dgrauman
Registered
We just got back from 10 days at Sorido. Here are my impressions.
The resort itself is lovely, and costly. It is "Sleep, eat, Dive"; not many other attractions.
Unless you live in Asia or Australia, the travel is brutal.
The dive operation is beautifully set up. I would sign off the Nitrox log, put on the wetsuit, and after a briefing get on board where everything was in place and ready to go. The crew helped with all the gear, and all we had to do was roll off the boat. Getting on was similar; hand the crew the weights, then the BC, then the fins and climb up. No back straining climb carrying 50 lbs of gear. There were generally 3 divers per guide, no more than 6 on a boat total. That part was amazing; totally personalized service. The guides and staff were spectacularly helpful.
There are two "special" dives; The Passage, and Manta Sandy that are generally done, all others are within a 10 Km radius. There are many sites within this radius, but the geography and dive at each is very similar. The drill was drop to 20 meters, linger a bit, ascend to 10-15 meters, surface within one hour. I did not feel there was a great deal of difference between the sites within this zone; a turtle here, a few more Wobegone sharks there, but in general things got a little monotonous. Beautiful, yes; lots of marine life, yes; great corals, yes. But one site started to look a lot like the next.
This was our first experience with strong currents. We were there at the slack of the moon, but even so it was impressive on several dives, as well as often highly localized . I am not sure what qualifies as "strong" to a really experienced diver, but there were a couple instances that there was no possible way I could hold my ground against the current, and if the guide was 5 meters away I was hugging the bottom and burning up my air at a really frantic rate just trying not to disappear into the blue while he and others were in an area of almost total calm. At one point my dive buddy and I swam around a small coral outcrop less than 3 meters from our guide, who was looking away from us at that moment, and we were suddenly blown back so quickly that he was lost to sight before he noticed we were gone. We had to surface on our own, a couple hundred meters away from the others in the group.
In summary, I think if you can afford it, have a high tolerance for jet lag, and want to be treated like royalty you would enjoy this trip a lot. If you are a dedicated photographer then there will be enough biodiversity to keep you well occupied and interested. For my part, however, as a general "underwater tourist" I have been on other trips where there was a greater diversity of types of dives, and I found that preferable.
The resort itself is lovely, and costly. It is "Sleep, eat, Dive"; not many other attractions.
Unless you live in Asia or Australia, the travel is brutal.
The dive operation is beautifully set up. I would sign off the Nitrox log, put on the wetsuit, and after a briefing get on board where everything was in place and ready to go. The crew helped with all the gear, and all we had to do was roll off the boat. Getting on was similar; hand the crew the weights, then the BC, then the fins and climb up. No back straining climb carrying 50 lbs of gear. There were generally 3 divers per guide, no more than 6 on a boat total. That part was amazing; totally personalized service. The guides and staff were spectacularly helpful.
There are two "special" dives; The Passage, and Manta Sandy that are generally done, all others are within a 10 Km radius. There are many sites within this radius, but the geography and dive at each is very similar. The drill was drop to 20 meters, linger a bit, ascend to 10-15 meters, surface within one hour. I did not feel there was a great deal of difference between the sites within this zone; a turtle here, a few more Wobegone sharks there, but in general things got a little monotonous. Beautiful, yes; lots of marine life, yes; great corals, yes. But one site started to look a lot like the next.
This was our first experience with strong currents. We were there at the slack of the moon, but even so it was impressive on several dives, as well as often highly localized . I am not sure what qualifies as "strong" to a really experienced diver, but there were a couple instances that there was no possible way I could hold my ground against the current, and if the guide was 5 meters away I was hugging the bottom and burning up my air at a really frantic rate just trying not to disappear into the blue while he and others were in an area of almost total calm. At one point my dive buddy and I swam around a small coral outcrop less than 3 meters from our guide, who was looking away from us at that moment, and we were suddenly blown back so quickly that he was lost to sight before he noticed we were gone. We had to surface on our own, a couple hundred meters away from the others in the group.
In summary, I think if you can afford it, have a high tolerance for jet lag, and want to be treated like royalty you would enjoy this trip a lot. If you are a dedicated photographer then there will be enough biodiversity to keep you well occupied and interested. For my part, however, as a general "underwater tourist" I have been on other trips where there was a greater diversity of types of dives, and I found that preferable.
