Buzz’s comments on his
I had
concerns about Going to
I had a
choice of a land based Dive resort, Aggressor, or Ocean Rover. I had been on the Ocean Rover before and
found it to be a very comfortable live aboard. The Ocean Rover offered a 10 day itinerary,
the Aggressor was only 7. I prefer the
convenience of a live aboard. If I was
going to spend 2+ days getting there, I wanted a longer itinerary, so I picked
the Ocean Rover. (The Ocean Rover does
not travel to
I had
frequent flyer tickets on Cathay Pacific to Singapore. I needed to spend a night in Singapore and
then caught my Silk Air flight to Manado.
I stayed at the Grand Mercure Roxy hotel
because it was near the airport, had airport transfers and was reasonably
priced. It is not near the center of
town, but since I was going to be jet lagged, I only wanted a comfortable place
that would minimize the effort to get back and forth to the airport.
I
selected Kungkungan Bay Resort (KBR) as
the place to stay a couple of days in Sulawesi before getting on the Ocean
Rover. After traveling half way around
the world, I always spend a few days in the local time zone before diving. KBR picked us up at the
The ocean
Rover picked us up at KBR and we had a great 10 day trip. Some of the guests were disappointed that the
Ocean Rover was not traveling to some of the northern sites listed on the Ocean
Rover web site. The captain did not want
to go because of security concerns with some of the local tribes. As it turned out the weather would have made
diving there impossible anyway.
The
diving was exceptional and I am glad I went.
Enjoy the streaming pictures, there are lots of critters that I had never seen before. For individual pictures
click here.
Before
you choose to go, be very careful about the security situation in
Also I
would seriously consider a private dive guide.
They are not too expensive and they are very good at finding the really
neat critters. I could see the critters
when we were diving in a group but unfortunately too many times the area around
the critters was disturbed due to the poor buoyancy control of some of the
group members. The resulting silt in the
water ruined many pictures. (I tried
cleaning my pictures up the best I could but the silt has reduced their quality
substantially). A local dive guide, Nelson Uada, that
I would recommend can be reached at: nelsonuada@yahoo.com
More information on KBR click here.