The fabulous Tawali Resort in Papua New Guinea was our starting point for one of the great liveaboard trips ever -- aboard the Spirit of Niugini (
Spirit of Niugini Papua New Guinea).
Tawali, as other posters have reported, is one of the most exotic and comfortable dive resorts in the world. I absolutely love the fact that you have to take such a fascinating trip just to get there -- by smallish plane out of Port Moresby to Alotau, then a multi-passenger vehicle (provided by Tawali) on a drive with several stream crossings through the rainforest for an hour or so, and finally a 20-minute boat ride to the resort -- all of which tells you that you have arrived at a location that is distant, exotic, and entirely removed from the lives of all the friends you left back home. Just being there is a kick. And having such spacious rooms perched on a rainforest hillside overlooking a gorgeous bay, along with a terrific and attentive staff tells you in a glance that it's worth whatever sacrifices you made to get here. And that's even before you dive! At least, after two trips to Tawali, that's my experience.
But you give up nothing when you depart Tawali aboard the Spirit of Niguini. Roomy and comfortable, it provides something that I always look for in a liveaboard: a variety of "places" that you can go to get together with your fellow divers, review your photographs, work on your gear, or just read or relax -- either in the tropical sun or in expansive shaded areas or in the air conditioned interior. Just being in my cabin was great, too, with a roomy private bathroom and windows that spanned the entire cabin wall.
We were aboard for a 12-day trip from Tawali up and around New Britain (with a fascinating stop to do some driving and hiking through the highly volcanic Rabaul) to Kimbe Bay. For my money, diving in Papua New Guinea is the best in the world with refreshingly healthy, beautiful reefs with fantastic hard and soft corals in sizes that you wouldn't believe, a startling array of species, huge schools of fish and dolphins, and some occasional big animals to spice up your dives. I wore a 3ml wetsuit most of the time and occasionally just a dive skin. Very comfortable water. And depending on weather and proximity to shore, you can get some of the clearest water you've ever seen.
Our trip was made up of experienced divers and the Spirit of Niugini crew thankfully recognized that. We were given advice about our diving but never any strict rules. You are in charge of yourself, which I find wonderfully refreshing. Not to say that I make a practice of flaunting scuba safety rules but after more than 40 years of diving I do like to be on my own once in a while. I did that on this trip with a bounce dive down to about 135 feet just to see what I could see. After a few minutes I moved back into shallower water and noticed one of the crew divers had been keeping an eye on me, just to make sure I was safe. When I got near he gave me the "OK?" signal but he never tried to tell me what to do. Thanks, mate!
I could go on and on about the sites we dived and the critters we saw but if you need any of that kind of encouragement to go to Papua New Guinea you haven't been paying attention. Sorry if that's too blunt but PNG is simply top tier diving. I've done three trips to PNG in the past few years and I will eagerly go back to dive again from Tawali and the Spirit of Niugini. The boat is comfortable and fast. The food is top-notch; as good as I have ever had aboard a dive boat anywhere -- from the Red Sea to the Caribbean to Galapagos. The crew is a dedicated group of extremely hard-working locals. They are great -- and careful -- about helping with gear and such. There was a special job for them to handle on our trip when a volcano erupted about four miles from our mooring in Rabaul harbor. What an exciting event that was! It took the crew two days of hard work to clean off all the volcanic ash that fell onto Spirit but they never slacked off on their regular responsibilities.
Bottom line: For world-class diving you can't do better than Papua New Guinea. And in Papua New Guinea you can't do better than Tawali and the Spirit of Niugini.
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