Indonesia: Raja Ampat + Bali - March 2012
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 Papua, Papua in Indonesian. A name full of jungles and beaches, exuberant coral and giant fish. Another world... that filled me with wonder. Welcome to Raja Ampat!
Head to Raja Ampat
March 2012. The Raja Ampat archipelago, the "Four Kings" is a dream I had for a long time. A wild paradise. Unique, still preserved.
UPDATE: as a reminder, this article dates back to 2012... A lot has changed in Raja Ampat since then. Tourism has developed considerably, and some islands are no longer as wild and unspoilt as they once were...
Raja Ampat is an archipelago dotted with verdant islands, some of them unexplored. I spent a dozen days there. Half on a boat, half on land.
The region captivated me. As I said in my previous postI think it is one of my most beautiful trips. I have only one desire, only one idea in my head, since I came back: go back!
UPDATE : this first trip to Raja Ampat date of March 2012 so, and since then I've been back... several times!!!! 🤗 I'll put the links to my other trips below :
→ 2012 - July: Alor + Raja Ampat
→ 2015 - January: Raja Ampat - stay on Kri Island
→ 2015 - October: Banda - Raja Ampat cruise aboard the Waow
→ 2016 - July: Komodo + Raja Ampat
Sorong
But West Papua is far away. A long way. It's deep in Indonesia, in the very east of the archipelago. And in 2012, it takes several flights to reach Sorong, the "capital"...
Upon arrival at the tiny Sorong Airport [UPDATE: there is now a new, larger and more modern airport]It's already hot. It's only 7am, but it's a mad rush. I find the air more sticky than in Sulawesi, moister than in Bali. Papua is very tropical, very humid. We're practically on the equator.
Porters in blue and red shirts rush over the luggage as it is deposited. Men whose physical appearance is anything but Asian... This is West Papua: Melanesia, Oceania. Although the region came under the authority of Indonesia in the 1960s, it's not Asia at all...
A little historical-political reminder: the western half of the island of New Guinea, once colonized by the Dutch, was annexed by Indonesia in 1963. The Indonesians acted as invaders and the army committed massacres. A Papuan separatist movement continues to take action and the Indonesian authorities do not hesitate to brutally repress any demonstration, even peaceful ones. Just recently, in 2017, almost twenty years after the Biak massacre (1998), the Indonesian military and police have carried out mass arrests in Nabire and Sentani, whilea petition for West Papua is trying to make the voice of Papuans heard on the international scene. I close the parenthesis, but when you go there as a tourist, you must be aware that the region is unstable and not quite a "paradise" for everyone...
When the Sriwijaya Air plane starts its descent, after having passed the clouds, we see some islets surrounded by turquoise water.
Then comes the coast and the shacks on stilts of Sorong. Seen from above, a heap of rusty sheet metal roofs. In the harbor, many cargo ships, some abandoned, also rusting.
I didn't see much of Sorong, which I only passed through on the way there and back, like most tourists who come here.
A shapeless town, criss-crossed by more or less vague roads, alternating miserable shacks and concrete buildings. There's nothing really attractive about it, apart from the smiles on the faces of the kids playing and the passers-by watching you sail out to sea. It's an industrial and mining port in full development. And the gateway to Raja Ampat.
Wonder
The wonderment comes a little later...
First on the bridge of the Black MantaI was transferred to the diving boat with other pale faces from the plane.
Then under the sea, where we will make bubbles with the fish in water at 29 ° C.
Then, a few days later, from the pontoon of the magnificent Sorido Bay Resortwhere I will have the chance to extend my stay...
Operation "I am a princess
That's right! When I travel to Indonesia, I metamorphose into a princess... 😅 I'd already been lucky enough to enjoy a dive cruise boat all to myself back in 2011, the Pascha, in Komodo. Once again, for this stay in Raja Ampat, I had a huge stroke of luck...
I had booked a bungalow at the Kri Eco Resortto extend my stay after my cruise. And it's on the Black MantaBetween two dives, I learn the good news: the Kri Eco is under maintenance, I will be upgraded, free of charge, to the much more elegant Sorido Bay Resort neighboring Papua Diving.
A princess, I tell you! ☺️ But I'll tell you more in a future post...
The article is online! Read here → Live my life as a princess in Raja Ampat
Raja Ampat on a cruise
Let's go back on the boat, for the first part of this trip to Raja Ampat ...
On the Black MantaWe are 16 divers. A group of 14 Americans, who already know each other. And then my new friend, Miyo, a Japanese woman who lives in Bangkok, a flight attendant by profession, and who is like me a diving fanatic.
I am delighted to learn that I share my cabin with her. We met at the airport in Makassar, at 4am. With our boarding passes in hand, we were looking for the right gate for our flight, a little confused by the number on the board, the number on the boarding-pass and the number of the sound announcement which were not the same... We engaged the conversation and quickly sympathized, by discovering that we were both going diving, and on the same boat!
The "cruise-leader" of the Black Manta is a Frenchman, Cédric Lesenéchal. Adorable, calm and patient, all smiles, he takes care to put everyone at ease. At the time of the diving briefings, we forget the traditional white board. His thing is to make 3D models of the sites!
On the table, he lays bottles of ketchup and soya, places a jar, spreads a towel on it to create a relief, decorates the landscape with some accessories: felt pens, toothpicks, salt shaker... And that's it, work!
His greatest success: the briefing for the dives at "Manta Spa", the site where dozens of mantas come to swirl in the divers' bubbles.
See the video and photos here → Manta Spa
Cedric makes mini-mantas in triangle-folded paper towels, with a toothpick piqued in it. Americans love it. Me too.
We will love even more when we will see the real mantas... Not at all format "paper napkin", even that they do not hold in the frame of the photos!
In short, the atmosphere is good. The groups are small (4 people). Miyo takes pictures underwater, like me. We drink Bintang, the Indonesian beer, in the evening. The staff of the boat is very careful. Everything is perfect.
And most importantly, the dives are great. Raja Ampat now ranks number 1 in my top 3 Asian sites, ahead of Komodo and Sipadan ...
The pictures!
The proof in pictures... I had already posted a first series of sub pictures, here :
→ Rajat Ampat, the wild archipelago
Here's another sample, taken from the 2,383 photos and videos I brought back from Raja Ampat. As usual, a click on the image displays it in a larger format, and you can then navigate from one to the other using the keyboard arrows.
I knew, having read about it, that the underwater "biodiversity" was exceptional in Raja Ampat. Seeing it with your own eyes is something else. Another world, really...
→ To see all the articles about my dives at Raja Ampat : one click here !
