private guide, for an extra charge of $12/dive, who was on-call all day every day to dive with either of both of us. After each dive, we would decide when & where to go for the next dive and agree on a meeting time. This could not have been more perfect given our parenting responsibilities. It meant we could do a mix of diving together, while grandma looked after the little one, and doing extra dives on our own while the other was on parent duty. Typically my wife only did one dive per day, together with me in the morning (she’s a not as dive-obsessed as I am), and I would do one or two additional dives in the late morning or afternoon.
On top of this, the dive setup is super efficient – we would set a meeting time, gather at the central dive staging area of the resort, put on wetsuits while the staff load our assembled gear onto the pickup truck, hop in the truck and drive 2-10 minutes to the dive site, put on our gear and walk into the water. We were generally underwater 15 minutes after our meeting time, and back at the resort 10 minutes after surfacing. This meant that I leave the room to dive and be back on dad duty 80 minutes later. This flexibility and efficiency couldn’t have been more perfect for our group, especially when you think about most dive locales where a dive outing means 4-5 hours on a boat, minimum.
Our guide was Uji – a super nice guy, great in the water, and an incredible macro spotter. Generally our morning dive (with my wife) would be on the wreck or a different reef/coral site, and then my later dive(s) would be macro sites, as viz tended to deteriorate throughout the day.
Besides the wreck and macro sites, we dove Coral Garden, Drop-Off, and Kubu reef. We liked Coral Garden ok (some neat critters that we didn’t see elsewhere), had horrible viz at Drop-Off (<10 meters), and liked Kubu Reef, but decided the wreck had them all beat and stuck with that for our morning dives for the rest of the week.
The early-morning Bumphead dive on the wreck was great – we were underwater at 6am and had the wreck and the bumpheads nearly to ourself. Peaceful and magical. The other days, we started around 8:30 or 9am. There were definitely lots of other divers but the wreck is big enough that it didn’t have a huge impact on our experience, despite what we’d been warned of.
The other highlight of the wreck for me was hanging out just 15-20 feet deep at the stern. With a light current hitting the wreck, there were tons of fish hanging out there, and at that shallow, sunny depth, it was a riot of color, and a great place to practice my ambient-light wide-angle:
I would have liked to see some of the other recommended coral sites that are further away – Japanese Wreck, maybe a boat dive – but didn’t want to take the extra time away from my wife & mother-in-law who were already taking on a lot of child care to enable me to get plenty of diving in. Those will have to wait for another trip.
For macro sites, I let Uji choose. We did the wreck slope twice, Melasti, Seraya, and Agung Resort. It was a great crash course in macro for me, and my learning curve was steep – I even managed to get some halfway non-atrocious images out of the experience.
As far as conditions, viz was mixed, and never stellar. At best, we had maybe 15 meters on a few morning dives, with lots of large particulate in the water. More typical was 12-15 meters in the morning, dropping to 10 or less in the afternoon. Temperatures ranged from 81-83F (27-28C). We didn’t bring our own wetsuits (gotta make some compromises on an extended trip with an infant!) and it turned out LDR only rents shorties. I was ok in a shorty but definitely got a bit chilled towards the end of the week, and my wife runs quite cold so Uji managed to dig up a 3mm full suit for her. But heads up, if you want something more than a shorty in 27-degree water, bring your own! (This theme was repeated in Padang Bai…)
There was a new moon during our visit, and as a result, we had more current than is typical for Tulamben. Most dives were pretty mellow, but we had to fight some moderate current on a few dives, and my one night dive (for macro at Wreck Slope) featured washing-machine-like currents – one way for a few minutes, then calm, then the other way, then up, then down…and often too strong to kick against, leaving us hanging to the sand by our muck sticks. Not exactly the best conditions for a new photographer trying to do macro…at night…while my photo subjects are getting blown around by the current. Uji found a few good subjects and I even got a couple decent shots before calling the dive when it became clear that the whole endeavor was ridiculous.
In sum, LDR was a perfect place for a couple of SE Asia newbie divers, a snorkeler, and a baby to spend a week. I managed 14 dives over 6 days – not bad for vacationing with a baby. If we hadn’t had grandma around to babysit while dived together, we could have still easily fit in 2 dives per day each, alternating while the other was on baby duty.
After Tulamben, we headed to Candidasa for diving out of Padangbai. To be continued...