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North Sulawesi, Indonesia Part Two

 

North Sulawesi, Indonesia

The Center of Life’s Diversity

Part Two

  

As you last recall, we tried to include all 50,000 miles (70,000km) of shoreline of Indonesia in one article, then we briefly mentioned three dive resorts on the northern edge of Sulawesi Island where some 390 species of coral, 90 resident species of fish, and where some 1,650 species of fish commute to work daily to and from the Bunaken National Park which is considered Grand Central in the incredibly bio-diverse Coral Triangle which stretches from the Philippines down over to Malaysia and across to the Solomon Islands.

 

 One of the most famous dives here at Bunaken Park is Lekuan 1, which is a 120ft (40m) wall dive where away from the wall you might see pelagics as big as whale sharks.On the wall you might find pink pygmy seahorses, and small orange colored orangutan crabs, colored corals, sponges, and perhaps a turtle resting on a ledge. Sachiko’s is another wall dive where you might encounter black tip sharks, schools of bumphead parrotfish, or napoleon wrasse. Ron’s Point is a site for advanced divers where two currents entwine and tunas, black tip sharks, leaf scorpions, and pontohi seahorses are spotted. In addition, at any of these sites, you may see emperor anglefish, bluestripe snapper, pinkish basslet, two-lined monocle bream, frogfish, and a plethora of small shrimps, crabs, and other invertebrates.

  

The resorts we mentioned were the Eco Divers Lembeh and Minahasa Lagoon Resort and Eco Divers Manado.  From Singapore, Bali, and Jakarta, as well as several other airports you can fly right in to Manado, the capital city of northern Sulawesi. It’s a big bustling modern city with KFC and McDonalds, innumerable blue taxi buses filling the streets, yet there are also regions where you can taste cooked to order local foods from outdoor vendors, visit street markets, and enjoy a ride on an ornate decorated horse drawn carriage.

  

We think that there is something for everyone in Manado, but if you came here to completely relax at a secluded dive resort or do some serious muck diving, its time to leave the big city.

  

Minahasa Lagoon Resort and Eco Divers Manado, is within 90 minutes of Manado. This oceanfront property with several types of accommodations and expansive beach is surrounded by a tropical rain forest. It is highly rated on TripAdvisor with modern amenities, spa services, local and international cuisine.

 

Besides the dives at Bunaken Park, the Minahasa Lagoon Resort and Eco Divers Manado  has a house reef that is ideal for divers and snorkelers. Some of the other boat dives in the area include City Extra, which is a muck dive with seahorses, ghost pipefish, and down the slope you might find frogfish, mimic octopus, and black and blue eels. At Tanjung Bulo there are some 15 different species of nudibranchs, cuttlefish, harlequin shrimp, and sea snakes. Molas Wreck is a Dutch cargo ship that 70 years later has lots of coral growth and sponges. After diving the wreck divers typically go check out a nearby reef.

  

 Here you will see tons of coral that make up the fringing reef and tons of sea life as well. Batu Goso is a boat site with several steep pinnacles (5- 35m). It’s a drift dive where you can see white tips, black tips, turtles, grouper and multi-colored corals. Across the waterway on the Sulawesi coastline is Paradise Pier. This is a muck dive site at the old paradise hotel pier. Hot springs are located at the bottom of the steps. Frogfish, seahorses, octopus, squid, and batfish apparently don’t mind the warmer water. Sabora has nudibranchs, pygmy seahorses and a great place for night dives. Sahuang has jacks, dogtooth tuna, barracuda, red-toothed triggers and colorful corals.

  

Their is also a combination two resort package that lets you stay 7 nights at Minahasa Lagoon Resort and Eco Divers Manado, then a land transfer of 2.5 hours to Eco Divers Lembeh for another 7 night stay. This gives you the opportunity to experience the best diving that Manado and Lembeh can offer. For every divers piece of mind there is a hyperbaric chamber within 90 minutes of both resorts. When you depart it is a about a one hour van ride back to Sam Ratulangi International Airport in Manado.

 

  

Eco Divers Lembeh uniquely offers the comfort of a land based resort and all its amenities and services with the convenience of a stationery day dive liveaboard.  A maximum of 16 divers can relax, eat and depart in smaller dive boats to over 60 dive sites in Lembeh Strait. But just to inform you, don’t expect 100 plus feet of visibility here. What you will see is a black sand and silt substrate with patches of reefs, discarded man made objects, lone anemones, a few wrecks, and even small rocks with absolutely breathtaking rare creatures of every size, color, and texture. This is Mecca for underwater photographers.  An anemone with clown fish, an old bottle with a blue ring octopus inside, or a rock with a frogfish leaning against it fill your camera frames and image cards on almost every dive. And when we say frogfish, we are talking hairy frogfish, clown frogfish, painted frogfish, or the newly discovered Lembeh frogfish to name of few. Fish moving across the sand or mimic octopus or mantis shrimp burring themselves in the sand are common sites too. Keep in mind that there are also multiple species of shrimp, octopus, pipefish, and nudibranchs often seen on the same dive. Some oddity fish you will find include: stargazers, crocodile fish, Pegasus sea moths, bobtail squids, devilfish, rhinopias, and candy crabs, but it’s not just about these fish, as the strait is also home to juvenile pelagic fish that are drawn here for safety and plentiful amounts of zooplankton.

  

Some of the other favorite dive sites include Nudi Falls (nudibranchs), Jahir (night dives), Tk 1 (everything in this village bay), Hairball (frogfish), and of course the Mawali, a Japanese cargo wreck, which sunk in 1943 and now resembles a coral reef with occasional straight edges.

 

As you can see, we’ve run out of space again, and we haven’t even mentioned land activities such as jungle tours, guided treks into rainforests, volcano trekking, white water rafting, or birding to see the endemic species of birds found no where else in the world. Also, the 6 national parks, 19 nature preserves, and 3 marine preserves of Sulawesi along with the freshwater fish, freshwater shrimp, and the highly cave adapted freshwater crabs will have to wait for another time. Sulawesi has so much to see and explore, but none of these spectacular marine creatures can truly shine unless immersed by the light from your own camera or dive light.

   

For more information on exclusive dive travel offers, competitive airfare, and how you can visit North Sulawesi, Indonesia, please contact us or CLICK HERE     

 

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North Sulawesi, Indonesia, Part One

 

North Sulawesi, Indonesia

The Center of Life’s Diversity

Part One

   

You’ve probably heard of the Coral Triangle where the waters of the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea collide and infuse each other with nutrients and where different species of fish and invertebrates intermingle with scuba divers from every culture around the world? You haven’t? Well, before we go in depth on this incredible zone of creatures, critters, and coral cornucopias, we should mention the country that hosts this unique spot in the world.

  

Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, and it is also an archipelago made up of some 17,508 islands of which 6,000 are inhabited, but who’s counting? Now if you weren’t there or don’t recall, after the super continent of Gondwana began to split apart some 140 million years ago, the Pacific, Eurasian, and Australian tectonic plates with much volcanic fanfare met right where Indonesia now resides. Indonesia has 130 active volcanoes and most of the eruptions currently take place in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra just above the Eurasian plate subduction zone and when we say current, we’re talking geological time; Krakatoa last erupted in 1883, a much bigger eruption happened 70,000 years ago at Lake Tobo, Sumatra, but small earthquakes are more common in this region.

  

When seas were lower than they are today, animal life came down through Eurasia until deep waters stopped their advance. Animal life from Australia came up and over until deep waters stopped them too. The point or line made by these deep waters is called the Wallace Line and where these transitional animals mixed is called Wallacea. So now you know why Orangutans, Tigers, and Sumatran rhinoceros are found in western Indonesia, and two species of Anoa (miniature water buffalo), Babirusa (a curling tusked pig), and many other smaller placental and marsupial animals are found in Sulawesi and eastward Indonesia.

  

Now when you include birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, and invertebrates, Indonesia is only second to Brazil in biodiversity with a greater percentage of endemic species than any other country except Australia. In fact it’s hard to view many of these creatures found nowhere else in the world without the voice of BBC’s David Attenborough narrating in your head. We think a local monitor lizard that hasn’t change much in 3.8 million years, and whose ancestors go back at least 100 million years ago, called the Komodo Dragon is the perfect poster child for the rare creatures found only on a few of the thousands of Indonesian islands.

  

The first tourists attracted to all this diverse wildlife was Homo erectus “Java Man” (1.8 million years ago to 35,000 years ago), but apparently Java man followed the Boy Scout slogan of “Leave no trace behind”, so little is known of them. The second wave of tourists were modern Homo sapiens and on their way to Australia they left trails thousands of miles wide with items like the 40,000 year old hand stencils in Pettekere Cave in Maros, Sulawesi. It is the oldest art work known to date in the entire world. Someone later drew a pig on the wall 5,000 years later near the hand. Speaking of art, we should mention that the entire island of Sulawesi (formerly called Celebes) looks like a stencil of an elephant standing on two legs with its mouth wide open. Not to be out done by others, one group of artists left some 400 stone carved megaliths between 3,000 BC and 1,300 AD on Sulawesi Island. In general, each group that found its way to Indonesia brought its unique language and culture so that by today there are 300 ethnic groups with 742 languages and dialects spoken in Indonesia with the official language being Bahasa Indonesia.

 

Most of the islands were Islamic by the time the Dutch became nuts about nutmeg, cloves, and cubeb pepper and therefore claimed this area their own as The Netherlands East Indies and later The Dutch East Indies. Imperial Japan took control from 1942-1945 and divided Indonesia into three regions. During the three years of Imperial Japanese occupation some estimated four million or more Indonesians died of forced labor, forced prostitution, or famine. Sultans, intellectuals, as well as 30,000 Europeans were either murdered or sentenced to death and anything of value was shipped back to Japan or to other locations in the ever-expanding Japanese Empire. After the war ended, Indonesia gained independence, but there was later a protracted battle with the Communist Party (PKI) during which time 500,000 people were killed during the anti-communist purge. A political settlement was reached in 2005 and things have been comparatively peaceful in recent times for this diverse yet united tropical island nation. It’s interesting to note, that now the top five visitors of Indonesia are from Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, China, and Japan.

  

So now you might be thinking, sure Indonesia’s enchanted and a one of a kind paradise with a very interesting history, but what about the 500 plus dive sites that we’ve heard about? And for this reason we are going to focus on the northern tip of the island of Sulawesi. Here on the Eastside we have Eco Divers Lembeh with access to over 50 dive sites in the Lembeh Straight, which separates Lembeh Island from the Sulawesi mainland. This area is considered the “muck diving” capital of the world.  Here with a backdrop of black lava, a macro world of pygmy seahorses, pipefish, frogfish, and several unique and bizarre species of octopus, and other invertebrates steal the show on every dive.

  

On the west side of North Sulawesi is the capital city of Manado and nearby  the oceanfront Minahasa Lagoon Resort and Eco Divers Manado. From the resort you are close to Bunaken National Park which is comprised of five islands: Bunaken, Manado Tua, Nain, Mantehage, and Siladen. Were not sure if this marine preserve is more famous for its wall dives where you can see giant clams, black tip sharks, white tip sharks, sea turtles, and eagle rays, or its famous because of the local species of brown coelacanth fish they found living just beyond the reef walls in deeper water.

  

Lobed fin coelacanths have been around here for over 485 million years and they were thought extinct for 65 million years until they were seen as the catch of the day in a local market in Manado Tua in 1997, and just like the Indonesian dugong, and 200 million year old chambered nautilus, coelacanths have become ambassadors of Indonesia’s marine life.

 

We will mention more about these resorts and some of the top dive sites in “Part Two” of our North Sulawesi expedition. Suffice it to say, it won’t be easy, as a country with black sand beaches, white sand beaches, sand dunes, mangroves, estuaries, coral reefs, sea grass beds, coastal mudflats, algae beds, thousands of small islands, and a few large islands where even elephants run freely is hard to cover with just one pair of fins and booties.

For information on exclusive dive travel offers, competitive airfare, and how you can visit North Sulawesi, Indonesia, please contact us or CLICK HERE

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North American Aquarium Diving

 

North American Aquarium Diving

There may be times when you find yourself in a another city either due to work, visiting relatives, or just because you wanted to get away, explore, and play. If this happens to you, and you can’t bring all your dive gear, and yet you are looking for something a little more exciting than viewing goldfish in hotel lobby aquariums then we thought you might like the following list of relatively convenient yet definitely unusual dive sites.

Sure, this list is all about aquariums, but ones so big, diver friendly, and filled with sharks and other exotic creatures that you may have to rethink how you classify the seven seas. So, starting off our list of potential dive sites in a semi-random pattern from east to west this is what we have discovered so far.

Long Island Aquarium. This must be one of the easiest dives in the world. They provide everything for you including a mask with underwater communication abilities and you don’t even have to be a certified diver. A trained shark dive instructor goes with you inside a shark cage, which is lowered, into the 120,000 gallon Lost City of Atlantis shark exhibit. Besides a 12ft long trident, pillars, and remnants of the lost city, you just might see sand tiger sharks, nurse sharks, moray eels, grouper and a 300lb turtle named “Jaws”. This adventure also includes a souvenir beach towel and an emailed photograph of you diving. www.longislandaquarium.com

Baltimore’s National Aquarium. Be a guest diver in the 335,000-gallon Atlantic Coral Reef Tank. This is an authentic fabricated oval reef with some 500 plus fish, rays, and sharks. The 13ft deep dive is operated by Atlantic Edge scuba school and dive shop in Gathersburg. You must be certified and bring you own wetsuit, mask, snorkel, and fins. After the dive don’t miss the new 225,000-gallon Blacktip Reef exhibit with 793 different fish and sharks.www.aqua.org

North Carolina Aquarium at Roanoke Island. The “Dive with the Sharks” program allows you to dive with sand tigers, sandbar, nurse sharks, and a replica of the USS Monitor ship in a 285,000-gallon “Graveyard of the Atlantic” exhibit. You can have photos and a video made of you experience. They have two dive sessions each weekday and one session on Saturday and Sunday. All gear is supplied and you must be a certified diver.www.ncaquariums.com/roanoke-island

The Georgia Aquarium. Here you can dive with whale sharks, the largest fish in the world, in the largest indoor habitat that we know of. The Ocean Voyager exhibit built by Home Depot is 284ft x 126ft and 20-30ft deep and holds about 6.3 million gallons of seawater. It’s a chance to dive with up to 4 whale sharks, rays almost 9 feet wide, and 1,000 other fish. They supply all the gear, but you can bring your own mask if you want and you have to show your dive certification card. www.georgiaaquarium.org

The Epcot Dive Quest at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. The Caribbean Coral Reef is 5.7 millions gallons of saltwater fun and includes over 6,000 sea creatures, which is more sea life than you might see on a natural reef. For swimming with sharks and rays you need to have a C-card, but not the for the Dolphins in Depth program. Diving here is one of those “book early, book everything, and book often, adventure sites”, but would you expect anything less from a Mickey Mouse operation? https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/events-tours/epcot/epcot-divequest/

The Florida Aquarium in Tampa, Florida. The Dive with the Sharks program operates in a 93,000-gallon tank called “Sharks Bay”. The dives are 3 times daily and you can basically kneel in the sand and watch the teeth glide by you. Were talking teeth attached to sand tigers, zebra sharks, nurse sharks, and black tip sharks. A paired Florida Aquarium divemaster makes sure you have a fun and safe dive. Bring a mask, towel, swimsuit, and C-card. www.flaquarium.org

SEA Life Minnesota Aquarium at Mall of America. SEA Life has two really cool exhibit dives. Atlantis is their Saltwater dive and you will swim in a tank of sand tigers, nurse sharks, huge bowmouth guitarfish, large sawfish, wobbegongs, white tips, zebra sharks, and more. You glide right over the tunnel of people peering inside the exhibit and it’s fun to pick shark teeth up right out of the sandy substrate and show the families walking through the tunnel what you found. The second dive in Sturgeon Lake is an unexpectedly fun dive, especially if they are feeding the turtle and fish. You’ll never experience outdoor lake diving with this degree of clarity nor this docile concentration of alligator gar, walleye, sturgeon, and bass. Bring all your dive gear including C-card, gloves, and a hood. SEA Life supplies tanks and weights. After the dives you get a souvenir T-shirt and you can keep all the shark teeth you find.

www.visitsealife.com/minnesota/experiences/

Great Lakes Aquarium, Duluth, Minnesota. The “Dive-N-Feed Experience”, may not be found on the website, but it’s still occasionally offered on special request with plenty of advance notice. Here is a chance to feed freshwater fish and dive in a two story, three chambered, Isle Royale exhibit with Steelhead, kamloops, brown, coaster brook, and lake trout. Also, Siscowet lake trout, burbot, Atlantic salmon, coho salmon, sturgeon, walleye, longnose suckers, and American eels. They have over 100 Great Lake species in all. Bring your C-card and dive gear to keep you warm in the 52ºF 45,000-gallon main tank. Caution, diving here may lead to you becoming an active volunteer diver too. http://glaquarium.org/

Downtown Aquarium, Denver, Colorado. There are several ways to dive this aquarium, but all are done in conjunction with A-1 Scuba and Travel. For certified divers you can dive with the fish in the “Under the Sea” exhibit, and Dive with the Sharks in the “Depths of the Pacific” exhibit. If your not scuba certified, dive students training with A-1 Scuba and Travel may complete open water dives 1 & 2 at the aquarium, so call A-1 for more information on any of their aquarium dive programs. www.divedowntown.com

Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, Nevada. Their “Dive with the Sharks” program is available for guests staying at Mandalay Bay. Now just about any marine biologist or batfish going blind from nematode infection will tell you that Shark Reef has had several unfortunate die offs in the last unlucky seven years from eels, sea turtles, schooling fish, and sharks. Fortunately, after the main circular lobby tank sprang leaks, the fish and sharks from this exhibit were transferred to the tank where the cow rays recently died off, so it all looks good to passing tourists, but concern about alleged reports about a shark left on the loading dock over a weekend and becoming injured, to not being able to dive 48 hours in the salt water after being chemically treated for parasites, and sharks with visible signs of parasitic infection, or showing signs of abnormal behavior still seem to plague Shark Reef, but hopefully a team of marine biologists can turn all this around soon, as Mandalay Bay Resort is one of the best beach resorts in Las Vegas. www.mandalaybay.com

Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach, California. Daily dives into the 350,000-gallon Tropical Reef Habitat ;swim with over 1000 fish, use an underwater camera, and get a souvenir towel and memory card all combine to make this a fun dive. All equipment is provided, but you can bring your own mask and booties. Must be certified and see age restrictions. www.aquariumofpacific.org

Oregon Coast Aquarium, Newport, Oregon. People come here annually to this 23-acre Pacific marine wildlife attraction. Passages of the Deep is considered the best shore dive on the Oregon coast. This was the former home of Keiko the Orca whale and the site was transformed into three ecosystems so you can dive 26ft deep at Halibut flats with skates, sturgeon, and rockfish, or sit on a 13ft ledge or dive with the big sharks like the 10ft long Broadnose Sevengill shark at the Open Sea Exhibit. Eugene Skin Divers Supply operates the underwater dives. Must be open water certified. http://aquarium.org/

Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, Tacoma, Washington. Their “Eye to Eye with Sharks” program just started last year, but it’s a big hit with those that have experienced it. They actually have two dives in this 240,000-gallon tank, one is a cage dive for non-certified divers, and a scuba dive for those that are certified divers. The sandbar tiger sharks, nurse sharks, and even the wobbegongs here are some of the biggest you may ever see close up and personal. Dives are available Fridays through Mondays up to four times daily. All gear is supplied for these dives, and you will wear drysuits, so you can wear street clothes on underneath and keep them dry without need of a towel except for hair, but they’ve got that covered with a souvenir towel! No personal cameras are allowed. www.pdza.org/dive

Maui Ocean Center, The Hawaiian Aquarium. The Open Ocean exhibit has 750,000-gallons of salt water, 20 sharks, stingrays, and thousands of fish. Open to divers three days a week except holidays. They supply weight belts and tanks; you bring everything else. Why dive an aquarium in paradise? Guaranteed sightings of sharks! A constant rotation of sea creatures with those in the nearby natural native waters makes every visit here unique. Reservations required and you get to keep the shark teeth that you find in the sandy substrate. www.mauioceancenter.com

Now it’s quite possible that this list is ever changing and hopefully forever expanding. Keep in mind that available days of diving and the frequency of dives may change for any location. Most locations give you a tour of their backstage areas and a glimpse of other animals not normally seen by the general public. This includes breeding pools of fish, and species specifically raised to trade with other zoos and aquariums. A briefing on the dives and in depth information on fish, sharks, and local ecosystems may also be provided. The total tour time could take 3 to 4 hours. Sharing these dives with family members will create life long memories whether they go on the dives with you or look in from the other side of the clear acrylic wall. We hope you get a chance to take part in some or all of these unique diving opportunities.

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Destination Spotlight: Bonaire

Just 50 miles north of Venezuela and about 38 miles east of Curacao, lies a 24-mile long island with some of most beautiful and well protected dive sites in the world. We’re talking about Bonaire, of course. And if you haven’t experienced it for yourself just yet, this post might be the nudge you’ve been waiting for!

We’ve got the skinny on real 24/7 diving (we knew you’d love that), exquisitely preserved marine life, attractions and activities and some history for all you yesteryear junkies.

It just would have been wrong to keep this all to ourselves, so here it is, your virtual trip to beautiful Bonaire.

Diving Bonaire

As a result of submarine volcanic eruptions (millions of years ago, don’t worry!), Bonaire is the peak of a submerged mountain with sloping fringing reefs that are very close to shore. In addition, the dives are considered to be some of the best in the world. Bonaire has more #1 rankings from divers in the Caribbean including best shore diving for 20 years, best advanced/beginner and best macro/underwater photography.

Why?

We’ll tell ya!

Visibility is AMAZING: the underwater visibility is over 100 feet year-round and most of Bonaire’s 86 marked dive sites can either be accessed from the shore or are no more than 15 minutes away via boat. Since almost every dive is from a moored dive site, Bonaire’s appeal is from the newest to most experienced diver. So get your fins and cameras ready!

Over 360 different fish species: tons to see + clear waters, seriously what more could a diver ask for? From seahorses to turtles, nurse sharks, eels, angelfish, damselfish, peacock flounder and the not so occasional pelagic, the fish life is extensive. There are also tons of extensive colorful coral, sponges, crabs, mollusks and invertebrates. You’ll just have to see for yourself.

Truly unlimited diving: one of the best things about Bonaire is that you can pretty much get into a car and drive to one of about twenty dive sites and dive in. But most dive resorts (and there are many) allow you to dive when you want. Whether it’s 3am or noon, you can grab a tank and in one giant stride (or take the less climactic ladder) you’re moments away from the beautiful reefs and diving freedom. Want more? Then explore 80 dive sites from their custom dive boats.

Some popular dives include:

  • Forest (Klein Bonaire)
  • Invisibles
  • Margate Bay
  • Hilma Hooker
  • Hands Off (Klein Bonaire)

Oh! And for all our certified Nitrox divers, the resorts on the island offer Nitrox.

Green Life

Bonaire takes pride in being one of the world’s most beautiful treasures, which is why it’sdetermined to protect its natural resources. All of the waters surrounding Bonaire and the uninhabited Klein Bonaire or “Little Bonaire” have been named Marine Parks since 1979. To maintain and preserve the natural environment spearfishing and reef anchoring are strictly prohibited. Collecting seashells, sea fans, sand and any type of coral are also against the law.

Underwater environmentalist Captain Don Stewart (Captain Don’s Habitat’s founder) was also at the forefront of environmentally sound developments and reflected this love in his resort. This continues today from the low impact construction methods, to the use of solar water heaters and energy saving devices, as well as a state of the art wastewater treatment system, every detail has been designed to have the least possible impact on the local environment.

Topside

Bonaire is rich in beautiful fauna and flora, so it’s perfectly okay to want to spend some time outside the water too. So what can you do around an island that does not have a single traffic light?

Here are some awesome topside activities:

Windsurfing at Lac Bay: the peaceful, protected lagoon at Lac Bay is the perfect spot for windsurfing with clear, waist-deep water at a constant 15-25 knots per hour winds.

Flamingo Watching at the Salt Flats: THE place to watch flamingos, there are thousands, is at the salt ponds in the National Park at Goto Meer or at the southern end of the island at the solar salt works. Every day at sunset, the entire flock flies back to Venezuela for feeding. A beautiful not-to-be-missed sight.

Washington Slagbaai National Park: A truly natural and dramatic terrain which offers excellent snorkeling and subtle discoveries but don’t feed the Iguanas!

Kralendijk: The Capital City: Bonaire’s capital is a quite town of colorful, well preserved buildings. Only a few blocks in size, you can sightsee the island’s highlights such as: Fort Organje, Queen Wilhemina Park, Government House and the mini Greek temple-style fruit and veggie market. The city also offers a variety of bars and restaurants that offer authentic dishes that blend the best of European and the Americas cuisine and drinks.

Come visit the most diver rewarded destination in the Caribbean and you will discover why Bonaire has the highest percentage of diver repeat visitors.

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What to Expect From Your First Liveaboard

I still remember the first time I decided to plunge into something new and book my first liveaboard charter.  None of my dive buddies wanted to join me, so I grabbed my gear and set sail alone. There are far too many places to discover in the world to pass this up!  I must admit that the excitement of exploring a new underwater environment was paired with a little fear of what I might encounter on my first ever liveaboard . I’m sharing my experiences with you all in the hopes that it will encourage you to try a dive liveaboard yourself!

Choosing the Right Liveaboard for Me

First thing I did was start looking into companies that offered liveaboard sailings and, being a single female traveling alone decided that there were a few things that I absolutely had to have:

  • Hot showers after every dive
  • Private/semi-private cabin (I would be willing to share with another female)
  • My meals prepared for me (I do not cook willingly even at home)
  • Dive masters in the water and available for me to dive with
  • English speaking crew
  • Nitrox; as I was recently Nitrox certified and wanted to use it
On board the Maldives Aggressor.

On board the Maldives Aggressor.

So after checking out many different dive liveaboards with exciting destinations, I decided that the Aggressor Fleet offered all this and more. The booking procedure was easy and once handled, I was expertly guided to the Cayman Islands where I began my first of over 25 LiveAboard trips aboard these dive boats.

Travel Tip: There is no extra charge if you are willing to share a cabin with another passenger of the same gender,  but you can also get yourself a private cabin for a single supplement charge.

A Week Aboard a Resort Afloat

Carib-Dancer-

Courtesy of  Aggressor Fleet

Every morning I woke up on top of some of the world’s best diving sites where I could experience multiple dives daily.  My relaxing charter vacation included personal touches like:

  • Delicious snacks between meals
  • Warm freshwater showers
  • Pampered service from an attentive crew
  • Fun with other divers onboard and more – all for a great price

Put simply, it was a week aboard a floating resort.

What to Look For

Knowledgeable Divemasters

When researching liveaboard charters, make sure they have divemasters that will accompany you on every dive and also offer instruction and guidance as needed. My charter had Divemasters, (who are also instructors) that accompanied me on every dive and were eager to help me locate resident critters for my prize-winning photographs. Which was great because I could snap my own version of those Dive Magazine photos I’m always gawking at.

All-Inclusive Packages

Try to find a liveaboard package that includes everything for you like: diving, deluxe accommodations, chef prepared meals, snacks, soft beverages, even local beer and wine so once you are aboard you literally have nothing to worry about.

Licensed and Trained Professionals

Captain and Divers

Make sure your liveaboard has licensed, professional trained mariners. They should also be equipped with safety equipment and an expert crew that is well trained. This was important in making me feel a little better about traveling on my own.

Eco-friendly Living and Diving

Marine conservation is key for me. So one of my criteria for choosing a charter was that they would be environmentally friendly. That’s another reason why I went with Aggressor Fleet.  Many of their dives are conducted within marine sanctuaries and UNESCO World Heritage locations.  This enables pristine diving now and measures to ensure it remains the same for future divers.

Thanks to Sharon Connor for sharing her experiences on her first liveaboard.  There are over 70 dive liveaboards available worldwide from Maduro Dive.

 

 

 

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