havecarryonwilltravel

Last day in Raja. Tears all around. We could have mutinied, there were no guest scheduled for the Coralia until Wednesday and had we revolted we could have had the boat to ourselves for another 3 days but sanity prevailed and we disembarked at 7.30am.

Last night was the send off party and the BBQ went beyond the standard that had been set for the rest of the trip We ate like kings. Raja Ampat means the 4 kings, reference to the four large islands in the area, and we got a taste of their life. The whole crew was up on the upper deck, after the formal introductions of all the folks that have help us all week they joined in a rocking good bye song, something to do with sayōnara. Japanese but who is keeping track?

We were shuttled back to Sorong on a speed boat ferry. Bump, bump, thump, wholly! it was rough. An hour and a half later we were back on terra firma and the boat was still moving, gently but still moving. Dropped off at a hotel we wait for our flight times it is the first real downtime in ten days. My body likes the rest.

If you have ever wanted to go diving on a liveaboard, do it. Being on one allows a diver to explore dive sites that cannot be reached from shore. Depending on the liveaboard, the service, accommodation and food are excellent. The Coralia is the perfect choice for a liveaboard as all three are above exceptional.

When we decide on a dive destination, we also decide whether to do a land based dive trip or a liveaboard. The Caribbean can easily be done as a land based trip. Cuba might be an exception to that, as the Garden of the Queens is too far off shore to do day diving trips.

Destinations like the Maldives, Raja Ampat, Solomon Islands and the Galapagos are best done on a liveaboard so more of the area can be explored.

Liveaboards are intense though. Food five times a day, three meals and two snacks. Three to four dives a day. The first dive at 8:00 am and the last one at 6:30 pm.Two or three or four land excursions over the course of the cruise. Down time is snatched between eating and the next dive briefing.

There are always new and interesting people to meet from all over the world. We have made long lasting friends from Germany, England and the United States. Everyone has stories to share, about diving, their lives and travels.

We do not normally talk about returning to a location, dive resort or a liveaboard while we are there, but we actually had a conversation about coming back to the Coralia to dive on one of their other tours in Indonesia. That says tons about what we thought of the boat, crew, dive directors and diving. We will be back!

Mantas? Holey shit mantas. We dive a spot in the open ocean, three small rocks jut up out of the blue and are surrounded by quite a shallow shelf. I think the deepest we went in 78 min. is 48ft. Haven’t even cleared my ears and Debbie races towards me wide eyed. What did I forget my reg again? She grabs my arm and points up. A manta cruises above me close enough I could scratch its belly.  5 minutes later a monster shows up and circles us twice. I have to guess and the water does magnify but it was maybe 5M across. Holy F_____! can be heard on the video I was taking. It was big! We putz around for another 60 minutes or so and see very little, then the armada arrives. First a group of three, then close behind two more. They fly by extremely close. Two of them circle back for another look and we enjoy a symbiotic vision of them.  We have done a couple of the night dives that particularly attract Mantas but this is the most action we have seen on a regular daytime dive. Fantastic.

The water is getting rough so we head back to the shelter of a bay for the afternoon dives. On dive two one group comes up with stories of a pod of dolphins that visited them. As we are dressing for our third dive the dolphins come by the mothership and we get to have a look at them from the rear deck. Raja is not particularly known for dolphins so this quite a treat.

Diving here is as good as we have heard. The coral is in pretty good shape, the soft corals are better than any we have seen. Abundant, multicoloured, brightly coloured, and feeding even in the daytime. There are so many nutrients in these waters the little animals feed constantly. There are fish everywhere. We swim, bellies to the sandy, rubble bottom and out of nowhere a school of 1000 fish swims by. Nudibranchs inch along on every dive. There are the ‘non rare’ ones of course but there are plenty of multicolored ones we have till now only seen in books. More stunning in person then in pictures.

Travelling Raja on a ‘yacht’, around island, in and out of bays, across straits, and on the open sea is a thing of the movies. It is quite surreal to get up in the morning open the drapes and a rain forest island is fading off into the distance only to be replace by another. Sitting in a bay eating lunch outside on the front deck with a canopy shading the sun and a cool off the water breeze tempering the heat is more than idyllic.

Ah well, tomorrow will soon be upon us and we will again dive beneath the surface to see what other unusual suspects we will run into.