opisthobranch
Contributor
My friend Sami and I are back from Milne Bay, PNG where we spent 10 days at the Tawali resort. My week was courtesy of the NCUPS Beach Dive Photo Competition in Monterey last year. Of course actually getting there probably cost me more than the value of the week at the resort, depending on the final value we place on Sami's business class upgrades which certainly did make the extensive air itinerary more bearable.
Tawali is a nice place and seriously in the middle of nowhere. You start by flying 11,737 miles to an airport consisting of a one room building at the end of a runway.
http://tinyurl.com/2z6vbg
Then you drive down an ever more rustic dirt road through the jungle while dodging pigs and chickens until you reach the end and a rickety dock. From there it's about a 25 minute skiff ride to the resort. Of course despite the remoteness the resort somehow manages to have good internet connectivity and free WiFi in the dining area. Progress I guess. Not sure if it's a good thing.
The resort itself is very nice and cleverly hidden in the jungle so that it's nearly invisible from the water. Rooms were large and comfortable and the food was, if not memorable, certainly acceptable. One exception being the Papaya which was incredibly good and almost worth a trip there by itself. Diving facilities were OK, though literally every boat we saw while in Tawali had some kind of mechanical issue. Didn't affect the diving much though. Also not sure why they think steel tanks are a good idea in the tropics. OTOH they did have convertible DIN valves and filled Nitrox. Oh - and if you're coming from the states bring power converters as they only had 110v in the library area.
Anyway the diving was very, very nice indeed. Not much in the way of big animals but the reef is very healthy (only one or two sites seemed much impacted by coral bleaching) and the muck diving was incredible. Lots of critters, though neither Sami nor I could find anything ourselves without the very expert help of our dive guides.
And for those wondering - no we weren't hit by the Tsunami. We figure the quake happened right about as we were back rolling for our first dive that day. When we came up the skiff driver told us what had happened and they pulled us out of the water until the warnings passed. In fact this is how we discovered the internet connectivity which we had previously assumed was non-existent. Reckoned people back home should hear about it from us rather than the evening news.
So enough talk. We know what you really want are pictures and here they are:
http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/album112
Clinton
Tawali is a nice place and seriously in the middle of nowhere. You start by flying 11,737 miles to an airport consisting of a one room building at the end of a runway.
http://tinyurl.com/2z6vbg
Then you drive down an ever more rustic dirt road through the jungle while dodging pigs and chickens until you reach the end and a rickety dock. From there it's about a 25 minute skiff ride to the resort. Of course despite the remoteness the resort somehow manages to have good internet connectivity and free WiFi in the dining area. Progress I guess. Not sure if it's a good thing.
The resort itself is very nice and cleverly hidden in the jungle so that it's nearly invisible from the water. Rooms were large and comfortable and the food was, if not memorable, certainly acceptable. One exception being the Papaya which was incredibly good and almost worth a trip there by itself. Diving facilities were OK, though literally every boat we saw while in Tawali had some kind of mechanical issue. Didn't affect the diving much though. Also not sure why they think steel tanks are a good idea in the tropics. OTOH they did have convertible DIN valves and filled Nitrox. Oh - and if you're coming from the states bring power converters as they only had 110v in the library area.
Anyway the diving was very, very nice indeed. Not much in the way of big animals but the reef is very healthy (only one or two sites seemed much impacted by coral bleaching) and the muck diving was incredible. Lots of critters, though neither Sami nor I could find anything ourselves without the very expert help of our dive guides.
And for those wondering - no we weren't hit by the Tsunami. We figure the quake happened right about as we were back rolling for our first dive that day. When we came up the skiff driver told us what had happened and they pulled us out of the water until the warnings passed. In fact this is how we discovered the internet connectivity which we had previously assumed was non-existent. Reckoned people back home should hear about it from us rather than the evening news.
So enough talk. We know what you really want are pictures and here they are:
http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/album112
Clinton