Since our arrival in Indonesia we’ve been hearing about Raja Ampat. People say it’s one of the best places in the world for diving, with lots of beautiful reefs and the opportunity to see a huge variety of creatures. So, with Indonesian tourist destinations still offering pandemic discounts, we decided to check it out.
We flew direct from Jakarta to Sorong and then took a boat about two hours from Sorong to the resort. We were delighted with our bungalow (pondok in Indonesian). It is built in traditional local style out over the water by people from the nearby village. One of the best aspects of the resort was the hammock on a covered part of the deck, and a second section with lounge chairs where we spent each night stargazing.
We hadn’t been diving in about 5 years, so we did a refresher course and ended up doing 6 dives over the course of three days. It was nice to try out diving again, and we managed to see quite a few things. The highlight was probably our dive at Manta Rocks. We went down to about 15m and then sat on the bottom and waited for 5-10 minutes before the mantas started to appear. A huge one (maybe 10-12 feet across) swam right over Adam. We saw 4-5 of these beautiful creatures. It was pretty unreal, since visibility wasn’t great that day and so it was like a huge shadow would appear out of the darkness and seem to fly over the top of us and around.
We also saw a number of sea turtles, stingrays, black tip reef sharks (mostly they were in the shallows under the resort restaurant!), and a couple of different types of nudibranch. On one dive the guide pointed out tiny, blue and almost transparent shrimp.
The other thing that Raja Ampat is known for is birds of paradise – the birds, not the flower. We took the opportunity one morning to view the crimson bird of paradise. It lives on the island where the resort is located. To get there, we left the resort about an hour before dawn and took a short boat ride to the nearby village. There, we met our guide, an older villager. He and another man walked us up into the forest above the village. We walked about a half hour to a spot in the forest where the village has set up some rudimentary benches. We sat in the darkness listening to a cacophony of bird calls as the sky slowly got lighter. Eventually, a tree overhead took shape, and at some point 7-8 crimson birds of paradise flew in. There was at least one male, and a bunch of females. Of course, we don’t yet have binoculars, and they were up in the trees, so our view was limited. But we could see enough to understand that the male was doing his mating dance. We saw the long plumes from the male’s tail and his wings and body moving around in the dance. We sat and watched the birds, just in awe. It was so cool! We were very lucky. Eventually, our guide said, “It’s 7:00.” And it was time to go. The birds actually never flew away – we just left them in the forest as we made our way back to the village.
We also did a lot of snorkeling. We pretty much decided after three days that, while we’d seen a lot, we were kind of done with diving. We did a couple of snorkeling trips on boats, but we also just went out in front of the resort. At high tide we could swim from the deck of our bungalow. We haven’t used our underwater camera setup in a while, and it was fun to try it out again during our relaxed snorkeling sessions by the resort.
It was a wonderful week, and of course the end of the week came all too soon. We are so grateful for the time we spent in Raja Ampat. One of the opportunities we’ve had during the pandemic is to see these places with almost no one else around. We were one of a maximum of 11 people at the resort the whole time we were there, and we never saw another boat at a dive site. It was a truly magical time for us. We will remember the corals, the sharks, the mantas, the birds of paradise, the sea turtles, and many, many colorful fish. We will also remember an incredibly peaceful stay in a beautiful pandok over the water.
