Indonesia: Flores + Komodo + Bali - July 2011
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation of an article originally written in French. I apologise for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have resulted. If you read French, click on the French flag below to access the original, correct text:
Français
Maumere Bay, in the east of the Indonesian island of Flores, is full of beautiful underwater sites. My favorite dive site is called Fish Soup. Here, the fish soup is in the sea, to be enjoyed underwater!
Sites full of life
In 1992, a violent earthquake hit the Maumere region. A tsunami has razed whole villages. The deadly wave destroyed 18,000 homes and killed nearly 1,700 people.
The seabed has also been damaged. As a result, Maumere Bay has stopped attracting divers, who prefer the spectacular bottoms of the Komodo archipelago, 500km west of Maumere, at the other end of the island of Flores.
But today, almost twenty years after the earthquake, the coral reefs of Maumere have regenerated. The bay offers sites full of life, rich in fauna, both for the "big" and the "small".
Underwater photos
I was really surprised by the quality of the dives here. My favorite site, the aptly named Fish Soup, is splendid, teeming with life. I dived there three times, and each time, white tip sharks appeared from the drop-off. We also regularly met turtles. And I was even lucky enough to see the graceful flight of a school of eagle-rays...
The internet connection I have here is not powerful enough to put videos online. So I will put online later my little shark movies made at Fish Soup.
In the meantime, here are some underwater pictures. I didn't include nudibranches, those little sea slugs I love, I will devote a separate post. There is an abundance of nudis here... I even discovered two-three species that I had never seen before!
Ankermi Happy Dive
I dove these days from the beach of Watu Mita, where the resort is located Ankermi Happy Dive. It is about 50 km west of Maumere.
A nice little hotel: a handful of bungalows facing the sea, a dive-shop, a restaurant, and fabulous sunsets every evening. Lazing around and diving... I savour my happiness.
We are warmly welcomed by Claudia and Kermi, a Swiss-Indonesian couple. They are absolutely charming both.
I found the address on the internet. And I did really well to book... They are fully booked until the end of August!
I really love this place. The comfort is simple, the atmosphere peaceful. Ideal to start my stay on Flores.
For more information about diving in Maumere, I invite you to visit the page Flores of the site Starfish.ch. A very complete and precise website about diving in Asia-Pacific, made by Teresa, a Swiss-German woman that I already had the opportunity to meet twice, during my previous trips to Indonesia!
It's already been a week that I'm here... Tomorrow, I leave Ankermi Happy Dive for a crossing of Flores by the road, from east to west, until Labuan Bajo. I will come back to tell you about it in a few days...
😎
