I wanted to title this trip report "To back roll or to stumble this is my question?" But thought it may be a tad obscure!! So I went with the tried and tested route!! But I will get to my question soon enough.
This was now our fourth time to the pebble beached sleepy town of Tulamben. As per usual we travel with two growing boys (now 6 & 4) and this time around we dragged their Auntie all for the ride.
Our previous 3 trips we stayed at Scuba Seraya and we highly recommend that resort, but we thought we would try something new and stay in town and close to the wreck. After lots of review trawling I ended up at Ocean View Tulamben or OVT from now on ( Ocean View Tulamben - Home ) . There are tons of good reviews for Liberty Dive Resort and I'm sure it's great BUT they are up the road from the "beach" immediately behind OVT and personally I like staying where I can actually see the sea. Yes the view is restricted from the resort restaurant but at least there is a direct view and you are literally on the rocks.
We stayed in the more budget rooms at the top end of the resort in front of the top pool. The rooms are HUGE and clean. And even have a bath all for a bargain price of USD52 per night!! The AC worked great and the staff are helpful. The bungalows down below are really pretty and If I were travelling sans kids I would definitely go for the. BUT when you need 2 rooms the extra cost was a tad much. This is the view from our veranda.
The upper pool at Ocean View by Angmo Al, on Flickr
The bottom pool and restaurant area are really pretty. And we ended up spending much of our time down here. The younger one loved the shallow plunge pool at the bottom.
Food at the restaurant was on the whole not bad, some meals definitely better than others. With two very busy kids with dietary restrictions we really do not bother exploring for food! We get the kitchen staff accustomed to what we need and then just stick to it. To their credit the kitchen staff we very accommodating! The only real issue was that they had an extremely limited booze selection!! My wife loves a cocktail to celebrate the sunset but they basically had nothing!! They did have cold Bintang's so I was fine!
Ocean View Sunset by Angmo Al, on Flickr
One of the main reasons for staying in Tulamben was so that I could take my eldest out snorkeling to the wreck. And man did he love it!! He is so comfortable in the water, a true fish! The wreck is a 50m walk down the rocky beach and then about 100m swim out.
Mr Fish by Angmo Al, on Flickr
On to the diving. Firstly the dive team at OVT are extremely easy going and at your service, we dived when we wanted, how we wanted. We had our own guide and often two of them! They were good spotters, but possibly a tad enthusiastic with the critters and I needed to dial him down a little. You travel out to the dive sites by truck and then either kit up on the rocks and stumble in or they will bring your gear into the water and you can kit up in the shallows...still stumbling around!
So this brings me back to my initial question "To back roll or to stumble?". I can honestly say that next time I will likely head back to Scuba Seraya! The hassle of stumbling over those rocks and in the shallows gets old quick!! At Seraya you cruise up to the dive spot and just back roll from the boat! Much more civilized!
To further illustrate my point. The one night I was walking on the "beach" and I spotted this big guy floundering in the shallows! Really struggling! I waded out to him and helped him out. He was very grateful and was seriously unimpressed with the situation he found himself in! Apparently the current was ripping through the wreck and he got separated from his group and was now just hating life!
Ok back to my diving. Unfortunately I came down with a strange flu thingy, which did not really clog me up but often made me pretty dizzy. So I took a day off and just relaxed, and then tried again, but even though I was ok underwater I did not quite feel myself, which put a slight damper on the dive trip! But we still got to see some amazing new nudi's and critters. When I got back I went to see the doc and he said it was an inner ear infection and the dizziness cleared up a week or so later!! Pretty weird!
Beautiful beast by Angmo Al, on Flickr
_DSC8651 by Angmo Al, on Flickr
After our week at OVT we headed down for a week on a real beach!! We stayed in a rustic Air BnB right on the beach just down from Padang Padang.
All in all we had a great trip.
I would definitely recommend OVT to anyone heading to Tulamben!
You can see the full Flikr album below:
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmKnPLBd
This was now our fourth time to the pebble beached sleepy town of Tulamben. As per usual we travel with two growing boys (now 6 & 4) and this time around we dragged their Auntie all for the ride.
Our previous 3 trips we stayed at Scuba Seraya and we highly recommend that resort, but we thought we would try something new and stay in town and close to the wreck. After lots of review trawling I ended up at Ocean View Tulamben or OVT from now on ( Ocean View Tulamben - Home ) . There are tons of good reviews for Liberty Dive Resort and I'm sure it's great BUT they are up the road from the "beach" immediately behind OVT and personally I like staying where I can actually see the sea. Yes the view is restricted from the resort restaurant but at least there is a direct view and you are literally on the rocks.
We stayed in the more budget rooms at the top end of the resort in front of the top pool. The rooms are HUGE and clean. And even have a bath all for a bargain price of USD52 per night!! The AC worked great and the staff are helpful. The bungalows down below are really pretty and If I were travelling sans kids I would definitely go for the. BUT when you need 2 rooms the extra cost was a tad much. This is the view from our veranda.
The bottom pool and restaurant area are really pretty. And we ended up spending much of our time down here. The younger one loved the shallow plunge pool at the bottom.
Food at the restaurant was on the whole not bad, some meals definitely better than others. With two very busy kids with dietary restrictions we really do not bother exploring for food! We get the kitchen staff accustomed to what we need and then just stick to it. To their credit the kitchen staff we very accommodating! The only real issue was that they had an extremely limited booze selection!! My wife loves a cocktail to celebrate the sunset but they basically had nothing!! They did have cold Bintang's so I was fine!
One of the main reasons for staying in Tulamben was so that I could take my eldest out snorkeling to the wreck. And man did he love it!! He is so comfortable in the water, a true fish! The wreck is a 50m walk down the rocky beach and then about 100m swim out.
On to the diving. Firstly the dive team at OVT are extremely easy going and at your service, we dived when we wanted, how we wanted. We had our own guide and often two of them! They were good spotters, but possibly a tad enthusiastic with the critters and I needed to dial him down a little. You travel out to the dive sites by truck and then either kit up on the rocks and stumble in or they will bring your gear into the water and you can kit up in the shallows...still stumbling around!
So this brings me back to my initial question "To back roll or to stumble?". I can honestly say that next time I will likely head back to Scuba Seraya! The hassle of stumbling over those rocks and in the shallows gets old quick!! At Seraya you cruise up to the dive spot and just back roll from the boat! Much more civilized!
To further illustrate my point. The one night I was walking on the "beach" and I spotted this big guy floundering in the shallows! Really struggling! I waded out to him and helped him out. He was very grateful and was seriously unimpressed with the situation he found himself in! Apparently the current was ripping through the wreck and he got separated from his group and was now just hating life!
Ok back to my diving. Unfortunately I came down with a strange flu thingy, which did not really clog me up but often made me pretty dizzy. So I took a day off and just relaxed, and then tried again, but even though I was ok underwater I did not quite feel myself, which put a slight damper on the dive trip! But we still got to see some amazing new nudi's and critters. When I got back I went to see the doc and he said it was an inner ear infection and the dizziness cleared up a week or so later!! Pretty weird!
After our week at OVT we headed down for a week on a real beach!! We stayed in a rustic Air BnB right on the beach just down from Padang Padang.
All in all we had a great trip.
I would definitely recommend OVT to anyone heading to Tulamben!
You can see the full Flikr album below:
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmKnPLBd
