Monday
We took an Airbus A340 (A320 maybe?) Silk Air flight from Singapore to Balikpapan, Indonesia, where we arrived mid afternoon and had to spend the night. When we got there, a lot of porters in orange suits were running around grabbing any bag you pointed at in hope of getting the 2500 Rupiah porter fee (40 cents). Someone even had our names on a sign. We got through really quickly, but then waited on the curb outside waiting for other divers to get through. Included in this group was the divers (and non-divers) that we would spend the next week with : 4 Brits and a South African.
Derawan is off the east coast of Borneo island
The hotel is proud to be the oldest in Balikpapan, at 19 years, and is supposed to be nice. Sure, for Balikpapan, I guess. Our hotel hostess even tells us we should try the turtle eggs on Derawan (sad)! We do a little trip preview with the local dive representative and then hit the streets to explore.
We wander the streets for a little bit and visit the big mall. There are lots of people out on the streets and quite a few beggars. We did sit out on the sea wall for a little while and watch the surf come in. There was a big group of naked kids out playing in the surf. There were lots of little food stalls / restaurants, but we decided to head back to the hotel for a safer dinner.
After a couple of beers in the room, we head down to the hotel bar, where we get a couple more and watch the local soap operas with the hotel staff. Dinner at the hotel restaurant with Helmuth from Austria who is meeting up with a large group already at Derawan. We had Bihun and Nasi Goreng which were both excellent. Then we crash for an early night. Woke up in the middle of the night getting chomped by mosquitos and the air-con had switched off. Put on bug spray and went back to sleep.
Tuesday
Woke up to a cold room and hot showers. Amazing. Breakfast at the hotel is more fried noodles and rice with fried eggs. Yum. Guide met us and took us to the airport. The local airline is trying to get money anyway it can, and had lowered the minimum baggage allowance and charged for everything else. Our travel agent had taken care of it ahead of time, but the others in the group got to fight to get their baggage on without paying.
Our flight was on DAS airlines, a local carrier, and we end up leaving over an hour late, even though whenever we asked, it was always "ten minutes more". The plane is an Indonesian built plane that is pretty much just a box with wings. There is luggage and boxes packed in every nook and cranny and we squeezed aboard and into the tiny seats. Once airborne, the pilot had a smoke and then proceeded to read the paper. He didn't make it too far before having to settle in for a nap. At least the copilot seemed to be pretty alert.
Our airplane (square-plane?)
Will it actually fly?
Taking a snooze after a smoke and the paper.
Safe on the ground in Berau
The landing in Berau was smoother than expected and we got to watch through the cockpit. Someone from the dive resort met us and loaded us in a couple of vans for the very short ride to the river, where we loaded into a speedboat for the rest of the journey. The "jetty" for loading the boat was just a couple of boards nailed to a big floating log. We rode about an hour along the river and then forty minutes in the open sea before reaching Derawan. Derawan is larger than Sipidan and even has a local village. We were met at the resort with a sweet drink and a bowl of ramen noodles. We head to our rooms for a few minutes before our check-out dive.
The "jetty" and our speed boat.
A small logging village along the river. The white dome is the mosque.
A squid fisherman. They build these and live on them and catch squid at night.
The mouth of the river and the islands we're heading to (all the green is shallow water or reefs)
The dive center is pretty unorganized with cubby holes, hooks, pegs and lockers, but no assigned spots and not enough room. Once we figured out who to follow and where to meet, we started our checkout dive under the jetty. The jetty is about 200m long and boats can't come to shore in high tide, only to the end. The dive staff sets up your gear on a tank for every dive and they were pretty good about getting the right gear for the right person, but we did have tangled hoses a couple of times.
Derawan Dive Resort
The end of the jetty and the restaurant
The rest of the jetty back to the dive shop and the resort
Dive sites around Derawan
There were three classes of rooms at the resort, and as the lowest level had no hot water and the mid-level was all full, we had booked a VIP room. They were great. We were the first people to stay in the room and it still smelled of varnish and concrete. The cabin had a common area with couches, a TV, VCR and VCD and a kitchen with a stocked fridge and snack tray. There were two bedrooms and the other stayed empty until almost the end of our trip.
The restaurant is about halfway down the jetty. It has a big hole in the middle with a railing where lionfish (and others) gather in the light. This is a great place to dive. There were two waiters in the restaurant, Harold and Sugi. They were both nice and helpful, if not a little overly attentive. Food was always a buffet and good but not much variety. Mostly trevally, rice, bean/corn/carrot mix (from a freezer bag). 101 ways to cook local fish...
The jetty from our cabin
We did a night dive after dinner the first night, which we found out later is frowned on. They prefer to have you hit the water as soon as the sun sets and be out by 8 so they can close up the dive shop, even though the resort ad says night diving until 9. There is an amazing amount of life along the jetty and we saw a baby octopus, a cuttlefish, lots of lionfish and crabs.
Wednesday
Our first full day of diving was to the legendary island of Sangalaki. Legendary, because it is one of the few places in the world where you are almost guaranteed to snorkel or dive with schools of manta rays. Key word here is : almost. We didn't see a single one. Might have been the lack of a moon, or the wrong wind direction or strange tides, but no mantas.
Dive sites around Sangalaki (we only did Manta Boulevard and Manta City)
Our dive boat "Moray"
Our standard dive day is to get on the boat around 8, cruise to one of the other islands, do a couple of dives and then have box lunches on shore. One early afternoon dive and then back to Derawan for a fourth dive.
A local trading boat
The cruise back to Derawan
Even without the mantas, Sangalaki was pretty good diving. We saw several leopard sharks and turtles as well as lots of other fish life. The visibility was good and the mild current made for a good drift dive.
Thursday
The second day we get up early to catch the tides just right at Maratua. When the tides are just right, there is supposed to be lots of pelagics (big stuff). We were probably just on the edge of the good time to be there. We did see a big eagle ray (very nice) and a massive school of barracuda. The current was strong and Keith was burning air quickly trying to compose good pictures with the camera.
Dive sites around Maratua
Maratua was an absolutely beautiful island. The thin V-shaped island had a calm bay with lots of little islands in the middle. We had lunch on one of these where the resort had built a little open cabana.
After dinner, we wander up and down the beaches in the dark looking for female turtles that have crawled ashore to lay their eggs. We did see one in a hole getting ready to lay, but it was real dark (no moon) and we didn't want to disturb her with a flashlight, so we didn't see much. The locals (even the local police) hide in the trees or wait on their porches for the turtles to come ashore and then stake claim by standing around by the turtle. After the turtle leaves, the locals dig up the eggs (about a hundred) and sell or eat most of them and send a few to a "turtle hatchery". The turtle hatcheries are a joke, as the turtles are hatched and then used as a tourist attraction instead of being released immediately for their crawl down the beach and back to the water. The locals consider the eggs to be "better than viagra" and sell them on the island and in Berau. Hopefully there are enough other islands that are not disturbed to ensure the population doesn't disappear. Every island had fresh tracks every morning about every 20 feet apart on the good beaches, but Derawan and Sangalaki were disturbed by locals. Even undisturbed, only a couple turtles in a thousand will survive to adulthood. Okay, now back to the trip report...
A turtle track on the right and a nest hole
Friday
We head to the island of Kakaban for another unique day of diving. The morning dives are good wall dives with lots of stuff to see, including a school of huge jack fish that was lurking in the depths below us the whole dive. We landed on the island, but before lunch, everyone hiked through the rain forest to an enclosed brackish lake. The island had closed the lake off from the sea a long time ago, but jellyfish and sea anemones continued to live in the water. Devoid of predators (except the anemones) the jelly fish lots their stinging cells, so were able to snorkel with thousands of stingless jellyfish.
Dive sites around Kakaban
Making our way through the rain forest (this was the easy part)
The lake in the center of Kakaban
Making our way into the lake
Lunch boxes on the beach at Kakaban (rice and fish again?)
Uninhabited, beautiful beaches
The afternoon dive at Kakaban was also very nice with schools of barracuda, jacks and tuna and another leopard shark. We did another night dive and saw an octopus, but we still hadn't seen the seahorses that everyone kept saying were under the restaurant.
Saturday
Saturday we head back to Sangalaki in hopes of catching the mantas before we have to leave. No luck. But the dive was good even with the disappointment of the lack of mantas.
Our afternoon dive was under the jetty with the dive guide pointing out all sorts of stuff we had missed while diving by ourselves, including the seahorse. We also got to play with an octopus some, but I'm not sure the octopus appreciated it much.
Sunday
We did two dives in the morning with a dive group just around Derawan, but skipped the afternoon dive to let our bodies de-gas before our flight on Monday. We wandered around the island some and walked through the village. The village was really pretty, as the road was a simple sand walking street (no cars or motorbikes) and there were some brightly painted houses and some flowers planted.
Main street of the village
The local boat builder
Going from a stroll along the sandbar
The sandbar stretched for several hundred yards away from the island
Monday
We got up real early for our 5:30 boat ride back to the airport. We got to say goodbye to Harold when we gave us our box breakfasts for the boat ride. We had an hour or so to kill at the airport to let us get a little nervous about our next trip in the square-plane. The plane ride was fine even with a quick stop in a little town to drop some people off. We had a layover of 5 or 6 hours in Balikpapan, so we hauled all our gear up to the restaurant and camped out. We ordered different local dishes every hour or so and played lots of yahtzee. After a whole day of traveling, we finally got back to Singapore Monday evening.
The trip overall was great, even without the mantas and other pelagics that we were hoping to see. The accommodations were good and clean and the staff was helpful even with their limited English skills.
The underwater dive photos will be in the dive photos section of the web site once we get them all reviewed and scanned (only nine rolls!) |
