medas2005 - Bluewater Dive Travel

medas2005

medas2005

My Dive Map

Reviews (22)

Loloata Island Resort

4
4
4
3

My adult daughter spent three days here while waiting to board the Golden Dawn for a trip to the Eastern Fields. I have known several who have stayed here and it came with high recommendation.

We were somewhat limited by weather that limited the diving to one day instead of 2 or 3. The one site that we wanted to get to was Suzy’s Bommie which didn’t happen because of weather. We did have one nice day out and some some decent sites that I enjoyed and we saw some good content underwater.

The dive guiding was good and they guides worked to point out things that were interesting to us. I would rate the diving to be a 6 or 7 on a 10 point scale. For a stopover spot, it was quite good and I would recommend anyone that is leaving on a trip out of PM to spend 3 or 4 days here. My daughter went on the flashlight fish night dive which is very unique and enjoyable.

The resort experience starts when you clear customs at the airport. The hotel was there with a sign waiting for us, so I rate them highly on this important point. The trip is a 45 minute car ride and a 15 boat ride and your arrive at a long dock in a stand alone island.

The rooms were OK, but maybe a touch below what I was expecting. Each room was in a stand alone bungalow with a bed and a hideaway bed that was not so great. Similar to Lembeh Resort, but a notch below.

The resort is very informal with everyone eating at one common table including the owner who chatted with us each night. Nice touch. The food was good, but lacked variety. I like the breakfast and lunch and dinner were buffet style. The resort has a pretty good sized meeting going on which I think pushed the quality of service a bit.

The resort has plenty of animals which are kind of fun. PNG wallabies are in abundance as are a few kinds of decorative birds. I got to breakfast early on my first day and found a wallaby huddled under a dining table. We startled each other when I pulled out my chair.

I would recommend anyone who is coming to PNG to stay here for 2 to 5 days. Some of the diving is quite good. Suzie’s Bommie and some of the other open ocean bombes are very good which I know from earlier dive trips. You will enjoy a unique little island with a lot of personal charm, but very little pretense.

Visited on 02/2014 - Submitted on 03/22/2014
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Golden Dawn

5
4
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4

In early March, my adult daughter and I flew to Port Moresby to board the Golden Dawn which was bound to the Eastern Fields and onward to the Australian reefs of Boot and Ashmore. She and I had been there 3 years earlier and a shorter itinerary limited our diving opportunities to the inner part of the Eastern Fields.

Well, weather intervened and a cyclonic weather pattern made our trip out into the open water a high risk endeavor. After discussing options with us, the owner and captain, Craig DeWitt, sent us down the coast to the Milne Bay diving area. This did carve a couple of days of diving out of our two week trip and the diving along the southern coast is not that great. The trip out to the Eastern Fields is a bit risky and open waters does threaten these itineraries. I highly recommend on planning for a 14 day trip so that the boat can make adjustments and secure a good chunk of diving no matter what the weather.

The diving in Milne Bay ranged from spectacular to mundane at times. Banana Bommie is rated as one of the top 100 dive sites in the world and in was great. We dove several other dive sites like that where fish density was as high as I ever seen. These sites compared very favorably with the dive sites around the Raja Ampat area which is considered the gold standard in dive quality. The one missing ingredient: lots of purple and pink soft corals. We saw some, but not a lot.

Critter diving was also very good. The dive sites at Dinah’s Beach are one part coral pinnacle and one part critters. And the critters are very much in abundance. Maybe a notch below Lembeh, but only a small notch. And, you will never see another diver the entire day. On the way home, we stopped at a passage where Craig thought that the critter diving might be good and we hit the jack pot. It may well have been the best hour of dive photography that I have ever experienced. My daughter found a new critter about once every 90 seconds, and I hammered my strobes. Amazing. I might have been the first one to ever dive this site.

The Golden Dawn and the owner, Craig DeWitt, are pretty much inseparable. The boat is a bit small, especially compared to Indonesian boat that are bigger and more comfortable at times. But Craig is amazingly excited about the reefs and the secrets that they give up on each new trip. No one knows any more about this part of the underwater world than Craig. He is a class act and his recent marriage to Cam has softened him up a bit too. There is no one in the dive industry that I respect more than him.

The service is good but does lack some attention to detail. The attention to detail and pampering that you get in Indonesia are sometimes lacking. No hot towels when you come up from a dive. No hot chocolate, but you do get an great afternoon bakery creation every day. The crew is competent, but not attentive at times.

The food was good, especially our dinners. Breakfasts were very good as well, but lacked variety. His new wife, Cam, seems to add a nice “woman’s touch” and we liked we she brought to the boat. The dinners were very good, especially when we caught a Spanish mackerel and had baked fresh fish on several days.

So, who would like this boat? If luxury and detail are important to you, you should go to one of the nice boats in Indonesia like the Damai or Arenui. If you don’t mind doing some things for yourself, Craig and his boat, the Golden Dawn, are a great place to go. I had the misfortune of learning several days into the trip and a long time friend and neighbor had died suddenly back at home. So that raised the question—if I had one last dive trip to take where would I go back to? Milne Bay would get a lot of thought, especially if that were the intended spot that didn’t require 500 mile round trip of sailing to get to. Several of the dives were amongst the best I have ever done. For those of us who love the ocean, spending a final dive trip with Craig would be my final choice.

Visited on 02/2014 - Submitted on 03/22/2014

Cozumel Diving

4
4
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4

Cozumel is where many Americans go to dive. It is easy to get to, relatively inexpensive, and the diving is very good. Although I like Little Cayman and The Belizean atolls a bit better, it ranks right up there with the best diving in the Caribbean.

I have been here a half dozen times, so this review is a bit of an amalgam of several trips. The weather varies a lot from season to season. June and July are my favorite times to dive here when the water is very warm and seas are flat as glass. Hurricanes are an issue here in August (it seems to attract early ones) and we were there once in August a week or so after a medium sized one, so the threat is real. It is perfect in early summer. Was there in late fall and it was very rough and we were quite restricted in where we went. Spring break was good as well, kind of in between.

Our family has stayed in a condo or two in the north part of the island which was great and good value. If you have a couple of kids and want a mixed activity vacation, this worked great. Diving requires a bit of a drive, so you kind of need a car to commute. If you want an all in dive holiday, this is probably not so good. I have stayed at the Presidente which is right by the best dive sites. The boat picked us up right by the hotel peer and you are diving in 10 minutes. You also are south of the cruise ship parking lot.

There are a lot of options in dive operators as well. We have avoided the hotel operators ard selected those that cater to more serious divers. We stay away from those that focus on the cruise trade and fill in with divers when they can't fill up there scuba buses.

Visited on 07/2005 - Submitted on 02/25/2014
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La Paloma Lodge, Drake Bay Panama

4
4
3
4

We were here with our family of five for a week. Many people come here for 3 or 4 days which is fine, but there is plenty to see and do in a week. I would suggest 2 or 3 days of diving together with lots of other rainforest activities. Getting there is a bit of an adventure in a small plane from San Jose that has to go up over the mountains. The air currents have fun and my children were white when we got there.

The lodge is reached after a 20 minute boat ride from the airstrip to dock. It's a good walk up the hill to get there. This is a place that requires a bit of fitness. The central lodge is where you eat and gather. It was very nice and had a beautiful view of the ocean to the west. The food was from a menu for dinner and buffet for breakfast. Very good lodge food, but not fantastic. Everyone was happy, but we didn't leave thinking food was the outstanding feature of the trip.

The resort has a small beach that is a bit of a hike down to the ocean. It was OK, but the pool was a lot better. Monkeys would also come to the pool and visit us which was pretty cool. You are definitely in the rainforest.

We went to the rainforest twice--once by boat and once by horse. Those were incredible days. We saw so many monkeys and other animals of the tropics. It was outstanding. On several occassions, we saw the great scarlet maccaws which was a trip highlight. We even saw them right at the lodge at one point. Very memorable.

The diving is primarily around the island of Cano which is about an hour boat ride away from the resort. Most of the people that go there are snorkelers but the staff really likes to go in with divers because it is more fun for them. The diving is pretty wild. There some very strong thermoclines, the strongest that I have ever experienced. The water was upper 70s above about 50 feet and 70 below the thermocline. You can actually see the layer in the water. Visibility was average, probably about 50 to 70 feet.

The dive landscape is primarily is boulders with algae, not much coral to be seen. But lots of bigger fish. We saw a big school of barracuda, trevaly and jacks. Saw several mantas and a mobulla ray which I had not seen before. We also saw LOTS of eels. Maybe a dozen on one dive.

The Bajo del Diablo is a stone pinnacle that rises to within 30 feet of the surface. This dive site was great, similar to some of the dive sites in the Galapagos Islands. We dove here twice and the second time we saw about 25 white tips which were very active. It was almost a little intimidating because there were so many of them.

The dive operation was small but very capable. They were well prepared for helping divers who were novice to more experienced. Because most went snorkeling, we had a divemaster for two of us and he was great at finding things of interest for us.

Visited on 03/2003 - Submitted on 02/19/2014

Kona

5
4
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5

I do not think of the Kona as a true destination for diving. But it is a great multi-purpose family vacation spot with many things to do.

By far and away the best diving is the manta night dive. It is very good for divers and for snorkelers. The diving is about 30 feet deep and you all sit down in a circle around the projector which brings in plankton which brings int he mantas. The arrival rate is very high. We had one female show up and she was a show animal. She swooped and danced for as long as we had air in our tanks. At one point she swooped over my daughter and looked like she was going to crash right into her but then belly rolled on top of her instead. My wife, who does not dive, saw the whole show from right overhead. I have talked with others who have been there recently and they have seen up to 30 mantas on a night. For divers and snorkelers, this is just fantastic.

The diving topography is kind of boring, even compared to the Caribbean. Because of the remoteness of the islands, they do not get many eggs to setup shop. But we did see a lot of interesting animals. We saw lots of eels and several of them were quite interesting and unusual. We saw a half dozen turtles in 4 days of diving. We saw a leaffish, a frogfish at about 100 feet, and several interesting snail like creatures. I was surprised to see just how many things we saw in a few days.

The water is very clear-- up to about 100 feet of visibility in places. It was probably in the 75 to 78 degree range which is not real warm if you are diving more than a few dives a day.

We dove with one of the local dive operators and they were great. My two teens both got their advanced PADI certs while here. They were very comfortable with young and inexperienced divers. This is a great place to get certified. The only negative is that the logistics are a bit painful. You have to drive a harbor where you meet the boat and then have a 20 to 45 minute boat ride to the dive sites. The dive masters were great with my children and I was pretty much left by myself to snap photos and find little fishes.

We stayed in a two bedroom condo on the edge of town which was right on the water. We even were able to do a couple of shore dives which were pretty boring. We made steaks and fish on the grill most nights which we bought at the local Costco. It was every bit as good as a restaurant for about 1/3 the price.

Of course, there are so many things to see and do on the big island of Hawaii. My kids went parasailing which was a highlight. We had a luau at a local resort. We drove around the island to see the volcano on the other side. This is a full day adventure and you are best to leave at around 6am so you have plenty of time to stop and do things. I have not been diving anywhere else in the islands, but I believe that this is one of the best spots on the islands.

Visited on 03/2007 - Submitted on 02/18/2014
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Jean Michel Cousteau Resort

4
5
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5

The Jean Michel Cousteau Resort is a well known eco resort on Fiji's second major island of Vanua Levu. It is near the small city of Savusavu which is not really a tourist town, but fun to visit nonetheless.

I think that this is the best place on the planet for diving parent who have young children through teens who might be learning to dive. I got certified when I was here with my family a year prior and have now accumulated about 700 dives so the hobby stuck. They have nannies to take care of your children (up to 12 I think), so every morning after breakfast, they get swept away and spend the next 10 or 12 hours with a Fijian nanny while you get to be a couple.

My then 8 year old son said it was the best vacation ever because they only gave him food that he loved. Simple view of life. He also got to go out into the ocean on a bubble marker which to him was like diving. He got certified 3 years later when he was 11, so it had a profound impact on him too. My oldest daughter who was then 15 got certified along with me and has now been on over a dozen liveaboards, so their formula for hooking divers is amazing. She came home wanting to be a marine biologist which didn't happen, but her love for the ocean has never left her.

Every night the resort would have a resident marine biologist give a talk on what they saw during the dives of the day, so there was very strong focus on diving.

The resort really caters to people learning how to dive or have family learning how to dive. The divemasters were all very good at persuading the snorkelers to become divers and regular divers to become advanced divers which I did in my return to the resort this time.

They had two very nice boats that held about a dozen folks each. Very comfortable and pleasant.

The resort went diving in three locations: inside the reef, outside, and Namena. The outside reefs were anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes away. One special dive was Dreamhouse which was a nice pinnacle at about 90 minutes. We saw a hammerhead there and sometimes they saw tiger sharks which we did not see. All of these dives were classic wall dives and some had swim throughs down at about 100 feet. We saw mantas and an eagle ray or two on most dives.

The food was fantastic with incredible variety. We had a combination of buffets and single entres. A lot of fish and chicken with an occasional piece of beef. Deserts were a stand out as well.

The inner reef dives were also good with some nice pinnacles and a good variety of hard and soft corals, but they were affected by the sediment of runoff so they were OK.

The twice a week trips to Namena were the highlight for divers. They were about a two hour boat ride away and thus left early in the afternoon and returned at about 5PM. Chimneys were my favorite dive site although most patrons who had been there multiple times like Grand Central Station (I was not able to go there until 5 years later on the Nai'a Liveaboard boat--it is very good.

Fiji has a lot of seasonal weather patterns. April is the end of summer and we had some pretty nasty storms but rarely missed some diving. This area can get hit by some pretty strong tropical storms in February and March. Water temperature was in the low 80s but drops pretty rapidly as you get into May and June.

We also went on a few night dives and they were very good as well.

We stayed here twice and my wife cried both times when we left because she liked it so much. She does not dive, but had plenty of activities and enjoyed her time sans small children. The Fijian people are loving and kind and have a great heritage. We got to visit a native chief's home and shared in a kava ceremony which was quite unique as well.

Visited on 04/2002 - Submitted on 02/14/2014

Paradise Villas, Little Cayman

5
4
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3

Getting there is half the fun. You take a prop plane from Grand Cayman and land on a small runway with an airport building about the size of my bedroom at home. You get your luggage from the plane and walk across the road and you are at Paradise Villas. It doesn't get more casual than this.

I consider Paradise as the alternative to the much bigger and more polished Little Cayman Beach Resort where a lot of divers go to. Paradise consists of a dozen bungalows, right on the water with very lovely grounds. No TV to be found here. We did get a bit of Internet coverage.

The island is great. It has one of everything. One ATM. One grocery store. One fire truck which was given to the island by the government to keep them happy. One gas station that has gas about half the time. One road that goes around the island and is fun to take by bike but it is a bit of a trek.

The resort does not have a restaurant but the Hungry Iguana is next door and it is pretty good. A good breakfast and burgers during the day. We walked to the LCBR on a couple of occassions for a nicer dinner. And did I mention, the island has one big party each week. The week we were there, the young teen daughter of the owner played her flute for entertainment. The island also has some good bird watching with one of the best places to see boobies outside of the Galapagos Islands.

The rooms are nice with a little sitting area and a bedroom. They also had a nice sun porch. Nothing luxurious, but comfortable. The resort has a nice pool where lizards come to sun themselves during the sun of the day.

The diver operation is headed by Mark and Sabine who are great people, photographers, and divers. The shop is small, but professional.

We did almost all of our diving on the north (far) side of the island which was a bit of a bumpy ride in the windy season. We had been there a couple of years earlier in the summer and that was much nicer conditions than in March. I would say that this is best diving in the Caribbean in May to September.

The diving is all about the Bloody Bay wall and it is world class. The top of the wall is about 20 feet and goes straight down to 2500 feet. You can pick your depth and kind of see what you want. Lots of classic reef fish and a turtle or two every 10 minutes. This is a great place for children and beginner divers.

Night dives are great here and include visits from resident tame groupers who know that divers point flashlights at pretty little fish. See a cute little guy? Litght it up and you feel a shock wave over your should as a big grouper eliminates the little guy and replaces it with a puff of sand. Entertaining but not so much for the fish.

Just a bit further up the coast is Jackson's Point where there is another handful of very nice dive sites. A lot different topography with flat sand bottom and very pretty swim throughs. We saw turtles, eagle rays, and a couple of nurse sharks.

The is some good diving on the south side off the coast of the Villas. These sites are where you go when you can't get to BBW for world class diving. These south dives are very similar to what we saw on Grand Cayman. Good healthy corals and a lot of small reef fish. We saw some lobsters and a pretty interesting octopus.

If you like laid back, no pretension, this is a good place to go. There is plenty of diving for a week--20 or so dives and many of the sites can be dived at different depths. The water is very warm and visibility is 100 feet plus. I have been here three times which is always the measure of what you think about a place.

Visited on 03/2005 - Submitted on 02/14/2014

Nai'a Liveaboard

4
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5

The Nai'a was an unusual trip for me in that I went alone. Being a lone traveler was a bit different because you don't have that go to person on the boat or underwater. It tends to amplify the importance of the details.

First, getting there is great. It is the easiest place to get to of the far away spots outside of the Caribbean. An overnight from LA and you are in Nadi and a 1 hour drive and you are ready for the boat. I stayed one night at a Nadi hotel to catch my breath and ended up meeting half of my future boat mates.

The boat is most luxurious that I have been on, even compared to the Indonesian boats which are bigger, but in a more casual way. The owners make sure that you feel like royalty when you step on board. When the boat was first built, the owners created a deal where each return visit would get a slightly larger discount. They were more successful that they had hoped and ended up with a lot of very regular repeat visitors. I was one of only 2 or 3 out of 18 that had not been on the boat before.

The food is the best you can get on a liveaboard dive boat. They have chefs come in and design a 2 week menu that rotates for each night. White table clothes and fine place settings. Meals are a big focus of the week.

The water temps in Fiji vary quite a bit through the year. I was there in early November and the water was a bit cool, especially towards the end of the week after 20 or so dives. If you go in our summer, the water can be very cold while Feb and March are very warm. Be prepared.

We divided up into two groups for the week and the dive operation was very hands off once they were comfortable with your skills. I passed their muster and was left to kind of do my own thing with my camera. Because I didn't have a dive buddy, I was almost too alone at times. The good thing was that water visibility was always very high and we could see a long ways. We were also left to dive as long as our air and computers would take care of us.

The camera facilities were more limited than what is now current standard. I would not be surprised if they have updated their UW photography benches. Equipment has gotten a lot mroe common and bulky over the past few years.

The diving is very good from start to end. The Namena marine reserve has a half dozen world class sites. I dove there from the Cousteau Resort a few years earlier, but it was a long ways removed from the hotel and boat only went there twice a week, wind willing.

Chimneys is a pair of volcanic pinnacles which are really nice with schools of fish from the bottom at about 100 feet all the way to the surface. All of the reef tops in Fiji are full of colorful hard coral garden and the Chimneys were beautiful. Kansas is another amazing dive with fields of beige soft coral flowing in the current to make it look like, well Kansas. North Save-A-Tack is also an incredible dive in the right conditions. Schools of fish and a handful of sharks were everywhere.

Nigali Passage has to be one of the best dive sites in the world. Very similar to Ulong Island in Palau. It is a mile long channel between two bodies of water and at the right current conditions it fills with the entire food chain from the eaten to the eaters. A dozen sharks, 50 or so big groupers , and schools of bait for the big guys. They set up like a wall of feeders and you just watch the action happen. It is almost worth the trip for that dive alone.

Also spectacular is E6 which is a bit pinnacle out in the blue. While some divers said that this site has been hurt by El Nino is the late 1990s, it seemed pretty amazing to me.

Fiji did lack the huge variety of places like Solomons and Indonesia to the immediate west. We did not see the exotic creatures that one sees there.

One other side note, I did befriend an elderly woman diver who had logged 12,000 dives in her career and she was retiring after she left the boat. She was most famous for being the blonde on Sea Hunter who always needed to be rescued by Beau Bridges. She had many stories to tell about the creation of the dive industry over the 1980s and 1990s. For an avid diver, her stories were great. And she still kept up with the group!

Visited on 11/2005 - Submitted on 02/13/2014
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Bilikiki Liveaboard

5
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3

Getting here is not too bad. We flew to Brisbane from LA, stayed a couple of days, and then flew non-stop to Honiara which is only about a 3.5 hour flight away. We didn’t stay on land, but several people did. If you have an interest in WWII wrecks, there is plenty to see. Just be ready for Malaria protection as this is one of the worst places in the world for malaria.

The Bilikiki is a nice boat but not spectacular. We had a very unusual situation in that because of a group cancellation, there were only four of us on board. It was kind of fun to have a room all to ourself and we kind of designed each day as the four of us wanted to have it happen. The host and hostess were both dive masters and that was who led the four of us into battle. As could be expected, we were given total flexibility in our dive profile. I have remained friends with the other 2 divers for almost a decade now.

The boat had a great relationship with the natives. They would sell us vegetables and fish on many of our stops. We did 3 village stops during our 11 days and they were very authentic and lots of fun. We were likely the only outside civilization that they would see for a month. The welcome was always warm and sincere.

The food was consistently good, but not as good as some other boats I have been on. The breakfasts were nice, but the dinners were a little boring after a while.

The Solomons have a number of very lovely dive sites. My personal favorite was Custom Cave which is a long tunnel that ends in a large open cavern with an opening to the sun at the top. When the sun goes under a cloud, it gets dark and when the sun comes out, a light switch goes on and a beam comes from the ceiling. Very cool. Leru Cut is similar and is more famous. The shimmering light is very unusual.

Mary’s Island has diving similar to Sipadan. The premier dive site is Barracuda Point which attracts gray sharks and large schools of fish. It is quite deep and the best action is well below 100 feet.

Only the longer itineraries go to the Morovo Lagoon and the very best diving is definitely there. If you are going half way around the world, it is good to get to these dive sites. They are classic atoll dives with the best dives along cuts into the center of the lagoon. Amazing sea fans on several of the sites.

Back in the Russell Islands, a series of sites hover over the giant garbage dumps left by the U.S. after the battle of Guadacanal. Lots of critters here

Throughout the Solomons, the seas were warm and the clarity was very high. We found a very nice Mandarin Fish site here that was as good as any one that I have seen anywhere.

The overall impression of diving in the Solomons is variety. Nice WWII wrecks. Schools of fish at Morovo Lagoon and Mary’s Island. Some very nice critter sites. Leru and Custom Cave are highly unusual as well.

We were on the boat for 11 days and did 50 dives. It was a very good experience.

Visited on 07/2005 - Submitted on 02/12/2014
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Gangga Island Resort & Spa

4
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5

Half the fun of this place is getting there. The road that turns north towards the shore starts out as a normal Indonesian rode and gets progressively more remote as you go. Farmers would use the road to lay out blankets and dry their crops in the sun. We had to go around mules pulling logs and even had to work our way through a wedding celebration march that used the road we were on. You definitely get a "We're not in Kansas anymore" feeling by the time you get to the dock where it is then a 45 minute boat ride to the island.

The Gangga Island Resort is a small island with 15 bungalows, each with two rooms. The resort itself is quite spacious with a good size pool and a nice set of core buildings for the patrons. Some of the rooms are a pretty good walk to the central resort, so look at a resort map and choose carefully if you don't want a five minute or more hike each way. The paths were dark and not real well lit.

The food was buffet style for all meals (it's not like you had anywhere else to go!) and it was very good. As a matter of fact the food was great--the best that I have had at a dedicated dive resort. The owners are Italian so that tilts the food in that direction. As a matter of fact, the entire resort is heavily tilted towards European travelers and families. We were there in August which is the height of the vacation season so there were a lot of European families with children. We only saw one other American couple the time we were there. That didn't bother us, but some folks might like more Americans.

The diving facility and dive photography facility was spacious and first class. The entire dive operation was extremely well run. They had 4 or 5 boats that would go to different sites each morning.

The diving was quite a bit more controlled due to the nature of the clientele which were generally less experienced than at most dive resorts. (I think Lembeh tends to attract the serious divers compared to here) Strict one hour limits were enforced and we were required to stay in a small group. Since I was there with my 13 year old son, this was OK with me.

The diving nearby was very good, although some of the sites were not reachable because of windy weather when we were there. Several of the sites near the resort had typical pretty coral reefs with small reef fish and an occasional eagle ray and turtle. We also went back to the mainland of Sulawesi for some dives that were a bit more Lembeh like. We did find a nice mandarin fish dive and they had a boat that went there every evening at sunset. We went twice because I forgot to have my strobe plugged in inside my housing the first time! We looked for pygmy seahorses but did not find them. We did see lots of angel fish and a couple of interesting octopuses.

We went to Bangka Island twice during the week were there and it was very good coral reef diving. Not quite as good as Raja Ampat, but still very good. For extra charge, we did a day trip to Bunaken which was actually a bit disappointing. Very pretty topography, but not a lot of fish. The resort did an all day trip to Lembeh a couple of times a week. We had just been to the Lembeh Resort, so we skipped that.

While a dive resort, this place had a multi-purpose feel to it as opposed to Lembeh which was kind of a liveaboard on land. Most people went diving, but not every day like we did. We did get paired with a specific divemaster who appreciated that we were more serious than most divers there. He helped me with my photography and kept a good eye on my young son. He was probably the best divemaster that I have ever had on a trip.

This is a great family destination where some dive and some don't. The only other place like it was the Cousteau Resort on Fiji. Kids will be happy in the pool. Teens will be happy in local diving. Divers will have lots of options as well. This is a place that more Americans should visit. There are plenty of local sites for five days or so. It makes a great extension onto a Lembeh Resort visit and gives a very nice extension to the muck diving of Lembeh.

Visited on 08/2007 - Submitted on 02/12/2014
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