Ternate, Halmahera and Morotai

[gracero]

Hi Ruth,

I've visited Halmahera twice, the first time on a liveaboard trip from Ternate to Sorong and the second time we stayed at Weda Resort.

On the liveaboard trip we visited a diverse range of sites in a variety of island groups - Makian, Goraichi, Kasiruta, Bacan and Pisang Island. The sites ranged from great black sand critter dives, to perfect reefs and included some very fishy dives.

I can thoroughly recommend Weda Resort. I visited a couple of years ago and had a really enjoyable trip. Rob and Linda have created a great small eco resort in a very special location with some great diving nearby and fantastic bird watching, with the opportunity to see to Birds of Paradise in a forest conservation area they have set up. Again there was a good variety of diving with good macro and beautiful pristine reefs and one site in particular was about as fishy as they come including a school of thousands of oceanic triggerfish and the largest grouper I've ever seen. Perhaps the diving was just a notch below the very best I've seen of R4 or Komodo but it is still very good and I wouldn't think twice about going back.

I took loads of video whilst I was there and haven't got round to editing much of it but here are couple - one showing the resort and the other taken at Elmo's Reef which is a very beautiful wall dive.



Richard

 

[pelan-pelan]

Thank you Gracero for the videos. They brought back memories of our trip to Weda - about 5 years ago. I recall the large puffer fish. I thought they were the largest I would ever see, until last year in Lembeh. The land-experience at Weda is a wonderful add-on. The hornbills flying past the cottages, the birds of paradise in the forest just a short distance away. And waking up in the middle of the night and seeing twinkling stars - delirious or dreaming? - fall asleep again. It turned out to be fireflies flying up in the roof space.

 

[Struth Ruth]

I would certainly say it is fishy and well worth doing - you can probably see from the clip my little foray into the Mouth of the Dragon Volcano dive will always remain one of my favourite ever dives.

Hard to define a top three purely for diving - but I will say I have a great love for Bangka, a longing for Alor again and hard to split Dampier Straits and the Bandas.

Hey Wingy, is that Bangka off Sulawesi or Bangka off Sumatra?

 

[Wingy]

Bangka off Sulawesi - across from Lembeh, easy from Manado or Makassar. Some genius at Lion Air once sent me to the Bangka off Sumatra with a hand written ticket (I should've double checked, was my fault really) when I wanted to go to Padang not either Bangka -shrug - it a tin mine that features heavily in pollution and mining documentaries - Bangka means tin.

"Apparently there is some diving nearby that a hotel on an island that is not an active minesite" the hotel offers diving but from the pics I saw on their flyer it looked a bit moonscape like.
I decided to forgo the hassle and head back to Jakarta and try again that night.

I was young enough to half sleep on airport floors and gardens then - don't make the same mistake lol

 

[Struth Ruth]

Bangka off Sulawesi - across from Lembeh, easy from Manado or Makassar. Some genius at Lion Air once sent me to the Bangka off Sumatra with a hand written ticket (I should've double checked, was my fault really) when I wanted to go to Padang not either Bangka -shrug - it a tin mine that features heavily in pollution and mining documentaries - Bangka means tin.

"Apparently there is some diving nearby that a hotel on an island that is not an active minesite" the hotel offers diving but from the pics I saw on their flyer it looked a bit moonscape like.
I decided to forgo the hassle and head back to Jakarta and try again that night.

I was young enough to half sleep on airport floors and gardens then - don't make the same mistake lol

Whoops glad I checked hahaha