Since I’m currently between jobs, I decided to take advantage of the downtime to experience some diving at Bunaken, Indonesia. Ves was away in Canada enjoying the cold weather with her family so I was looking for something to while away my time – and what better way is there besides diving?
So where is Bunaken?
Bunaken is located near Manado, and is also pretty near the macro-famous Lembeh Straits. However, since I wanted a bigger variety of diving besides just macro, I decided on Bunaken instead.
Choosing Froggies
There are a few dive operators on Bunaken island, such as Two Fish Divers, Bastianos and Living Colours. However as a solo traveler, many of the other dive resorts had really expensive single supplement charges and/or a lack of air conditioning, which to me is really a quality of life requirement while on holiday in the tropics (I don’t go on vacation to suffer!)
You can go to their website to see the latest price list, but what sealed the deal for me was the low single supplement charge since I was travelling alone.
The resort
Froggies had some really nice and cosy air-conditioned and non air-conditioned cabins available – I of course chose the air conditioned ones. The shower/sink water provided in the cabins isn’t really fresh; what comes out of the taps is filtered sea water which is not as salty as the sea, but still not truly fresh. This results in your skin feeling sticky even after showers and also why I insisted on having an air-conditioned room – because air conditioning helps to reduce stickiness quite a lot.
If you want to know some tips to survive saltwater showers, click here.
Froggies divers provides full-board accommodation, which means that all 3 meals are provided in your stay. The meal times are more or less tied to the dive schedule, with Breakfast at 7am, Lunch at 1pm and Dinner at 7pm.
For breakfast you have a choice of Indonesian delights such as Nasi Goreng or Mie Goreng, but there are also Western style dishes such as pancakes available. There is no option to choose during lunch or dinner, but the 3-course meal options were always interesting and delicious, starting with soup, then the main course, and a dessert which was usually fruits (though some days special desserts were provided).
The diving
Now the real reason I came to Bunaken wasn’t really for the resort, but the diving – and it didn’t disappoint, but of course it isn’t mind-blowing like you can expect from Raja Ampat or the Maldives. Visibility was almost always pretty good at 8-15m even though it was raining every single day I was there (it’s not the rainy season, I was unlucky).
Almost every dive I had was a wall and/or drift dive, and the corals were very healthy and pristine, along with hundreds of reef fish swimming about happily on every single dive. On a few dives we also managed to see the usual reef sharks (Black tips, White tips) and an Eagle ray, along with plenty of turtles.
There is one particular dive site, Ron’s point, which gives you a pretty high chance of seeing pelagics (I saw most of the sharks, rays and barracudas at this site) but it is not for beginners. In the time I was there, precise buoyancy control and strong finning was required so that you would not be pushed around by the current. I could literally see small reef fish being swept away by the currents just 2 metres above my head, and only by strategically positioning yourself (close to the reef, hiding behind rock outcrops etc) you can manage to move about comfortably with the strong currents. It was a pretty challenging dive but the rewards are really great. I would dive there again if I could (I found it fun and exciting).
And also because of the dive site above, I believe in the experience of the Froggies divemasters – the DM I followed, Iwan, knew how to navigate this tricky area and kept me safe throughout (though he was also panting a little bit by the end of the dive…).
The dive boat was of a good size, and due to the off-season, sometimes it was just me on the boat. The shelter provided on the boat was a good respite from the constant drizzle that we were experiencing.
How to get there
From Singapore, there is an (expensive) direct flight via Silkair (which will probably change to Scoot in the future) to Manado airport, the closest airport to Bunaken Island. Alternatively, travellers can connect via Jakarta airport to Manado with Garuda Indonesia which is a little cheaper. No matter how you get to Manado, if you are diving with Froggies and most other resorts, they would be happy to arrange the to-and-fro transfers for you. With Froggies it was 20 euros each way, which actually to me is a little expensive if I were to be travelling as a group, but since they sent a car and a boat just for little old me, I could hardly complain.
