One of the best diving & snorkeling spots in Indonesia, with all kind of tiny and huge underwater life. Additional jungle fun is available too.

The two main trip options are:

  • Live aboard. The best option if you are an advance diver and you love the underwater; 3 or 4 dives a day and few other activities. Some boats are extremely expensive. If you book a lot of months beforehand (think at least 5 or 6) you can find cheaper options.
  • If you have a lower budget, you are not an advance diver and/or you have a lot of holiday time, homestays and connecting speed or longboats are a better option. Transportation, and activities, nevertheless will be expensive for Indonesian standards.

We went for the second option, among others because Summer had dived less than 20 times before and I like diving but need the freedom to go swimming, running, hiking or else; not just focus on one activity for too many days.

For this option, you can find all the information you would want to know before departing in the Stay Raja Ampat web. Highly recommended to read their step by step, health, weather, etc. sections. It includes booking service & information for the home stays. Great effort by the people managing it.

The logistics are a bit complicated and you better have everything ready before you go. Once in the little islands, there are no shops and even in Waisai (the last “city” you will be in) you can’t buy “simple things” like contact lens liquid or tampons… You can’t use credit cards but in dive resorts and little more. ATMs in Waisai might accept or not your foreign cards… Below how we did it and some improvement tips.

Fly Hong Kong to Jakarta. Just get out and find a little shop selling SIM cards (open till midnight). We decided to buy a Telkomsel (which seems to have the best network in all the country) one. IDR300k for a month 12Gb data and phone plan. You can find way cheaper if you are with time, which wasn’t our case. Even the money changers were closed when we landed, so IRD obtained in HK.

Wait for a couple of hours and fly to Sorong in the midnight. From the airport walk or take a taxi to the pier.

The ferry costed us 100k and in a couple of hours took us to Waisai. On the left side of the pier find a blue roof small building. The Information Centre where we needed to pay 1m rupiah each for the conservation fee of the Raja Ampat national park.

Small boats depart from there towards the home stays. If you are lucky you will have with whom to share it. Either through the home stay itself or trying to find matches in the Stay R A Facebook forum. Some people wait for others going to similar areas for doing so too. In most cases, get ready to get wet. In our case, we traveled to Kri in a smallish long boat shared with another couple. Not the most stable and we got completely soaked. The adventure started.

First stop Brar homestay.

Simple lodging just next to the sea.

Surrounded by all kind of fauna, including cuscus.

And huge lizards. Here one climbing up a palm tree.

Most local people are devoted Christians, so no activities (diving, boat rides to different islands for snorkeling, etc) could be arranged in some places on Sundays. That is not such a big problem when you can start walking in the water

and in no time arrive at the next diving center: Yenkoranu.

Which has a wonderful reef just next to its jetty.

Just jump into the water and its left side find tons of coral, fishes and even five reef sharks!

On my own, I swam most of the northern coast of Kri. Fins, hand paddles and swim with and against the current (rising tide East direction, West when going down). A pleasure to do so with so much life below. Some people we met had even seen a Dugong grazing around. In front of Brar itself, there is a grassland (seaweed) initially but you have really good corals once you pass the buoys on your right. Really nice one next to Cape Kri too. The Westernmost area connecting with Pulau Mansuar highly recommended. You have here a comparison of snorkeling places if your trip’s main goal is doing so.

The diving was as impressive.

Even if we were not very lucky with the sun, the visibility was very good everywhere. Here with a fish that followed us for the whole dive, we do not know why.

The only issue is that the best spots tend to have quite strong currents, not suitable for non-experienced divers. You can find all kinds of mantas, turtles, even whale sharks. In our case, we did not see the latter but yes tons of Wobbegong sharks, turtles and big shoals of fishes.

Our second destination was Pam (also called Fam) Islands. Staying at Sunrise home stay. The place was better looking. Nice white sand beach just outside, plants around garden-like… But way more mosquitoes and, later we would discover, mice too… Missing the cat of Brar…

The boat ride to Pam was several hours long and therefore we only had the afternoon to start exploring the island around.

Tiny village and nice sand beaches all around. With creatures trying to camouflage in different ways.

Cute crabs.

Our main reason to go to these islands was to visit Piaynemo, the “poor version” of Wayag. We had decided that the long expensive (15m per boat) transportation to the latter didn’t fit our plan. In Piaynemo you can find similar karstic structures and pristine water for some postcard like pics in a sunny day.

Nice drone flying point.

The main viewpoint, the Star lagoon and definitely top snorkeling places, among others Melissa’s Garden. Some of the places in the area in the video.

Did you see the baby sharks in the last part of the video?! One of the several highlights. In that case, just while we were having lunch in a white sand beach. Also monitor lizards, a snake and tons of other fauna in and out of the water.

The second full day we took it easy. The morning jogging the island. Nothing special to see but a quiet tiny village

where intuit the life out of tourism.

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An afternoon with bit more of boat, snorkeling, and photo shooting on the Western islands.

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From there we went back almost to Waisai, to Warimpurem homestay. We wanted to be closer to the last activity + ferry and try another homestay with very good reviews. The only con (discovered there) was that snorkeling with them and diving with the nearby center was way more expensive than in Kri. For the latter we paid 2.2m for two people two dives with no gear of us, 3.2m after some bargaining with Scuba Republic, mentioned center.

Beautiful sunsets.

A lot more expensive diving and snorkeling half or day trips.

Our final plan was Jungle hiking in Mayalibit Bay. We had been messaging with Otter (Wolter Gamtan) for quite some time. Almost three hours longboat in choppy water. Easy, for our standards, hiking to a little hill to see the views and down to the village through the jungle.

Simple but tasty curry and rice dinner. Night hike trying to see wild fauna. But we were not very lucky. We only saw several frogs, a huge bat, worms

but no cuscus or special endemic birds. A pineapple to finish the hike that would be part of our breakfast the next morning. Returning to the homestay in the darkness.

The second day after breakfast we went for a bit more fun jungle trek.

Amazing trees in the area. Those are all the roots from the same tree.

Little stream hike

before arriving at the bat cave. Huge bats all around that started flying all around as soon as they felt us. Here Otter picking up a baby that had tried to fly also but fell to the floor.

The return was a bit eventfull… Summer was attacked by wasps and I was bitten by fire ant (I would realize several days later when a very sizeable blister grew on my hand). Real jungle. Back in camp Summer being treated of her dozen bites…

Later we decided to hike a little

and enjoy a pool and a waterfall around.

Last moments in the huge jungle.

In same conditions as centuries ago. Similar and different to Hong Kong’s.

Before starting our return. Eventful again… I had been saying to Otter that we were late. And we were. We ended up returning in complete darkness but for my diving torch. Not the safest… You can watch at the end of the video…

But we made it. Night at the hotel and early next morning start the long return day. Ferry at 9am from Waisai and flights Sorong – Makassar – Jakarta – Hong Kong arriving early morning one day later.