Liberty Dive Resort and MSY Seahorse Raja Ampat review

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Carlos Diver

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Messages
389
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Location
USA
# of dives
200 - 499
Spent two weeks in Indonesia with three night in Tulamben at Liberty Dive resort before traveling on the Seahorse the first week of December, 11 days/10 nights Raja Ampat. Long review, so I will break it up so you can skip parts you dont care about.

Getting there:
Traveling from the East coast of the U.S. this is a haul. I made the big jump from SFO through TPE to CGK on EVA Air. Excellent flights, with great flight attendants and solid catering. This airline is awesome. I then jumped to Bali on Garuda to start my vacation in Tulamben. Garuda doesnt believe in leg room, but the plane was new and they fed and watered us on the short flight from CGK to DPS.

Tulamben:
The trek from DPS Airport to Liberty takes about 2.5 hours. Their driver was waiting for me at the airport and escorted me to the van. I crashed hard in the shuttle and slept 95% of the trip. We got there about 2230 and I was shown to my room where I crashed for the night. The next morning I was able to get my first look around. Liberty is a nice little dive hotel. Three pools with big, clean rooms. Very attractive and well-kept ground. Restaurants was solid and cheap. Quick walk to other restaurants and down to the ocean. I would recommend a visit to Chops and Hops down the road. Really good food at a great price.

Diving Tulamben:
I did five shore dives, two on Liberty, two on Drop Off and one on Coral Gardens. Did the morning Liberty dive to see the Bumpheads and they were fun to look at. Had a nice school of about 20 escort us from the ship at the end of our dive. All the sites had plenty to keep you busy and were all easy dives. Shore entries can be tricky because of the loose-rock composition of the shore line, but not too bad. I loved the black sand bottoms.

Getting to Sorong:
The trek back to DPS wasnt as fun since I was awake. That is some... interesting driving and road conditions. Also, while the views of the country side are very nice, some of the views can make you very appreciative of the luxuries we have in life. DPS airport is sweltering. Connected through Makassar and stayed for a few hours at the Ibis Budget. Not the best, but for $28 its better than lounging in the airport for 8 hours. I did the Gaurda bid upgrade for the hop from DPS to UPG, and had business to myself. They were both fine for short-hop flights.

Sorong:
Finally, Sorong. When I arrived, Seahorse had reps waiting for me at the airport. They have a list of guest arriving by times and as soon as the other Seahorse guest (same flight) appeared they put us in a cab and off went. We were transported to the boat by one of the large and spacious aluminum dive tenders.

The Seahorse:
This boat has a bit of a dark cloud over it on this board from a previous misadventure. However, that was several years ago and under a different company. The new company Wallacea Cruises runs a great operation and put a lot of time and money into this boat. The cruise director and part owner Akim, even took the time to show me the photos of the overhaul. He is very proud of the work they have put in and the results from that hard work. They stripped this boat down to the hull and completely renovated it. She looks fresh and they work very hard to keep it that way.

The rooms are spacious for a liveaboard and cleaned twice daily. Linens are changed every three days or on request and towels are changed every few days as well. I know they actually change the towels because the colors change just slightly and they are numbered. She can be a noisy girl, most wooden boats are, and nothing earplugs couldnt fix. I am also a very light sleeper, so that plays into it. I like it cold when I sleep and the AC runs COLD.
They are safety conscious. All charging is to be done in the dedicated camera room and they were very thorough with the safety briefing and procedures before we left port.
The food is hot and plentiful. I would rate it as good to very good. A few meals were excellent including the beach BBQ. Considering you are serving 16 divers at a time from six different countries, it can be very tough to get meals right, and they do it well.

The crew is very helpful and always smiling. I think that says something when your employees actually smile. They work hard, but you can tell they arent run into the ground like some operations do with their boat crews. They also have dedicated sleeping quarters and crew areas.
We also made all the usual shore excursions, the views of Heart Lagoon and Wayag and the small villages across the islands. Very nice and much needed on an 11-day cruise.

The guest for this trip was a combo of Europeans, Australians, Americans and Chinese. I was little disappointed my western counterparts didnt make more of an attempt to socialize with the Chinese guest. Its your vacation, you can do what you want. (Soap Box time) but I guess saying how worldly and loving of diversity you are is far easier than actually making friends with someone different than you. Their loss though, since Bao and Wong had the best tea on boat :).

THE DIVING:
The most important part. The diving.
With the length of the cruise we were able to hit all the hot spots. South to Misool and north to Kawe and back down through the Dampier Straight. 31 dives were offered. I did all 31 :).

Divers are broken into four groups, with four divers per guide. All diving is done from the fast, aluminum tenders. The crew lugs your gear from the spacious dive deck to the tenders and back again at the end of the dives. You rotate guides every other day. I wasnt really a fan of this since I liked my first guide the best.

All of the guides are safety minded and very good at finding the macro life. However, by dive 27, you dont need to call me over from what I'm looking at to point out a nudibranch. Also, we missed a few drops. One of the guides seemed very picky on where he wanted dropped, often having the pilot move the tender after he picked where he wanted us to be, and he wasn't exactly correct in his calculations. That being said, he was a good guide once underwater.

Overall, the guides are very good, and keep a close eye on you under water. They are also very personable and friendly top side.
As for sites, some of my favorites were Shadow Reef (Magic Mountain, which we got to hit twice), Four Kings, Eagle Rock and Mayhem.

The colors, the fish, the schools, the diversity. Everything that I read Raja Ampat would be, it was and more. Some of the sites, I was just blown away. It was amazing diving.
It would take hours to list everything we saw, but some of the highlights included Black-Tip, White-Tip, Carpet and Wobblegong sharks, octopuses, mantis shrimp, seahorses, Bumphead parrotfish, angelfish and anemonefish (two of my favorites), crocodile fish, leaf scorpionfish, school after schools of jacks, cudas, trevally, turtles, large crabs and giant clams.

Also, how can you leave out the Oceanic Mantas! Magic Mountain was awesome. I was probably four to five feet away from a beauty of a manta. I did what I was told. Just hover and dont move, and it just kept getting closer and closer to me. Amazing to see one so close that I could actually see it moving its eye to watch me!

Another treat, on the next to last day, was something I was really hoping to find. A blue-ringed octo! As we were preparing to ascend, safety stop completed, a guide flashed us over. We hovered above a shell on the sand bottom at about 10 feet when suddenly it popped out of the shell and walked across the seafloor. It was as interested in us as we were of it (well, maybe not that excited about us) and gave us a nice show for about five minutes. The guide was even really good at waving people off once he felt the octo was over us. As we moved away, one diver choose not to listen and he was quick to cut them off and point back to the dingy. Such a cool animal to see.



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Part 2

A few of the dives had some strong current, we had to hook in at Blue Magic, but most were easy to moderately challenging. We had some novice divers on the boat and none of them had any real challenges during the cruise.
At the end of every dive was a hot or cold drink waiting for you at the dive deck, as well as a fresh, dry towel. Two showers on the dive deck and plenty of rinse tanks help keep you and your gear clean.
They really do a great job making sure you have a great all-around dive experience.

The return:
The worst part of any trip, it ending. The crew rinses and hangs all your gear after the final dive as we make our way back to Sorong. On of the last day, you are welcome to stay on the boat until noon (even later if need be). This is very nice as much charters boot you around 0800. Most of us had afternoon flights, so this made it even nice to have some relax and closing time with our new friends and dive buddies and not be stranded in Sorong.

I was a little paranoid about flight delays (which all flights departed on time) so I took the only true direct flight I could find,a Batik Air flight back to CGK. It was fine, no issues and no delays taking off or landing.

After dragging my bags across CGK airport, I hopped on my JAL flight home to the US to Chicago via NRT. Good flight, friendly and professional attendants and the best steak Ive ever had in the air.

As we descended into Chicago the roofs were covered in snow and I knew I was back to the northern U.S. Turned out my only issue was the incredibly slow and overcrowded entry lines at ORD airport, (why they dont have dedicated lines for US citizens at US ports of entry is for another discussion) and I missed my domestic connection. American was on it and got me a new flight home that actually was direct and got me back home about 30 minutes earlier.

Bottom line:
Wow, Just wow. This was an incredible trip. The flights (even though long and a pain to transfer airports) the Seahorse, Liberty and Raja Ampat were all incredible. I would recommend the Seahorse and this operation to anyone, newbie to advanced, first international trip to seasoned jet setter. You will be well taken care of on the Seahorse and you will be blown away by Raja Ampat!

Side note: After the first day or two I noticed a decline in the hot water. It didnt bother me because I dont take hot showers in the tropics anyway, but it wasnt hot enough for me to attempt a good shave. I just assumed someone complained about how hot the water was on day 1 or 2 and they turned it down. Turns out it was a cord that became unplugged and they didnt check until another diver said something. Point being, the cruise director doesnt know what he doesnt know. If you have something, no matter how trivial, let him know. He cant fix an issue he doesnt know is one.

I have a few pics from my generic Go Pro. No light or red-filter (it arrived at my house as I was pulling up to the airport) so dont expect too much haha.
 
A few more.
 

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Thanks for taking the time to share a report! It was very informative and enjoyable to read.
 
Great reading, thanks so much!

There was A Chinese guest on one of my trips with the Seahorse. He was one of the most intetesting people aboard. A very good diver, an accomplished photographer with good English. I believe he was also fluent in Danish. Cool guy.
 
Thanks for nice and detail report.
Glad to hear that everything worked as expected and you enjoyed the trip.
I notice you dive drop-off twice while many people in this forum incl. myself does not really favour this location and prefer the muck diving sites around tulamben.
 
Getting there:
Traveling from the East coast of the U.S. this is a haul. I made the big jump from SFO through TPE to CGK on EVA Air. Excellent flights, with great flight attendants and solid catering. This airline is awesome. I then jumped to Bali on Garuda to start my vacation in Tulamben. Garuda doesnt believe in leg room, but the plane was new and they fed and watered us on the short flight from CGK to DPS.

How many days did it take you to get there, to get back, and what was your longest continuous flight?

How many dives total?

If you take into account airfare, the live-aboard bill with any port fees and such, customary tips, hotel stays if needed to arrive a day or so early...care to give us a ball park estimate for total trip cost?

While the quality of diving can be hard to put into hard, cold numbers, travel times, dive number, trip duration and cost are amenable to it. Some of us (me, anyway) may have an Indonesian trip on our hope-to-be-blessed-with bucket list (taking well over a week off can be hard to do...maybe more a celebrate-retirement kind of trip?), but the price tag is necessary to compare it to some other options.

Enjoyed your report. Should I be blessed to go, I imagine it'll be a hard call to make between Raja Ampat and Komodo. Probably no time real soon.

Richard.
 
I share your experience at Liberty Dive. A little older place, but huge rooms and beautiful ground, excellent guides - free nitrox even. Food there was so-so...
 
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