Along the northern coastline of Sulawesi Island lies a brand new hidden diving paradise, Gorontalo. It covers a mere 12,215 sq. km. with about a population estimated to be around 900,000. It was separated from North Sulawesi Province on Dec 5, 2000 and had their first election day on Nov 27, 2006. The current governor who was extremely popular was re-elected and we had the opportunity to witness the celebration parade that went on when we were there. The local people were very friendly and in many a time, attempted to chat us up but we can only smiled back due to our inadequacy in Bahasa Indonesia . The streets were clean and well-kept. Most of the houses looked new, colorfully painted a month ago just before Ramadan, an annual affair according to Rantje.
Getting there:
On the morning of Nov 25, we flew from Singapore to Jakarta via Singapore Airlines. The journey took 1 hour and 35 minutes and we arrived at 10.35 am (the local time is one hour before Singapore). We hired a taxi for Rp 45000 to get to the domestic terminal for our connecting Sriwijaya flight to Gorontalo (with a short layover at Makassar) The flight was scheduled to depart at 2.45pm but we were way too early for check-in, so we lazed on uncomfortable seats near the check-in counters, watching & being watched by the locals. As luck was definitely not on our side, our flight was furthered delayed for another 3 hours due to some technical faults just before take-off. Finally at 6pm, we boarded a replacement airplane which has seats so stiff and uncomfortable. After 2 hours to get to Makassar, a 20 minutes layover and then another 1 hour and 10 minutes, we arrived at Gorontalo a little before midnight ( the local time is the same as Singapore), completely not feeling the existence of our bums anymore. We collected our luggage and were picked up by Rantje, from Miguel’s Diving. Another 45 minutes by van ride later, we arrived at our hotel, totally exhausted and hit straight to snooze land.
Accommodation (Hotel Yulia):
The rooms were nice and clean, with air conditioning and hot shower. Breakfast was served daily but with limited variety, consisting mainly rice with fish/vegetables and bread, sometimes soup or noodles. The hotel did not serve lunch or dinner so we settled our meals usually at a fresh seafood stall opposite the hotel or sometimes at the restaurant in Quality Hotel.
Diving
There is only one dive operation on the island and the dive season is relatively short, from November to April. Securing a booking prior to arrival is advisable. Miguel’s Diving opened in Gorontalo in 2003 and is managed by Rantje Allen <info@miguelsdiving.com> who has been discovering new dive sites and species since 7 years ago. The dive operation consists of another dive guide, Yunis and 3 boatmen.
They were very helpful and accommodating. Every morning, at around 7.30am, Rantje will picked us up by van and bring us to the dock which is 5 minutes from our hotel. The 8-meter dive boat is custom made and was very comfortable and stable. Dive gears are setup prior to our arrival on board and they even provided us with a styrofoam box filled with clean water for our camera gears.
We did a total of 17 dives covering Honeycomb, Traffic Jam, Silvertip Grounds and Little Barrier Reef, . Shadowlands, Jinn Caves, Sponge Wall, Deserted Castle, , Sand Castle, Sand Pit, Sentinels, Mirabella. Most dive spots are wall dives, some overhangs and caverns. Other sites include sand bays and also multiple pinnacle dives. Dive sites were usually 25-30 minutes away from the dock. Water temperature was around 29-30 deg C with occasional thermo clines. Visibility varied from 30 meters to near zero meters when there were currents stirring up particles.
Gorontalo has some of the most pristine walls that you are likely to encounter anywhere in the world. It offers a type of marine biodiversity that’s hard to match elsewhere. The many huge sponges of different shapes and sizes, housed to many triplefins gobies and hawk fishes awed me. Enormous endemic Salvador Dali sponges (Petrosia lignosa) easily outsize the diver. Healthy growth of corals and sea fans lined the walls. There are literally thousands of species of animals that inhabit the reefs. Using his magic slate, Rantje educated us with the names of some uncommon or endemic species of fish, shrimp and crab. He also found us many shy species of gobies but it seemed impossible to get a close up photograph of these creatures. We saw a pair of Denise pygmy seahorses, many bubble coral shrimps with ring patterns on their legs, cute pyjamas cardinals, few zanzibar shrimps, orang utan crabs, numerous lion and scorpion fishes, napoleon wrasses, bumphead parrot fishes, puffer fishes, school of brightly colored fusiliers and butterfly fishes, bat fishes, moray and blue ribbon eels. Just to name a few.
The highlights of the trip were definitely the muck dives (sandy bottom) that we’ve done. There are also a few muck diving sites, which in my opinion are comparable to Lembeh Straits, in a different way. The sands here were yellowish white, unlike those black volcanic sands found in Lembeh or Seraya. We didn’t find as many weird creatures or nudibranchs but Sand Castle has so many colonies of anemones with different species of anemone shrimps and porcelain crabs keeping us busy from just 3 meters to 20 meters. There were also numerous and many different species of lion fishes out hunting. I saw one rare gurnard lionfish and a juvenile yellow lionfish. Deserted Castle has many small patches of reefs, where many cleaner shrimps with solitary giant moral eel, huge lobsters, harlequin ghost pipefish making their home amidst them. Aili think that Sand Pit far outshines any dumping grounds, even Basura (literally translated to Garbage) in Anilao holds no comparison. Filefishes and puffers tucked into the sides of rumbles, wandering seahorse, many shy-looking pipefishes trying their best to escape from invasive photographers and a huge flounder. It was almost like every time we found a new part of the reef, there were dozens of treats waiting to be discovered.
In short, it was a wonderful trip and one that we’ll look forward to repeating again in the near future despite the torturous journey.
Pix link:
http://sg.homeunix.com/jovin/Gorontalo-Nov-06
Useful link:
http://miguelsdiving.com/
Till my very next Splash with the thresher sharks...
Happy bubbles,
Jovin-
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