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Indonesia is a huge country...and getting anywhere a little remote is asking for some serious efforts. If...if only there was direct flight from Bali to Berau, the closest airport from Derawan/Sangalaki...we would speak of just above a 2 hours flight. But here it is...there is no direct flight!
first to clarify. Sangalaki may be the best known island. I will come back to the diving later on. But it is actually the little archipelago called the Derawan islands...and I'm staying on the main island of Derawan for 5 nights.
Getting from home in Bali to Derawan took me 48 hours door-to-door on the way up, and a good 15 hours on the way down. Derawan is in the Kalimantan province, on the East of Borneo. For those in the know, we speak of around 200kms South of Sipadan in Malaysia. I've done twice Sipadan.
Few airlines around in Inodnesia. It's either Garuda/Citilink, or Batik/Lion Air/Wing air, or if available Air Asia...and those are all operated domestically mainly as low cost model...and a full fare price! Airports are ok but nothing to brag about, so I would not call flying around Indonesia as
the most memoralbe experience.
To go up, the is a direct Denpasar-Balikpapan on Lion Air. 100 minutes flight...on time...made it mid-afternoon to the biggest city of Borneo Indonesia. I went walking around the city sea/center front. Truly not much to write about this place. I'm staying in the old but still decently maintained Novotel. Let say this would do it for the night. Next morning, early breakfast, 20 minutes ride to the airport, and I'm on a ATR72 propeller plane by Wings air to Berau. Here be warn, you pay per kilo and from the first kilo any check-in back. It is an 80 minutes flight. Went well till we arrived to Berau. The plane tried the first landing...aborted 500 meters from the runway. I didn't see why. Try again few minutes later...aborted again 500 meters from the runway. This time I saw a plane on the runway...welcome to Borneo! The third attempt would be the successful one!
Berau is a huge place for coal, open pit mining...pretty impressive from the air...but one more time, nothing of real interest in the little city. I would share the taxi ride with two more divers heading
for Scuba Junkie Derawan. It's a smooth...full of potholes road to the pier. Good we stopped in town to pick up one or two snacks ahead. We made it to the pier for a smooth 30 minutes ride on a tiny boat with a single engine. Arrived not that fresh...and happy to settle well in a cool resort with super cool staff!
Before writing of the diving and stay experience for the next few days, let me jump on the way back to Bali. did it in a single day...pretty exhausting one. Left Derawan at 7am. there is a need to leave ample transfer time due to...well, it's Borneo after all! Today the only flying available is Berau-Balikpapan-Surabaya-Denpasar. First flight was 1 hour late....they were fixing one of the propeller...so happy we made it! No idea if I would have the connection...as nobody is communicating and at best they are lying. So next flight was also one hour and this time half hour more late...no problem! Made it closer to home to Surabaya. One more time, no communication, if not few lies...and made it to Bali with just three hours delay. Maybe I should add, actually I
was happy I could do it in a single day...and I have not experienced many planes on time in the past 8 months in Indonesia!
So here we are....Derawan, the diving, and Scuba Junkie resort.
As explained earlier, the Derawan Archipelago is a set of few islands...and when it comes to diving, it's about Derawan....slope dives with lot of macro...Sangalaki, top coral boomies and mantas...Kakaban, the jelly fish lake, barracudas and wall diving and finally Matarua with more wall diving and tons of turtle...
The trick is to hope the resort will be full enough to be able to dive the 4 islands. Sangalaki is 45 minutes from Derawan, and Matarua and Kabakan around 1 hours with the diving boat away...so there is an obvious need of minimum divers to cover the fuel cost. The first 2 days...there was only three of us. good news, more joined for my last two days, so I did in this order Derawan, Sangalaki, Kakaban and finally Matarua.
The is no resort in Kakaban, there is a basic resort in Sangalaki. Matarua has few resorts, even a small airfield for chartered propellers...and
link to this...a much higher price tag than Derawan.
On Derawan, Scuba junkie seems the only international standard place running diving. Prices are not bottom low....but for what you get, it's actually a super nice deal! We got a basic breakfast each morning, and the prepared lunch was super nice Indonesian stapples.
They have 7 overwater bungalows...and one bungalow that they have converted in a 4 beds dorm. So no crowds around here!! Bed is super comfy, there is aircon...and a hot shower plus decent wifi connection!
We had two nights with storms...so that was a pretty bumpy experience! Finding food each night was much more a challenge the first few nights, but I got in my routine pretty fast. It's all about Nasi Goreng and whatever you can find else. This place being solid muslim, there is no alcohol in restaurants...but a small shop is selling fresh beer and you are welcome to bring it with your for your meal! Nice!
The diving...
Sangalaki is well-known for Mantas....we had one doing a single passage on our first dive...but...
Sangalaki corals are in solid
beautiful conditions for now. So tons of little fishes and soft plus hard corals with a more than dicent visibility. Water is currently at 30 degrees....so let's hope El Nino is not going to happen as predicted, because 2 degrees more on these corals would be a very very bad idea!
Derawan was all about little blue spotted sting rays running around, many turtles and a lot of super little macro life!
Kakaban, it's wall dive to the best, top drifts, hundred of barracudas. The island has also a huge interior lake where you can swim with jelly fishes. They don't stink. Did it few time in Palau. They have way more jellies in Palau but experience was still fun.
Maratua, we saw a single little white tip shark and the guide went ballistic...so it tells you not to expect much on the big stuff things. We had a super cool encounter with cuttle fishes laying eggs...super cool! On our last dive, I must have seen between 50 to 100 turtles...I've never encounter so many of them in a single dive...just magic!
The morning I left, they went to snorkel with whale sharks. They
had two of them. I'm a spoiled diver and have seen tons of them...so if it's on diving...I'm all in...but not much interest for me to go snorkeling with them again.
And this is it...another week exploring another corner of our planet. This week is all about golfing around Bali...and more...
Next week....back to Africa! Safe travel and hope life is good with you!
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