Photos from our 2013 trip.

See

http://www.cra.org/abernat/Dive_Trips/Wakatobi_2013/narrative.html

for a narrative.

Photos from our August 2013 trip.

This was our 11th trip to Bonaire and our 10th stay at Bruce Bowker's Carib Inn. We obviously like it. This time we were on our own and decided to dive from the boat rather than rent a truck, load up and dive from the shore. So most of our diving was off the small island of Klein Bonaire, something that just can't be done from the shore. The reefs were in good shape and we were often the only ones on the boat so it was very good all the way around.

Click on the photo to go to the images. You can look at the images one by one or there's a slideshow link at the bottom of the image thumbnail pages.

The Wakatobi Resort  is a well known high-end dive resort off the southeastern coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. You take a 2-1/2 hour chartered plane flight from Bali to get there, landing on their private airstrip on a nearby island. And it took 39 hours to get to Bali.

Why did we go? Wakatobi is located in the area with the highest coral reef diversity in the world. The entire region is a sustainable protected national park. So the reefs are the healthiest and most diverse in the world.

Our almost annual trip for a week of diving. This year it was just Drew, Jenn and Danny going with us. Getting there is becoming more of an issue - to Miami (where the Madison gang has to spend the night), to Curacao and on a 9-passenger plane to Bonaire. On the return the Madison gang has to once again spend the night in Miami. And of course there are the usual flight issues. But the diving is still great - visibility was even better this year than last. And Danny’s first new word was “beach”!

Quite the adventure - halfway around the world to the best diving in the world! We spent five nights diving Lembeh, off the coast of northern Sulawesi, and 12 nights diving Raja Ampat, off the coast of West Papua.

Lembeh is famous for “muck” diving; bare black sand and weird creatures, not necessarily pretty, but very well camouflaged.

 Raja Ampat is famous for spectacular coral reefs and an amazing variety and number of fish.

We decided we needed another dive trip before heading off for our big trip to Indonesia. We had had some gear issues that needing resolving and we needed just a few more dives.

This was our fourth diving trip to Saba; the last was four years ago when the whole family went.

Saba is the smallest island in the Netherlands Antilles at 5 square miles and a population of about 1500. Mt. Scenery is the highest point (in the Kingdom of The Netherlands as well at 2877 feet.

You fly to Sint Maarten and then take a twin otter to Saba where you land on the 1300 foot long runway.