Dave & Jan's Diving Diary

Manado & Bunaken, North Sulawesi

December 2005

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Our week in Manado was the 2nd week of our trip to Sulawesi, our 1st week had been spent on the Island of Lembeh at Lembeh Dive Lodge.Where we had been diving the Lembeh Strait's, which, for us anyway was all muck diving. This week was going to be different. We were staying at the Hotel Santika and diving with Thalassa dive center. The hotel is the only 4* hotel resort in Manado.

We found the staff very friendly & accomodating, the rooms were excellent and the food was very good with a good menu. The hotel grounds were well kept and beautiful.

Thre  Manado is a 3.5 hrs flight from Singapore, we used Silk Air. This is one place that you can get a visa on arrival, you should check before arriving at any port in Indonesia.

The hotel is about 45 minutes from the airport and about the same from Manado town, the road from the hotel out to any major road is basicly a single track road, its a winding twisting road that goes up and down through forest and local village. Santika & Thalassa are the closest hotel and dive center to the national marine park of Bunaken. The fast boat only takes 5 or 10 minutes. The dive center is located in the hotel grounds, on our arrival we went through a comprehensive induction to the dive center procedures. They are very well organised.

The boats leave the jetty at 8am, 10am, 13:30pm and 6pm, you can choose how many dives a day you want to do or which boat you want to go on. But, again we run into this "no smoking" on the boat, if you smoke it is a real pain because the first thing you want to do after a dive is have a cigarette. Your dive equipment is stored at the dive center overnight and taken to the boat you are scheduled to go on. After a days dive your gear is washed and dried for the next day. After the dives the guides would take note of your dive details >>

<< your air, depth etc and at the end of your stay Thalassa would print out for you, all the dives you had done, at which dive sites, with all your dive details, i had never come across this before and thought it was an excellent idea. We did not dive intensivly here, we had just done a week of muck diving in Lembeh Straits and the diving here was deep wall diving etc, there was some shallow dives where we found some fascinating critters, the house reef and Manado Mall where the sea bed was at about 6 metres and appeared to be just sand and rubbish unless you knew what to look for. After a day diving the pool was great to relax in, and the hotel rooms with satelite tv were great for just chilling and crashing. 

And this strange Crab like creature was found by our guide, it is so well camaflaged it is difficult to "see" even when it is pointed out.
I think it is a Decorator Crab

Philidia

Phidiana

Scorpionfish

Another Unknown