Paradise Dancer in Raja Ampat was great

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Shasta_man

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After a recent trip on the Paradise Dancer, can't recommend it enough.

I had a fantastic time. Diving was excellent, with some amazing places with VERY prolific fish life. These were places that you could watch the whole feeding cycle go on with silversides, walls just walls of them, in huge morphing schools enveloping and splitting around you, while schools of fusilers swam around and mackeral zoomed through, and mobulas swam by then swooped through the silversides. On one site, suddenly a huge school of big jacks came shooting through, making me wonder if they were tuna, zooming toward the surface, and then circling back around and right by my camera, taking my attention away from the seasnake I found. I had so many great experiences I just remembered that one while writing this. We saw the whole id book from fish of all descriptions to mantas, mobulas, eels, octopus, shrimp, nudis, etc, etc. Most dives were on rocky islands among chains of islands, diving either right, literally right next to the island perusing the deeper areas before ending up on the shallower shelf, or in channels along walls. Incredible color with soft and hard corals in great profusion. A few places were just off the scale in the lushness of the coral and fish.

The cruise director was Wendy and she knows her stuff, and she took care of everything and is a great dive guide as well with her pink tank. The dive guides were excellent and very experienced. I got to go with the incomparable Yan, someone you could trust to guide you anywhere in any currents, and immeasurable knowledge was
gained. As usual, the Indonesian crew was happy and friendly, and always smiles and "pagi!" (pronounced Pa-gee = morning!). Indonesia is a very cool place. Take the time to talk to and appreciate the crew and thank them for their hardwork. They'll repay you a thousand fold in smiles and greetings after the dives.

The boat was really beyond compare. 90% of the time, you couldn't tell you were on a boat. It's center of gravity is so low that there is very little motion. In the strongest seas we encountered, it was a mild side to side rocking, and most of the time very little. Everything about it is so much room. THe rooms were huge.
Food was great, with a mix of Western and Indonesian to choose what you like.

Weather was about 60/40 cloudy/sunny, not as good as we hoped but not raining that 60% either. Some very beautiful days, and watching the whiteout come at you is interesting too. After coming up from an amazing night dive including hunting morays, we marveled at the luminesence, then the stars, before drinking buckets of rain on the ride back to the boat, then sliding into a delicious dinner.

I flew to Jakarta, then to Sorong. I'd highly recommend this route as it minimizes using different "domestic" flights, merely being a continuing flight through Makassar rather than changing planes and risking missing your connecting domestic flight back to Bali for example, since there is high likelihood of flight delays out of Sorong. We had no problem coming in but my and an earlier flight were delayed 2 hours each on flying out of Sorong. THe earlier group left for the airport two hours before we did but were still there when we got there, then our flight was also delayed 2 hours. And come to the airport prepared for the heat because it's a big building with a metal roof with only part with fans, and sorry to say, little efficiency in it's workings. One of our group almost passed out from dehydration just in the short time waiting to check in for the flight. It's easy to do. 10 people behind the counter and only two doing anything. And I can't overemphasize the value of using a local rep to get you through. Unless you look the part and speak the language, you will be subject to
prioritized processing and you won't be a priority. And you'll witness the amazing ability of the human body to adapt to the conditions as you sit sweltering in shorts and T-shirt while looking at the locals in long pants, shirts, sweaters and even coats on in 85 degree 80% humidity weather.

So gush, gush, gush...my short note has turned into a page.

Oops, did I mention the after dive massages?! Watch out for Karim, I called him Clamps.

Trip report to follow sometime, with HD video and yes, pics too RobinT. :)
 
tehehehe......... you knew I was gonna ask.

Can't wait to see the video and pictures. I have looked at this trip often and dreamed about doing it, but the cost just seems to be way out of my range. So I guess I will just have to do it through you and your videos.
 
Thanx S.Man! We do a different boat to Raja Ampat later in December but it's good to hear any reports, never having been there. Hey Robin, it's out of our price range too but my new bumper sticker is: "Di(v)e Broke..." :eyebrow: Will await the trip report & vid! // ww
 
Thanks for the report - really interesting.

i was on Komodo Dancer on its Alor itinerary at the time you were on Paradise Dancer. As soon as i've got myself sorted from the shock that is 'returning to work', i will post a report.
 
Thanks all. I'll be interested in the Alor report as I have done Komodo on the Dancer and was wondering what Alor was like as it is again pretty reasonable cost. We had one of the dive guides on our boat that went with Gary to see the volcanos erupting and the ash falling on the boat. He was telling us about it.

Was Gede on the boat with you guys? He was an excellent guide when we went.

and there is no "recovery" there is only coping. :) People are still the same and the commute goes on.
 
watched another octopus clip last night. 2 of them together. We saw quite a few. I'm working on it, guys.
 
Sounds like they now have the experience they lacked a year ago. Not a complaint, I had a spectacular trip but they were still feeling their way around the area.

Echo the avoid domestic airlines as much as possible. In four flights within the country only one flight was on time - on time being within an hour of the scheduled departure time. The longest wait was 9 hours - this after a 26 hour international flight with multiple connections.

Look forward to the video.

Look forward to going back - trying to decide whether to go back to Paradise Dancer or another boat out of Sorong - anyone have any experience with any of the other boats?
 
Thanks for the response, Darnold. Yes, the trip went pretty well. I didn't see any major problems. We only changed sites once, and it was arriving first thing in the morning after a steam, and checking the conditions. So instead we did Boo Island. Turned out to be some of the best diving I've done. "3 windows". First dive, manta, tremendous amount of fish. Second dive, huge manta, then more mantas, a mobula then amongst a big bumphead school feeding on the coral next to me, still huge numbers of fish of all kinds, schools zooming through to feed, and incredible area of soft corals of every color. Next dive Boo Kecil was probably #1 of the trip for soft coral and sheer color. And the video camera wasn't ready to go on that dive so it's all in my head. :-0

BTW, your tagline bears mentioning though others saw a huge turtle on a night dive, I only saw turtles twice on the trip. Once very close then again above up in the current, out of reach. Trying to find it out of 681 clips. :)

I'll leave the rest of the detail for the report, but a "you're not on the list" problem almost made me miss the CGK-SOQ flight, and it was on time at 0500. Since it was Indonesia, it can be fixed as quickly as broken. Many thanks to Safari Tours in Manado. Ate my spam sandwich in-flight meal. Flight back delayed two hours but Makassar was quick both ways. I buffered two days in (transit hotel in CGK, one night hotel before the boat), and one day out (in CGK).

In researching this trip, the cost is pretty competitive, though there are some others that were lower with most I would have saved would probably be $500, but you can't tell if you're comparing apples to apples. However, the trips book up, so if you book early enough you have a lot more latitude to choose. I wonder about other places like Ambon. Not sure of the route, but I don't want to add flying further on, because that's where it starts getting really long and vulnerable to delays. Even though it was more hassle and a bit more cost ($750) to get out further, the diving was measureably better to me than even Komodo. I saw more really full-on feeding areas and larger volumes of fish in RA, than Komodo, though I'm sure there are many other good places in various places of Indo, including Komodo.

Ugh, 9 hour delay after 26 hours; surprised there was no hijack, there. I learned something new and that was not to take a 23 hour flight starting at midnight after working all day.
 
Shasta - great report. I'm in the beginning stages of research for a 2011 trip and Raja Ampat is now at the top of the list. Did you get a sense if there was a "best" time of year to be there in terms of dive conditions?
 
I couldn't say there was a best time of year to go. Weather is relatively stable throughout the year and there isn't supposed to be a pronounced rainy season. There may be animal migration times that I'm not aware of. Others with multiple trips might know of better times. It does seem to get rains generated by tropical storms/typhoons in the region and my limited experience indicates that late December and January got a lot of rain in the entire region. However after multiple trips, weather varies from spot to spot. If it's raining here, it might not be on the other side of the island.

From a best time point of view, I'm trying to avoid going during USA wintertime, because then you're increasing the likelihood of getting exposed to illness in the time leading up to the trip and during the trip travel. Don't want to lose a $6K trip over not being able to dive. Of course, I ended up going right in the middle of the swine flu situation and was unable to get a shot before I left.

There are some "trip planning" materials about Raja Ampat on the Peter Hughes website. Go to the Raja Ampat boat and look for the downloads link.

I'd strongly suggest coming in through Jakarta as it is a continuing flight through Makassar to Sorong.

To have the most choice, look at book as early as possible.
 

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