What’s it like to stay at one of the nicest dive resorts in the world?

Well, let me tell you, it’s pretty awesome.

Talk to anyone who is in the know about dive resorts in Indonesia, and Wakatobi will surely be mentioned. Located off the southwest corner of the big island of Sulawesi, Wakatobi Resort is about a 90-minute turboprop flight from the international airport on Bali. The flight lands on Tomia Island, which is the closest airstrip. From there, it is a short drive and then a short boat ride to Onemobaa Island, where Wakatobi is located. The resort has its own dedicated charter aircraft (this area of Indonesia is not served by regularly scheduled domestic flights), and flights run to/from the resort a couple of days a week. Greeting at Bali’s Airport, assistance with the local flight check in, and transfers on arrival are all capably taken care of by the resort staff. In fact, the great service at Wakatobi is in no small part responsible for the resort’s world-class reputation.

The resort has several levels of accommodations, from budget-friendlier garden view cabins all the way up to a deluxe two-bedroom villa (with private pool!). All waterfront accommodations have spectacular, west facing sunset views. Meals are served in a very nice dining pavilion. The food when I was there was very good to excellent, with lots of choices available, and special requests were graciously handled by the kitchen staff. Meals are served buffet-style. There is also a bar on the end of the pier — which quickly became the favorite place for sipping a cold one at the end of a great day of diving, while taking in the gorgeous sunsets.

The resort is fairly small (another of its charms), and is spread out along a beautiful and quiet stretch of beach and seawall. One of the best things about Wakatobi, for me, was the lack of diver pressure. Wakatobi Resort and its Pelagian live aboard dive yacht (which bases itself out of the resort) are the core diving operations in the area. The resort’s location is remote enough that day operators and other live aboard boats are not dropping divers on the area’s reefs with any frequency.

And the reefs are stunningly beautiful — amazingly pristine hard and soft coral gardens that show little to no storm or diver damage. On some sites, we were seeing healthy and pretty coral gardens less than 10 feet under the surface. So this is a good location for snorkelers too. I have become a bit of a muck hound in the past few years, and that was the only thing missing for me at this location — no muck, and as a result, no so many interesting macro critters. But the gorgeous reefs and the great underwater visibility more than made up for that.

Wakatobi is very protective of the area reefs, and all divers arriving at the resort are required to do an orientation/check out dive. If the dive staff is not comfortable that a diver has adequate buoyancy control and dive skills to be buddy diving, they will insist that the diver(s) in question engage a private guide to assist them (and keep them off the coral).

Divers are assigned to one of the resort’s dive boats on arrival, and the boats are sent to the twenty or more sites on a regular rotation, so there is never more than one boatload (maximum 20 divers if I recall correctly) on any site at any one time, and even then, they will spread out the drops so there are not hoards of divers from the same boat bunched up on the reef. The dive boats are spacious and well set up for photographers. There are sun cover and toilet facilities on each one.

The sites we dove, for me, became a happy, beautiful blur. Almost all sites are on the barrier reefs around area islands, with the exception of one very memorable site — Blade — which was out on the middle of nowhere. As its name suggests, it was a very long, thin wedge of reef, stretching on for what seemed like forever.

Another big draw of Wakatobi (as if pristine coral reefs, a beautiful and remote resort, good boat dive operations, and great food weren’t enough) is the great house reef, right in front of the resort. Divers are welcome to wade in and dive it from dawn til late in the evening, without a guide, and with no time limit. They will also arrange for a panga to drop divers anywhere along the wall, or pick up at the end of a dive (daylight hours only). The taxi is great, especially if there is current (which our group experienced on several house reef dives). I broke my record for my longest ever dive by clocking one gorgeous afternoon dive at over two hours. The house reef is colorful, with some steep terrain and lots of fish life. I had some of my most exciting creature sightings of the trip diving the house reef, including a massive herd of bumphead parrotfish, a crocodile fish, and there are several different kinds of anemones, hosting several different species of anemonefish. The corals are not as diverse on the house reef as on the reefs we dove from the boats, and are a bit beaten up (storm surge, and no doubt more diver pressure), but they are still reasonably healthy and pretty.

To read a much more detailed trip report for this destination, and to view a larger gallery of images, please feel free to visit my blog here.

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