Indonesia - Derawan and Maumere

Indonesia - Derawan and Maumere

This article discusses following locations:

We will be picked up for our last tour on our sabbatical in a few hours. That's a two weeks long liveaboard right through the bulls eye of biodiversity called the Banda Sea. After that we'll fly back home! So this is probably thr second last report, enjoy!

So, after another border crossing from Malaysia to Indo via ferry (aka bureaucratic torture and baggage searches) we met Thomas, our friend from Switzerland in Tarakan. He should accompany us for our last month here. Starting on Derawan where we spent a week diving:

Derawan, Maratua, Kakaban, Sangalaki

What felt a bit like Bunaken Part 2 It was not the highlight of our travels, for sure. We requested of course a focus on muck, but the local dive center insisted on a island rotation system giving us mostly wall drift dives. And two daily 1.5h long boat transfers... Yes, we saw a few sharks, mantas, barracudas but it was not overwhelming. What made the trip memorable was diving with Thomas. We had so much fun just goofing around underwater.

We did have a nice night dive in Derawan with two Stargazers and other cool creeps but that's about it. I would not recommend to visit Derawan to muck lovers. There will always be other divers who want their shot at a low probability sighting of some big fish and we the local dive center doesn't want to do two groups.

But a local speciality are the Denise Pygmy Seahorse and the Starry Night Nudibranch, hiding underneath fleshy leaves on the walls.

A highlight was a midsized Cuttlefish inspecting and touching my pointer and then gracefully do a crazy show of color changing. The video is impressive but my internet upload speed doesn't allow to share it. I'll update back in Switzerland! #TODO, FIXME 😉

So here are some of the impressions:

Maumere (Ankermi Happy Dive Retreat)

This might be the first time I mention the dive center we're at, by name. Because it's the first time I want to promote an extraordinary place.

Here we had the best diving of all our three month on this Sabattical.

Claudia, a swiss expat with Indonesian citizenship, runs this idyllic place. There are two girls and one guy staffed and they run the best, most efficient awesome dive center.

We went muck diving every day. And in only four days, we saw in 11 dives more than in our ten days in Lembeh. We were also mostly us four, spread out above the seagras/sand/rubble/volcanic silk searching and calling each other. My biggest respect to Silke who had to photograph everything. I cannot fathom the stress she must have been in 😂. We saw countless Nudis, super interactive Octopus, seahorses, cuttlefish and 9 frogfish. The most, Claudia has ever found with any group. So it was crazy because everyone was super happy and excited.

Ok, now, enough pix. let's go on a 14 days liveaboard 🥳 See you guys around!!

Rika wrote:

So much beauty. Thanks for sharing! 04.11.2022, 08:43:44

Tobias wrote:

Fantastic pictures as always!! :) Enjoy your last weeks!! 03.11.2022, 09:02:51