Under a clear blue sky with a lush jungle backdrop Otto, our Papuan dive guide counted ‘Satu, Dua, Tiga!” and six of us back rolled off the side of the boat.
As we descended, a seemingly jumbled mess of coral and fish, fish, and more fish greeted us from below. Nothing had prepared us for this spectacle, a school of about fifty, over-sized barracuda cast us a weary eye, schools and schools of sweetlips and jacks, fusiliers and triggerfish, massive bumphead parrot fish and surgeonfish cajoled above coral reefs that seemed to move in waves of yellow, red and purple.
A cacophony of sound reached our ears, so loud that not even our thunderous breathing could drown it out.Amid glimpses of black tip reef sharks in the distance, we heard a huge fluttering sound as giant trevallys swooped into a school of ten thousand fusiliers, and giant dogtooth tuna patrolled the outer edges of the swirling mass of marine life… like a grand opera stuck in its thundering crescendo with all the instruments in use at the same time… We were awe struck, confused and overwhelmed. How could it be real?
This was the jaw dropping spectacle of the ebb and flow of Raja Ampat, the underwater wonder of the world.
Raja Ampat or ‘Four Kings’ refers to the four major islands Waigeo, Batanta, Salawati and Misool, which are part of an archipelago of roughly 600 islands located off the Northwestern tip of Indonesia’s West Papua province. As per folklore, they were ruled by four ‘Rajas’ during the 15th century.
These islands form part of the coral triangle at the heart of the world’s coral reef biodiversity. The reefs have astounded marine biologists. All previous fish and coral records have been obliterated by the species counts of the Raja Ampat.
Today the only ‘Raja’ you are bound to meet, is the dashing Dutchman Max Ammer who developed the only land based diving operation in the area on Kri Island.
A modern day Indiana Jones, he is a true pioneer and adventurer extraordinaire, and regaled us with stories of daredevil jungle escapades, miraculous near death exploits and discoveries of war paraphernalia.
Charisma oozing from every pore, Max is a fountain of information having been around these parts for more than 15 years and is held in high esteem by the locals.
The Resort
Connected by long wooden walkways, Kri eco resort’s water bungalows perch precariously on hardwood stilts. Built entirely from local materials - bamboo, hardwood and palm fronds; each room provides the bare essentials: a comfortable bed covered in mosquito netting, an electric light (24hr electricity), mirror, fan and a table or two. The ‘windows’ have hinged flaps that can be opened for a cool breeze and to usher in the sounds of the tropical night. The ‘door’ slides closed for privacy – no keys on this island!
Short walks from the water bungalows, are western style toilets kept spotlessly clean throughout the day, and Papuan style ‘mandi’, a water tank with a scoop for washing.
The water is pumped out of the ground and is brackish, and after a day or two your skin responds positively to this exotic way of cleansing, while your hair becomes silky and shiny.
Only 500 meters away around the cape is the new and super luxurious Sorido bay resort for those who want all the comforts of home. At the time of writing three bungalows were already in use with another two well on the way to completion.
A reverse osmosis system provides the guest with sweet pure water and lovely hot showers. Air-conditioning cools you down should the ocean breeze not be enough.
For those who can’t live without their television, you have been catered for, and finally if the sounds of the jungle become too much, a DVD player will drown those out too!
Also included is a mini bar with ice-cold beers and cold drinks, even a choice of chocolate treats!
We stayed one week at Kri, and the second week at Sorido, however we still interacted with the guests at Kri and even enjoyed our dives together.
Included were three meals a day that were more than sufficient, tasty, wholesome and wonderfully free from the trappings of modern western society. The staff also plied us with fruit and cookies, sweet cakes, hot chocolate, tea and coffee between dives! We planned to lose weight and actually gained some
Dive sites are often described in the same old way and yes there were mantas, wobbegongs, untouched soft and hard corals, massive live clams, incredible quantities of sea life, sharks and rays, various species of undiscovered pygmy seahorses and nudibranchs amongst the diversity of macro life, etc etc so we will not bore you with a description of each and every creature sighted- these are after all the world’s richest reefs, proven and documented!
Suffice to say the intensity and sheer numbers of what we witnessed was mesmerizing. An veritable underwater photographer’s dreamland!
We had the pleasure of sharing our dives with a well-known Italian couple, part-time travel journalists and authors of numerous fish guides and coffee table books.
These lovely people have been diving in the Indo pacific for the last 20 years and are to say the least, well ‘dived’(!); this is what Andrea and Antonella Ferrari had to say at the end of their first day’s dives as we headed back to the resort: “This is not just a notch above any other place we have dived, it is several notches above.”
We stayed for 17days diving three dives per day. We were able to repeat our favorite dive sites – something we would not have been able to do on a live aboard.
Each morning we would wake up to the exotic call of wild parrots in the jungle and we became acutely aware of the total absence of mechanical sounds, no cars, no planes and no power boats, just the gentle lap of tiny waves rolling up on shore and the occasional whoosh! of trevallys swooping in to feed on the giant schools of baitfish in the shallows. This is true paradise, not dollied up by some rich developer but designed by Mother Nature, awe inspiring in its purity and spectacle.
As we stood on the jetty that last evening, facing yet another magnificent sunset, each of us was lost in thought….We had just experienced the very best diving this planet has to offer. There was this feeling deep inside one gets after being one of the fortunate few to witness heart stopping beauty and jaw dropping spectacle. This must be akin to what mountaineers feel when conquering Mount Everest or surfers after riding the biggest wave on the North shore of Hawaii.
For us, diving will never be the same again. We discovered the holy grail of diving.
Raja Ampat is not yet another new place to jot down in your dive log; it is THE place for diving and merits more than one visit.
So make your way off the beaten track to the beautiful Raja Ampat. Feed your soul and return renewed, inspired and complete.
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