This is a long overdue trip report...
"Full" trip report here 2009 Dec 26th to 2010 Jan 9th – Manado, Gorontalo - Gorontalo, Manado trip report There are links to my FB photos...
Summary:
Gorontalo was very good! Its beautiful, pristine reef is now a short flight 40mins away from Manado. Most sites are walls & slopes, with only a couple of murk sites (which were excellent!).
There is only 1 dive shop in Gorontalo http://www.miguelsdiving.com/index.php, Sulawesi & diving is only available for a few short months Nov - Apr. OK, need to add this, the quality of the dives was very high, the prices were relatively low. We stayed at Hotel Oasis, which the dive-shop is based at, it is a basic but comfortable hotel. Think the only "complaint" would be spending the surface intervals on a small boat, but the scenery was beautiful!
We spent a few days diving Manado too, with Minahasa Divers, staying at Sedona Manado Resort. Sedona resort is very nice, esp the huge pool, breakfast & free wifi... The muck dives at Manado were quite good - so we had a good mix of wall diving at Bunaken & muck at Manado. It rained quite heavily for abt an hour or so at abt 2pm almost everyday, when we were there but diving - uninterrupted. Also spent a day (3 dives) at Lembeh & we are going to go back to Lembeh again this year (as a "side-trip" to Buyat Bay)!
