Palau without liveabroad?

[Yunes]

Hello,
My wife and me are diving since two years. We started on ko tao, and this August we had a fantastic journey to the phillipines. We now have 31 dives and the AOWD since 2017.

We are now thinking of going to Palau in August 2019. Our budget is not that big and i cannot find prices for diving palau without liveabroads.

Is it an option to travel there without a liveabroad?
And are we already ready for Palau?

Thanks for your answers,

Yunes

 

[runsongas]

most of the dive ops are near malakal harbor to be closer to the dive sites. sam's tours, fish n fins, and neco marine are the larger operations.

Sam's Tours Dive Center Palau

Fish'n Fins - Palau's Premium 5 Star IDC & Diving Center

Neco Marine

you can either stay at a hotel or a resort nearby. if your budget is 200 usd a night or so, i would stretch it to the palau royal. west plaza malakal is around 100 a night if you need to stay near sams or neco. the DW hotel near fish and fins is the budget option. the only thing cheap on the island is beer at the mini mart.

you should be comfortable with diving in current and in blue water if you want to do blue corner or peleliu.

 

[Centrals]

Most of the sites are miles away. A trip to Peleliu on speed boat is NOT to be taken lightly!!
Liveaboard is expensive but it has distinct advantages over land based option.
Sam's is very good but the daily bumpy ride to the sites is pretty uncomfortable.
I had done both and can only recommend liveaboard.

 

[drbill]

I thoroughly enjoyed diving with Palau Dive Adventures when I was there. Small, valet style operation with a great crew. With all the beautiful scenery, I enjoyed the boat trips out to the dive sites and they even go places the liveaboards don't.

 

[Scared Silly]

We actually had a return trip in mind and planned to stay on Peleliu with these folks who we have met and visited: Diving / Dolphin Bay Resort & Peleliu Divers in Palau.

 

[dirtfarmer]

If you can afford a LOB go with that, if not there plenty of land based dive ops. Sam's is a huge shop probably the cheapest, but I didn't like getting lost in crowd, shuffled from dm to dm.

For land based op I'd go with @drbill recommendation of PDA. Smaller shop more personal service.

For accommodations I stayed at West Plaza Malakar it was a nice boring hotel but affordable and it has a few restaurants within walking distance.

 

[darook]

You can absolutely do it from land. We did it with Fish'n Fins. They were fine. We then did it again live aboard off of an Aggressor. Much preferred but would do it land based if we were going with friends who wanted to do land based. Having a whole day to do may sites around Peleliu is worthwhile. There are several good sites there beyond Peleliu Express, in fact, I enjoyed all of the others more. There are frequent offers that has the Aggressor boats at about $2K for the week. When you factor in that it includes very good food, 4-5 dives a day and spending all of your time out at the beautiful sites it is a pretty good value. Spend a couple of nights in town and go drive around the big island. It is lovely.

 

[Kensei]

As others have said, there is no shortage of great dive ops in Palau. IMHO, Neco probably has the best and most comfortable dive boats. I used to live in Japan and going to Palau was only a 4 hour direct flight from Tokyo... so we'd go often. While diving with Sam's once, he borrowed a boat from Neco. It was like being upgraded from coach to business class. More room, smoother ride, etc.

 

[Shasta_man]

There are pros and cons to land and liveaboard. With land you ride out to the sites daily which is usually an hour which can be good or bad depending on the health of your back and the weather. You drive through some beautiful places as Dr Bill said and might have more opportunities for exploring around the small islands. Then you stay in a hotel with hotel people instead of all divers and you likely pay for food individually. ON the liveaboard, you stay on the boat the whole time, usually try to not gain weight from the constant food, and the boat anchors in the Channel and every dive site is literally less than 10 mins out and back from the ship. Picture a beautiful classic light blue sea with islands 360 degrees around. You could have opportunities for going to the small islands too. The ship will take a day to go out to Peleliu and dive there and give opportunity for land tour which I highly recommend for historical value and real artifacts from WWII. You would get to sites first and can do night dives again just a few minutes away.

 

[darook]

Getting to the sites first cannot be overstated. By 10am there will be a dozen boats circling around for their shot at Blue Corner. BC is a great dive but I prefer Siaes Corner for the record.