Sulawesi diving

Hi,

I've just booked a couple of weeks holiday in North Sulawesi. We are planning on staying at Kungkungan Beach resort on the Lembeh Strait where the muck diving is supposed to be excellent.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience of diving in Bunaken National Park. Is it worth reducing the time spent at KBR to dive there? or is it worth missing in favour of more muck diving?

Any experiences?

thanks

scubababe

You'll find the diving much better around the northern tip of the penninsular. There is a site called Bhatu Mandi that will blow your mind. Also Bangka has some incredible dive spots either side of the channel into the lagoon. Giant frogfish on the right hand side in Black & Bronze. Several pygmy sites here too. If you're taken to dive the north east tip of Bangka do not go in the water if the tide is running - No matter what the guide says. This is a site with various pinnicles, very interesting in slack water but dangerous otherwise.

Bangka lagoon is pretty good too. At 2m you can see frogfish & 2 types of ghost pipefish.

We are going back in September/October - This place rocks, but limiting yourself to diving KBR you will miss out bigtime!

Thanks for the advice.

Do you have any recommendations for dive centres and accomodation on the northern tip?

Best thing to do is check on the web... I can advise you not to dive with US/American divers but the good guys will include Murex.

We have chartered a live aboard for our trip - This is the best way IMHO and you get to see everything.

Couple of spots left if you are interested.

You should consider joining us (Cybergoldfish) on that trip. It looks and sounds like the absolute best way to see that area. That and Bob as you can see is extremely knowledgable when it comes to it. I also understand the water is flat calm that season.

I can't wait!!

sounds very tempting.... however we have managed to get flights from London to Singapore to Manado for £600 - before SARS they were double that price!! And if we go to Sulawesi in July we can probably squeeze in a 2 week break in PNG before the end of the year too!

That price is about average for the flights - SARS made no real difference. I am informed all Singapore Airline flights are going to be reduced forcing the others to comply. If you're flying Air Singapore hope you don't have long legs (13 hrs too). The Silk Air flights out to Manado have more legroom.

Garuda too are selling flights to Bali ex Schippol for £394. (KLM Heathrow - Schippol £68 ret).

You'll get a shock when you book flights for PNG: Expect to pay around £1150.00 pp!

We spent a very enjoyable two weeks in Sulawesi splitting our time between Bunaken and KBR. I'd echo the previous comments that it's worth doing both as the nature of the diving at the two places is quite different and makes a good contrast.

We also got to spend a day in the Bangka area and it was possibly our favourite area, the dive in the lagoon was really interesting for critters and you can make your air last a long time when you're at five metres.

At Bunaken we dived with Thalassa Divers and stayed at Hotel Santika which was pretty luxurious (we arranged this and flights throughExplorers and thought is was excellent value for money).

We were impressed with the dive shop, as at KBR the guides were very good and finding and pointing out pygmy seahorses, pipefish, frogfish etc. They were also able to transfer us to KBR by boat diving on the way which was a bonus.

Richard

Cheers Richard - I'll check these guys and the hotel out. I like the sound of a hotel transfer in between diving!!

A good alternative to PNG is a trip to the Komodo National Park on Komodo Dancer. This is an incrediblely good trip and one of the best value liveaboards around - Everything is included in the price inc. Beer & spirits. The trip allows you quality time in Bali too. I shall be putting a couple of articles into Sport Diver UK & WP dive destinations soon, together with some pix.

If you need to know more gimme a ring on 01543 279286

Some freinds and I also looked at going to PNG recently too - as Bob mentions the flight price was horrendous here too and put us off - just over 60,000 Baht ($1400) from Bangkok to PNG in economy!!

[A good alternative to PNG is a trip to the Komodo National Park on Komodo Dancer. This is an incrediblely good trip and one of the best value liveaboards around - Everything is included in the price ]

Do you know whether they have an E6 processor on board? At the moment, my preference is Mike Ball's Paradise Sport for that reason.

Yes they do have E6 onboard - Pending chemical deliveries. I had several films processed onboard and Susanne does a good job with them.

Here's one of em...

Hi,

Give a try to Bunaken with Froggies (se their website).

You can drop an email to Christiane, who runs the place. She will take good care of you, as she does take care of the marine national park.

Good diving and really nice people.

Mark

markronge@hotmail.com