Land Based Diving In Komodo, Options?

[adventureswithwill]

Hi guys,

I know this is pretty last minute but me and my girlfriend are planning to head to Komodo soon. It's her birthday so I'd like to pay for some diving for the two of us. I'd love to do a liveaboard as I hear the diving in the south is very nice, but it's simply way to expensive for us at the moment.

Can anybody suggest some good land based operators? We'll be staying near the port in LBJ as that is where the budget places are, but would consider staying elsewhere if the price is right.

Ideally we'd also like to see the Komodo's on Rinca as my girlfriend has done some research on Komodo's for the zoo she works at. But this could easily be done seperately if people think that is best.

Looking to dive 2-3 days depending on the prices. Thanks in advance guys.

P.S just got back from Nusa Penida and really enjoyed the diving there, didn't see any Mola Mola unfortunately but a lot of other sea life and the coral seemed to be in good shape!

 

[DiveExploreIndonesia]

Hi adventureswithwill!
An option could be Bajo Dive Club, I've never been with them personally but they have a good reputation and you can do a 3 day/6 dives package for 2.400.000 IRP per person.
There are quite a few new operators that might work as well, I know of Blue Marlin Dive who seems to be getting good reviews...
Its not much but I hope it helps....
Enjoy

 

[adventureswithwill]

Thanks for the information, Dive Explore Indonesia. I thought I should probably update this thread, because I hate when people ask questions but never contribute any information after their diving.

In the end we settled on Divine Diving. I had thought this would be a more expensive option, but when we arrived in Labuan Bajo all the prices were pretty much uniform across all the dive operators. My suggestion would be to just book with your operator when you arrive, it's in peak season now and we had no problem finding any space (probably much different for LOBs).

In the end we paid 2.8mill for 7 dives and trekking on rinca + park fees. Considering trips to rinca usually cost about 750k we basically paid 2mill for 7 dives.

We were very happy with Divine Diving. Good equipment, really good crew (always helping getting the tanks out of the slots, helping with fins, getting drinks) and great dive guides. It's also nice to see that they care about taking care of Komodo National Park (was good to see that they did dive site clean ups and beach clean ups on their facebook page for example).

The boat was also really nice, which is important considering your spending the whole day on there (we usually left at about 7.15AM and returned anywhere from 5-7PM). Compared to the other shore based boats we saw we thought ours was the best (Dive Komodo also had a really nice boat and I'd feel comfortable recommending them based on the research I did. They also seemed to get doughnuts in the morning which Divine should take note of haha).

Dives are 60 minutes or 50 bar and they do a good job of separating those with experience. I think we hit 60 minutes or more on all of our dives apart from maybe one drift dive where I did 58 minutes and my girlfriend did 64 (DMT went up with me while the guide stayed with girlfriend). Even those with not much experience were getting good bottom time due to the generous fills they were doing.

We did central all three times, would've liked to do the north but due to the full and close moon the currents were a bit too strong. We mentioned it was my girlfriends birthday and one of the dive guides brought on a guitar to serenade her which she loved. They also took us to a site that had a good possibility of seeing Mantas that day as she mentioned she loved them. We ended up seeing 3-5 different Mantas that dive and had a bottom time of 68 minutes (they are happy to extend well past 60 if you're seeing something big/rare like Mantas).

Basically just sat on a sandy bottom whilst three Manta's did an infinity figure of 8 loop above us. One of my favorite dives and needless to say the girlfriend was very happy on her birthday.

TLR. Go with Divine diving, good equipment, good crew, good dive guides, good boat, well priced and excellent diving. Will try to come back at some stage and do a LOB with Divine. Thanks again to everybody who made the stay fantastic. I'll try to write up a proper trip report with pictures and short video montage of the central diving we did.

Kind of pissed off we wasted money doing a LOB in GBR when we could have spent it better here, but still very happy with the diving so far in Indonesia (Nusa Penida was also awesome).