Trip report: Bunaken and Lembeh

[TSandM]

Peter and I just got back from ten marvellous, amazing days of Indonesian diving. (Some of Peter's marvellous pictures -- and one of mine! -- are posted on our website.) The short version is that I would recommend the resorts we stayed at and the dive operator we went with without reservation. The long version:

The resorts

We started at Tasik Ria, on the Bunaken side of Sulawesi. The resort is very pretty and has TWO swimming pools, neither of which appeared to be used by anyone except locals. The rooms were large and air conditioned, which was actually nice (although I generally loathe air conditioning) because it was hot. Filtered water is provided in the rooms, and there's a tea/coffee service in the room as well. Meals were taken in a large, airy dining room. The food was okay. There is also a pool bar which serves a limited menu (and pretty good pizza), and a restaurant/bar at the end of the jetty, which was a lovely place to sit and watch the sun set. The resort is a good half hour's drive from the city, and there is nothing within walking distance, but it didn't matter to any of us because we were doing three or four dives a day, and all anybody wanted to do at night was play a few hands of poker or look at the day's photographs.

The second half of the trip was spent at Kungkungen Bay Resort, where we were pampered out of our minds. This place is also very beautiful, with lovely landscaping. The rooms are individual houses made of polished wood (we were told the trees that had to be cut to build the resort were used for some of this) with beautiful stone floors in the bathroom, and showers built of the same stone (again, this came from the blasting to build the road into the resort). Some rooms were air conditioned (ours was), but we could have done without it, as it was cooler on the Lembeh side and there was almost always a breeze. Meals were taken in the main dining room, which is built out over the water. The kitchen is open 24/7, and all food, coffee and tea (iced or hot) was included in the package. The food was VERY good, and I miss the spicy fried noodles for breakfast . . .

In addition to the basic housing and food, we were treated to hot drinks and cookies as we came back from every dive, and after the last dive of the afternoon, the waitstaff took our dinner orders as we got out of our wetsuits. For night dives, and when it rained, they had hot chocolate on the boats for us, even though the rides were very short.

This resort is only about five or ten minutes out of town, and I know a couple of our group went walking into the village. Most of us were content to sit on our butts and enjoy the view, those who weren't night diving, anyway. Several tours are available from the resort, including a village tour, a shopping trip to Manado (two hours away), and a drive into the hills to a nature preserve where we saw Macaque monkeys and the Spectrum Tarsier, one of world's smallest (and CUTEST) primates.

The staff at the resort was shy but very, very nice and ready to help us with absolutely anything. KBR also had internet access -- They provided one computer in the lounge, but there was a WiFi network you could sign up for which was much cheaper, although signal strength in the far rooms was pretty low. (Tasik Ria also ostensibly provided a computer, but it always seemed to be out of order when anyone wanted to use it.)

Overall, both places were very nice, but KBR is special and I sincerely hope I have an opportunity to go back there at some point.

 

[TSandM]

The diving

The first half of the trip was diving with Eco Divers in the Bunaken National Park. The boats are large and take about 16 divers, each with his own station which holds two tanks. A large milk crate under the bench holds the rest of the gear, and above the station is a niche for your towel (we got an individual one each day). Everything was labelled with our names, and the staff did a good job of making sure you got your stuff, even when people did night dives on different boats. There were showers on the back of the boat (cold water) and two rinse tanks for cameras, as well as shelves for the cameras between dives. In the bow was a dry room where coffee, tea and soft drinks were available, and where lunch (wonderful lunch!) was served. Here there were electrical outlets to charge batteries as well. Above, there was a sun deck, where the hard-core could bake between dives. I found this a useful place to dry my towel

The boat ride to the National Park was about an hour or more (I didn't time it), and between the dives was generally less than a half hour, although we did 1 1/2 hour surface interval times. We generally had six divers to a guide. The guides were generally good, although some were better than others. The dive profiles were beautiful -- perfect Uncle Pug check marks. We usually spent at least a third of the dive above thirty feet, and this was often some of the most enjoyable time. The dives were around 60 minutes, although we occasionally ran a little over. Visibility was quite good, I think always in excess of fifty feet. Current varied from minimal to ripping, and you had to watch for up and down currents.

A couple of the afternoon dives, and all of the night dives, were done off the mainland or on the "house reef". This was muck diving, much more like what we did later in the Lembeh Strait.

When we transferred from Tasik Ria to KBR, all of our gear was packed and taken over for us. To my knowledge, there were no hitches in that process, and it was awfully nice not to have to transport damp dive gear ourselves.

Eco Divers also runs the dive op at KBR, but it is different. Here, the boats are much smaller, holding eight divers. The ride to the dive sites is never longer than 15 minutes, and the ratio is four divers to a guide (or less). There are two huts on shore where wetsuits are hung and where racks are provided for booties. You dress before boarding, and gear up at the site. There is a white board with a list of the boats, the dive sites, and the divers, so you always know where you are going and with whom. As I said, you are met after the dives with hot drinks and cookies, and you got a clean, DRY towel after EVERY dive.

There is a separate BUILDING for cameras, with shelving and towels and a multitude of charging stations, including some 110 with American outlets.

Our package included three boat dives a day, and there was an optional night dive available every day, subject only to getting at least two divers (never a problem with our group!). In addition, unlimited diving is permitted on the house reef between 8 and 5. Many of us skipped the third boat dive on night dive days, and did a short house reef dive instead. It was not a second-rate option -- the house reef was often full of equally weird and wonderful things!

KBR has Nitrox at a modest additional charge, and they were very efficient about making sure we analyzed our next tanks and logged the mixes. Ostensibly, it's 32%, although most of the time it was a little richer than that (33.5), but it wasn't a problem, as none of the diving there is deep.

The profiles here were also excellent. We often dropped into 20 feet or so of water, swam down to look for specific creatures, and then swam up and spent a good 15 or twenty minutes in the shallows. Some of the dives were drifts with a live boat pickup, and some were anchored boat dives.

The diving in Lembeh is "muck diving". There isn't much coral, but rather a black sand or silt bottom, studded with the occasional rock, anemone, tire or bottle. One should not dismiss the trash, though, as it is often the habitat of the weird and wonderful. The visibility here was much more like home, varying from maybe 30 feet at best to close to ten at the worst site. I was glad I had my Salvo light.

We had some absolutely wonderful dive guides at Lembeh -- One was named Ben, and he was the most cheerful, enthusiastic person you could ask for. He got so excited when he found really cool stuff, he would run up to the hut after the dive and grab the ID book to show you what you had seen. The dive staff did the dive briefings, and drew amazingly accurate maps of the sites. They often knew precisely where a given creature was to be found.

 

[TSandM]

Bunaken was all about color -- corals, hard and soft, sponges, bryozoans, gorgonians, spectacular crinoids, and in the shallows, a myriad of colorful reef fish. Many of the most fascinating creatures were tiny, and I had to use my bifocals to see some of them. It was amazing what the guides could spot. In the blue water, we saw schools of tuna and jacks, an occasional white-tipped reef shark, and a few turtles, as well as ubiquitous pyramid butterflyfish. We had some drift dives where we hurtled over the shallow reef with hardly time to admire what we were seeing, and we had one dive on a wall where we switched directions a half dozen times, because the current changed repeatedly as we worked our way up. These were all live boat pickups, and once or twice we surfaced quite a ways from the boat, and it took a little time to get their attention -- my SMB was useful. (They provide them for anyone who hasn't got one of their own.)

Lembeh was much more a treasure hunt. We would swim slowly over the rather monotone bottom, and the guides would suddenly pounce and signal excitedly that they had found yet another rarity. Here, we saw octopus (although we didn't see a mimic or a blue ring), squid, cuttlefish, devilfish, scorpionfish, waspfish, various sorts of frogfish, ghost pipefish, various nudibranchs, and two rhinopias. We saw multiple species of shrimp, several kinds of eels, and large and small crabs. There were no dull dives! I do want to say that good buoyancy control and a mastery of non-silting kicks are major assets for Lembeh diving. The bottom kicks up easily, and there isn't enough current to clear the silt very fast, so the visibility declines very quickly if divers aren't careful.

A highlight of the Lembeh part of the trip was the Mandarin Fish dive. These spectacular little fish become active at dusk, and a whole dive is devoted to watching them. You swim to where they are found, and station yourself and wait, peering into the antler coral and watching for movement. Soon, you begin to see small, dark shapes flittering about, and with careful use of your light, you can see the wonderful colors of these fish. If you're lucky, they'll do a mating swim up into the water column. We got to see this, but it happens so quickly it's difficult to photograph. I'm really amazed at the pictures Peter was able to get of these small, elusive critters.

Overall, I have to say that I'm somewhat sorry that this was my first big diving vacation trip, because I have a hard time imagining that anything is ever going to live up to the combination of wonderful lodging, pampering, and spectacular diving we enjoyed over the last two weeks.

 

[annasea]

Lovely pics, Lynne! Especially the nudibranchs!

 

[DoubleDip]

Lynne, that is simply a "smack on" dive report; Thanks!

 

[ianr33]

Thanks for the report. I hope I get to make it there one day.

Does anybody know why such bizarre creatures have evolved in these waters and not in,say,the Caribbean?

 

[Tassie_Rohan]

Wow Lynne - thats a fantastic report: thanks for posting it. I was at both resorts last month and couldn't agree more. KBR rocks - its one of the few resorts I've been to where I was making plans to return before I left (its amazing how persuasive little touches like donuts/cookies/hot chocolate and towels after dives can be).

That was the type of detailed report I wanted to write - except that I'm a lazy slack@ss when it comes to such things.

Cheers,
Rohan.

 

[Cacia]

nice report and great pics. Always interested in what you two are doing!

Rohan seems to get around too.

Mandarin are pretty special!

 

[Jason Ooi]

Nice report.....Thanks you for sharing

 

[Tassie_Rohan]

Rohan seems to get around too.

Thats what they say but I deny everything! You’ve been speaking to my ex?