We spent a week in Walea December 2008. We combin ...
We spent a week in Walea December 2008. We combined the trip with a stay at Gangga
in North Sulawesi which was splendid and expected a lot from Walea since it had been sold to us by our dive travel agent as very special. You fly to Luwuk with a small aircraft
from Manado then on to a car for 2,5 hours and after a 1,5 h speedboat transfer to the island . The island is really nice and the resort very tastefully and lovingly furnished. The individual bungalows are directly on the shore and you might have to wade through seawater lapping onto your doorstep to get to the open plan restaurant. Very nice food for lunch and dinner but small breakfast. Now to the diving. This turned out to be slightly disappointing.
Very nice and healthy coral and lots of large barrel sponges but not much fish. Only one place with lots of current and a dephts of around 38 metres had large fish swarms including yellowfin tuna, bumphead parrotfish and groupers and some small whitetip reef sharks. We were in the water the next day when some fishermen illegaly dynamited a neighbouring reef. Lots of dead fish drifted on the surface afterwards which might explain the lack of fish on the reefs . The critter count was good so with pygmy seahorses, ghostpipefish, lots of nudibranchs and mandarin fish...so not a bad place for macro fotography. Organization was haphazard with several deep dives below 40 metres and no appropriate surface interval and also no first aid kit on the boats . The dive briefings could have been better .Surface intervals were far too short between dives sometimes only 30 to 35 minutes so we would be back on time for lunch! Diving on the housereef was free which is good but they charged you an extra 30 US dollars if you were not out of the water by 6 pm. So all in all a mixed experience . In my opinion there are better places for diving in Sulawesi.
in North Sulawesi which was splendid and expected a lot from Walea since it had been sold to us by our dive travel agent as very special. You fly to Luwuk with a small aircraft
from Manado then on to a car for 2,5 hours and after a 1,5 h speedboat transfer to the island . The island is really nice and the resort very tastefully and lovingly furnished. The individual bungalows are directly on the shore and you might have to wade through seawater lapping onto your doorstep to get to the open plan restaurant. Very nice food for lunch and dinner but small breakfast. Now to the diving. This turned out to be slightly disappointing.
Very nice and healthy coral and lots of large barrel sponges but not much fish. Only one place with lots of current and a dephts of around 38 metres had large fish swarms including yellowfin tuna, bumphead parrotfish and groupers and some small whitetip reef sharks. We were in the water the next day when some fishermen illegaly dynamited a neighbouring reef. Lots of dead fish drifted on the surface afterwards which might explain the lack of fish on the reefs . The critter count was good so with pygmy seahorses, ghostpipefish, lots of nudibranchs and mandarin fish...so not a bad place for macro fotography. Organization was haphazard with several deep dives below 40 metres and no appropriate surface interval and also no first aid kit on the boats . The dive briefings could have been better .Surface intervals were far too short between dives sometimes only 30 to 35 minutes so we would be back on time for lunch! Diving on the housereef was free which is good but they charged you an extra 30 US dollars if you were not out of the water by 6 pm. So all in all a mixed experience . In my opinion there are better places for diving in Sulawesi.