jeremyl
Contributor
After a 2wk Bunaken/Lembeh trip last fall the waters of Indonesia are calling me back. But to where? I am coming from Western US, so travel is a pain - so I plan on a good 3wks of diving. Dont want to rush around much either, so for now limiting to two destinations. My thoughts so far are center around the following areas:
Raja Ampat, Sipadan, Komodo, Alor.
This trip will be somewhere between this Sept - Dec... I am pretty flexible on this.
I have ~100 dives and not a lot of high current stuff (never used a reef hook - dove ~4Knts in Cozumel.) so some places of these scare me a tad, but I am 35 and fit, and people do this every day, so I figure I am being paranoid and should not let this affect my decisions.
All of this is expensive - so for now I am not having cost as a primary concern... but as this will be a long trip cost is going to come into play.
I will (probably) be a single traveller. I have no qualms about sharing a room with a random person though, and I think most LOB's will match you up with someone so you dont pay single-penatlies... and I imagine some resorts will do so as well (or fees are low)...
So - to get to the point... where to go? And LOB or Land based? RA really intrigues me as far as the "sheer volume of fish and coral" goes. I love the little stuff, but I also love soft colorful coral and schools of fish. I would choose critter hunting over pristine fields of soft coral over possible encounters with big guys, but I love it all.
The same things that draw me to RA make me want to check out Sipadan, which from what I can tell can be done much cheaper.
A few specific questions:
1) Is there an easy way (travel wise) to do Sipadan on the same trip as RA?
2) Can anyone summarize the pluses/minus's of the various (main) Land based RA resorts?
3) Do the various RA LOB's generally dive the same areas?
I dont want to get into specific decisions on which boats/resorts to do until I figure out where to go. For RA the Land v/s LOB decision is hard as they are both spendy but some of the land resorts look DAMN nice. I would expect to do ~11 day LOB, which is a fair amount of time on a boat (only LOB experience is 1wk on Turks & Caicos Agg.)... but I dont expect to have any issues with this.
For Komodo I would def to a LOB, and then thinking of staying down in Alor for a week since it seems to be popping up on a bunch of "must do" lists.
I am certainly open to other ideas, but I want to get the best out of this trip as it is going to be a pretty hefty time/travel/money commitment.
Thanks!
J
Raja Ampat, Sipadan, Komodo, Alor.
This trip will be somewhere between this Sept - Dec... I am pretty flexible on this.
I have ~100 dives and not a lot of high current stuff (never used a reef hook - dove ~4Knts in Cozumel.) so some places of these scare me a tad, but I am 35 and fit, and people do this every day, so I figure I am being paranoid and should not let this affect my decisions.
All of this is expensive - so for now I am not having cost as a primary concern... but as this will be a long trip cost is going to come into play.
I will (probably) be a single traveller. I have no qualms about sharing a room with a random person though, and I think most LOB's will match you up with someone so you dont pay single-penatlies... and I imagine some resorts will do so as well (or fees are low)...
So - to get to the point... where to go? And LOB or Land based? RA really intrigues me as far as the "sheer volume of fish and coral" goes. I love the little stuff, but I also love soft colorful coral and schools of fish. I would choose critter hunting over pristine fields of soft coral over possible encounters with big guys, but I love it all.
The same things that draw me to RA make me want to check out Sipadan, which from what I can tell can be done much cheaper.
A few specific questions:
1) Is there an easy way (travel wise) to do Sipadan on the same trip as RA?
2) Can anyone summarize the pluses/minus's of the various (main) Land based RA resorts?
3) Do the various RA LOB's generally dive the same areas?
I dont want to get into specific decisions on which boats/resorts to do until I figure out where to go. For RA the Land v/s LOB decision is hard as they are both spendy but some of the land resorts look DAMN nice. I would expect to do ~11 day LOB, which is a fair amount of time on a boat (only LOB experience is 1wk on Turks & Caicos Agg.)... but I dont expect to have any issues with this.
For Komodo I would def to a LOB, and then thinking of staying down in Alor for a week since it seems to be popping up on a bunch of "must do" lists.
I am certainly open to other ideas, but I want to get the best out of this trip as it is going to be a pretty hefty time/travel/money commitment.
Thanks!
J