Tufi, PNG Trip Report
I spent some time at Tufi Dive Resort in PNG at the end of December, a short trip report follows…
Flights
I flew from Cairns to Port Moresby on Air Niugini, which allowed 30 kg check-in baggage. The visa for PNG if you’re an Australian passport holder has to be arranged in advance these days – you can no longer get a visa on arrival. So upon arrival at Port Moresby, I got through immigration and customs very quickly. There is a domestic check-in desk immediately after you walk out of customs.
My connecting flight from Port Moresby to Tufi was on Airlines of PNG, and they only have a 23 kg check-in baggage allowance. I was prepared to pay for the excess (20 kina), as my bag was 27 kg…Except when they sent me to the Airlines of PNG customer service desk, nobody was there to pay the money to, because the check-in person couldn’t/wouldn’t take it and get me the receipt, which I needed to obtain my boarding pass. As such, the check-in person just gave me my boarding pass and let the whole thing slide. PNG’s infamous lax attitude works in my favour I guess?
On the way home, nobody blinked at my 28 kg dive bag (souvenirs). I had a 7 hour layover in Port Moresby before my flight to Cairns left, and there was no way I was spending that amount of time at the airport. So I made my way to the Airways Hotel for the transit time. I’d been “reliably informed” by the travel agent and numerous friends that the hotel let you use the pool facilities if you bought a full meal there. No such luck – apparently the situation has changed, and if you want access to the pool area, it’s a 50 kina (about AUD$28) charge to use the lounge chairs, towel, or pool. I paid it, because the only other option was to sit in the hard chairs in the hotel’s restaurant or coffee shop. Unsurprisingly, it started pouring rain about an hour after I got there, and spent most of the rest of the transit in the coffee shop. On the upside, the coffee shop did have good local coffee? Port Moresby international terminal is also undergoing renovations, so there's no shops inside at all at the moment. Wait outside the terminal building (where there's a handful of cafe's) for as long as humanely possible before checking in and going straight through security at the absolute last minute.
Tufi Resort
The resort is in a stunning location on the side of a hill overlooking the fjords. The accommodation is comfortable with air-conditioned cabins. Each cabin has tea and coffee making facilities, with the drinking water replenished as needed, and a bar fridge. Clean towels every day if needed. Hot water was ok, flushing toilets, half a dozen powerpoints to charge cameras, strobes, and other gadgets.
Wi-fi is available in the main restaurant area, but it’s pretty temperamental. It works early in the morning around 6am, or late at night after about 10pm. You can get a mobile phone signal on Digicel if necessary as well.
The food was a bit of a disappointment to be honest. The meals were small, and people commented about being left hungry as they bought additional snack food from the bar. Also, I have certain medically necessary dietary requirements, and that was problematic, despite the resort being informed well in advance of the situation, and confirming they could cater for it – it’s not like I just showed up and dropped it in their laps with no notice. It never really got resolved satisfactorily, but it did improve slightly as time went on. On the other hand, the bar is well stocked – albeit expensive. But then everything in PNG is expensive I suppose. There’s a bunch of mango trees around the resort though, and they didn’t seem to have a problem if you picked up any fallen mangoes to eat. So I did a mango hunt every couple of days and kept some in the fridge in my cabin to cut up and munch on from time to time. Dive knives come in handy for other things too!
I took the opportunity on my off-gas day before flying to do the cultural village tour and beach bbq, which was a nice way to end the trip. The cultural village visit seemed a little forced and I felt a bit uncomfortable with it, but the demonstrations and performances were still fun.
The Diving
Amazing. I’d leave it there, but I’ll elaborate…
First things first – photography. Tufi resort is not really set up for photographers. There is no camera room or anything, so you’re left charging everything in your cabin (so bring a power strip with you for all your bits), and there’s no air gun or anything. Getting a camera rinse tank set up was a bit of a hassle, and ended up being a case of “if you want one, do it yourself”, both on the boat, and in the dive shop after the dives. It all worked out in the end, but come prepared to force the issue to get what you need. Also, be prepared for people to just dump their masks full of soap in the camera bucket. No clue.
The dive day is basically a 2 tank boat dive to the reefs, followed by an afternoon muck dive on the house reef if you want one. The boats leave at about 8 am for a ~30 minute trip to the reef. Dives are generally kept to about 50 minutes with a 1 hour surface interval before the second dive. Cookies, cake, fruit, water, tea, and coffee get taken on board, along with fresh towels. Back to the resort for lunch, and then the house reef dive if you’re interested in the afternoon. The diving is all pretty much just “follow the DM”, which was fine.
Visibility on the reefs is mindblowing – 40-50m consistently on every dive. Currents were fairly weak, so while we got fairly regular sightings of white tip reef sharks, black tip reef sharks, grey reef sharks, and the occasional silvertips, there was only a single hammerhead sighting. Plenty of healthy coral and tropical fish to see though! Occasional turtle sightings, moray eels, plus all of the critters on the house reef such as ornate ghost pipefish, nudis, and various crabs. We did one twilight dive on the house reef to go and hunt for mandarin fish, but I kind of got distracted by the electric clams and didn’t see them come out to play. Not particularly bothered by that having seen them before though.
One important thing to note – the Blackjack bomber wreck that I’d hoped to dive is pretty much a no-go now. The resort is under new’ish management, and if you want to dive the plane wreck, you need to organise it in advance, not when you get to the resort, even if you’re there for 2 weeks and want to do it on the last day. And on top of that, you must be a certified tech diver. There was no “I’m an experienced rec diver and can show you my log book that says I can dive 50m without a problem”. They are enforcing the tech certification requirement to dive the Blackjack now. That being said, I suspect they simply don’t want to go all the way out there (it’s a couple of hours offshore), and are just looking for excuses not to do it, because they seemed willing to let people with only rec certifications dive the PT boat wreck at the house reef which sits at 45-50m.
All in all, I had a really fun time in PNG at Tufi. The only real letdown was the food, which left me in a bit of a bad mood for most of the trip due to hunger. However, I'm home now, with a full belly, and my mood is improving rapidly!
Photos can be seen here...
I spent some time at Tufi Dive Resort in PNG at the end of December, a short trip report follows…
Flights
I flew from Cairns to Port Moresby on Air Niugini, which allowed 30 kg check-in baggage. The visa for PNG if you’re an Australian passport holder has to be arranged in advance these days – you can no longer get a visa on arrival. So upon arrival at Port Moresby, I got through immigration and customs very quickly. There is a domestic check-in desk immediately after you walk out of customs.
My connecting flight from Port Moresby to Tufi was on Airlines of PNG, and they only have a 23 kg check-in baggage allowance. I was prepared to pay for the excess (20 kina), as my bag was 27 kg…Except when they sent me to the Airlines of PNG customer service desk, nobody was there to pay the money to, because the check-in person couldn’t/wouldn’t take it and get me the receipt, which I needed to obtain my boarding pass. As such, the check-in person just gave me my boarding pass and let the whole thing slide. PNG’s infamous lax attitude works in my favour I guess?
On the way home, nobody blinked at my 28 kg dive bag (souvenirs). I had a 7 hour layover in Port Moresby before my flight to Cairns left, and there was no way I was spending that amount of time at the airport. So I made my way to the Airways Hotel for the transit time. I’d been “reliably informed” by the travel agent and numerous friends that the hotel let you use the pool facilities if you bought a full meal there. No such luck – apparently the situation has changed, and if you want access to the pool area, it’s a 50 kina (about AUD$28) charge to use the lounge chairs, towel, or pool. I paid it, because the only other option was to sit in the hard chairs in the hotel’s restaurant or coffee shop. Unsurprisingly, it started pouring rain about an hour after I got there, and spent most of the rest of the transit in the coffee shop. On the upside, the coffee shop did have good local coffee? Port Moresby international terminal is also undergoing renovations, so there's no shops inside at all at the moment. Wait outside the terminal building (where there's a handful of cafe's) for as long as humanely possible before checking in and going straight through security at the absolute last minute.
Tufi Resort
The resort is in a stunning location on the side of a hill overlooking the fjords. The accommodation is comfortable with air-conditioned cabins. Each cabin has tea and coffee making facilities, with the drinking water replenished as needed, and a bar fridge. Clean towels every day if needed. Hot water was ok, flushing toilets, half a dozen powerpoints to charge cameras, strobes, and other gadgets.
Wi-fi is available in the main restaurant area, but it’s pretty temperamental. It works early in the morning around 6am, or late at night after about 10pm. You can get a mobile phone signal on Digicel if necessary as well.
The food was a bit of a disappointment to be honest. The meals were small, and people commented about being left hungry as they bought additional snack food from the bar. Also, I have certain medically necessary dietary requirements, and that was problematic, despite the resort being informed well in advance of the situation, and confirming they could cater for it – it’s not like I just showed up and dropped it in their laps with no notice. It never really got resolved satisfactorily, but it did improve slightly as time went on. On the other hand, the bar is well stocked – albeit expensive. But then everything in PNG is expensive I suppose. There’s a bunch of mango trees around the resort though, and they didn’t seem to have a problem if you picked up any fallen mangoes to eat. So I did a mango hunt every couple of days and kept some in the fridge in my cabin to cut up and munch on from time to time. Dive knives come in handy for other things too!
I took the opportunity on my off-gas day before flying to do the cultural village tour and beach bbq, which was a nice way to end the trip. The cultural village visit seemed a little forced and I felt a bit uncomfortable with it, but the demonstrations and performances were still fun.
The Diving
Amazing. I’d leave it there, but I’ll elaborate…
First things first – photography. Tufi resort is not really set up for photographers. There is no camera room or anything, so you’re left charging everything in your cabin (so bring a power strip with you for all your bits), and there’s no air gun or anything. Getting a camera rinse tank set up was a bit of a hassle, and ended up being a case of “if you want one, do it yourself”, both on the boat, and in the dive shop after the dives. It all worked out in the end, but come prepared to force the issue to get what you need. Also, be prepared for people to just dump their masks full of soap in the camera bucket. No clue.
The dive day is basically a 2 tank boat dive to the reefs, followed by an afternoon muck dive on the house reef if you want one. The boats leave at about 8 am for a ~30 minute trip to the reef. Dives are generally kept to about 50 minutes with a 1 hour surface interval before the second dive. Cookies, cake, fruit, water, tea, and coffee get taken on board, along with fresh towels. Back to the resort for lunch, and then the house reef dive if you’re interested in the afternoon. The diving is all pretty much just “follow the DM”, which was fine.
Visibility on the reefs is mindblowing – 40-50m consistently on every dive. Currents were fairly weak, so while we got fairly regular sightings of white tip reef sharks, black tip reef sharks, grey reef sharks, and the occasional silvertips, there was only a single hammerhead sighting. Plenty of healthy coral and tropical fish to see though! Occasional turtle sightings, moray eels, plus all of the critters on the house reef such as ornate ghost pipefish, nudis, and various crabs. We did one twilight dive on the house reef to go and hunt for mandarin fish, but I kind of got distracted by the electric clams and didn’t see them come out to play. Not particularly bothered by that having seen them before though.
One important thing to note – the Blackjack bomber wreck that I’d hoped to dive is pretty much a no-go now. The resort is under new’ish management, and if you want to dive the plane wreck, you need to organise it in advance, not when you get to the resort, even if you’re there for 2 weeks and want to do it on the last day. And on top of that, you must be a certified tech diver. There was no “I’m an experienced rec diver and can show you my log book that says I can dive 50m without a problem”. They are enforcing the tech certification requirement to dive the Blackjack now. That being said, I suspect they simply don’t want to go all the way out there (it’s a couple of hours offshore), and are just looking for excuses not to do it, because they seemed willing to let people with only rec certifications dive the PT boat wreck at the house reef which sits at 45-50m.
All in all, I had a really fun time in PNG at Tufi. The only real letdown was the food, which left me in a bit of a bad mood for most of the trip due to hunger. However, I'm home now, with a full belly, and my mood is improving rapidly!
Photos can be seen here...
