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Who to dive with and where to dive?

I’ve recently returned from my Easter Holidays and want to recommend the Diving in Bali. This was my 4th visit to the island but my 1st dive experience.

Whilst some sites have suffered from coral bleaching during the last El Nino, there is still an abundant amount of healthy hard and soft coral structures, no doubt due to the regular supply of nutrients flowing on the currents through the Indonesian Archipelago linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

I only had 3 days of diving on the holiday and so have left plenty of dive sites to discover when I next visit SE Asia.

The first day was at Tulamben on the north coast, the location of the WW2 US Liberty Wreck. Having completed an uneventful check dive on “The Drop-Off” in the morning, I completed 2 dives on the wreck, which was teeming with marine life. What struck me was the quality of the coral formations on the wreck itself, since it slid to its current resting place after the 1963 volcanic eruption of Mount Agung.

Having recently done a wrecks and reef itinerary on the Red Sea I expected just another wreck dive. However, I was blown away with the different coral growths and the variety of fish and macro life around the wreck. Having completed 2 dives, I am convinced that if I continued diving on the wreck, I would find something new each time.

I will post some photos in the gallery and on my profile page.

The 2nd day of diving was further round on the north-east coast at Padang Bai. Whilst the visibility was poorer on this day, it was a good drift dive location with gentle currents to move you around “Blue Lagoon”.

The final day of diving was on the Island of Nusa Penida, about 20 minutes from boat to the east of Bali. This place is drift dive heaven, sweeping over a landscape of table corals and other corals competing for valuable daylight for pretty much the whole dive. More experience is needed for diving here, but it can be very rewarding, with larger pelagics, sharks, manta rays.

Unfortunately, because I was diving with newbies, we stuck to the dive sites on the north-west corner and so I didn’t get to dive “Manta Point” a well known cleaning station where you are virtually guaranteed sitings.

My diving was organised through Aquamarine Diving and their service and staff were superb. They are a British run Dive Centre but all the guides/instructors are locals and so know all of the dive sites intimately. They have a fully functioning website and were very helpful in preparing an itinerary for the differing levels of experience within my group. I will use them again upon my return.

Note that all the dive sites in the north-east are a 2.5-3hr drive from the main tourist areas of Kuta/Legian/Seminyak. In which case you may want to consider bunching the diving together and staying at a hotel or beach villas along the north coast. Tulamben to Padang Bai is only about a 40 minute drive, so all the dive sites are quickly accessible wherever you stay.

There is also diving in the north-west around Menjangan Island, although I’ve not managed to dive there yet. That will have to be another holiday to Bali. Definitely book a hotel or villa nearby, as its a 4-5hr drive from the tourist area in the south east.

Getting there......we flew from Stansted to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and then again from KL to Denpasar (Bali) with Air Asia for all legs of the journey. They are a budget airline, but they are very good and a lot of the time will be half the price of the major airlines. Planes are new and seats are comfortable. Just buy additional food in the departure lounge before you board as the food is a bit limited.

And if have the time, book a flight from KL to Kota Kinabalu (Sabah, Malaysian Borneo) where there is diving to be had at Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park, or further afield at Layang-Layang and Mantinani Island from the west coast. You can book your diving online through Joanne Cotterill at Borneo Dream. A short haul to the east coast offers the world class diving of Sipadan/Mabul/Kapalai and Mataking Islands.

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