After running our underwater photography workshop at Dive Into Lembeh in November last year Anne and I were lucky enough to stay at the luxurious Bunaken Oasis on the other side of North Sulawesi to the Lembeh Straits.
The resort is on the island of Bunaken which also gives its name to the marine reserve that includes the reefs around several of the other islands in the archipelago.
The diving around Bunaken is characterised by impressive walls topped with beautiful coral gardens. The marine life ranges from tiny macro subjects such as pygmy seahorses up to enormous green turtles in amazing numbers.
The majority of the turtles seen on dives here are green turtles but hawksbills are quite common as well.
Bunaken Oasis are committed to being part of the local community on the island. They hire local people wherever possible and fund a range of initiatives including scholarships and a scheme to train new dive guides.
Three very happy dive guide trainees, who were nearing the end of their training.
The food at the resort is excellent with every meal being a la carte. The menus were quite broad with specials for lunch and dinner changing each day plus a range of regular dishes. Portions are substantial, to the point that some times we asked for half portions so we had room for dessert.
Impressively all the water in the resort is drinkable and purified on site. The excess is made available to the surrounding villagers.
The infinity swimming pool is a great place to relax after the diving is done and especially nice to have one of the bar staff bring us iced tea. While many diving resorts give guest reusable drinking bottles to help cut down on plastic waste, Bunaken Oasis provide flasks to keep your water cool.
The villas are spacious and very well appointed with coffee makers, wifi, bluetooth speakers and even a selection of marine life and bird I.D books.
Every room has a nice view but our room at the top of the hill the resort is on had a particularly good one over the beautifully kept gardens and out to sea from the balcony.
The resort has a spa that offers a good range of massages and other treatments in a secluded spot. We had a very relaxing couples massage one evening.
The diving centre has a ‘tack room’ where your equipment is stored and lots of rinse tanks. The camera room is very well equipped, with microfibre towels, benches for your equipment and power sockets for chargers.
The selection of o ring grease, tools and Nauticam vacuum pumps available for guests to use in the air conditioned camera room.
The dive boats are impressively well appointed by any day boat standard. Facilities include tea and coffee making facilities as well as cool drinking water, biscuits and fruit for between dives, a toilet and freshwater shower. The seating areas have comfortable cushions which you are allowed to sit on in wet swim wear.
A porcelain crab perches on the edge of an interesting spotted anemone. On most dives I took a mirrorless camera fitted with a kit lens or a compact camera so I could use both macro and wide angle wet lenses. This gave the ability to get pictures of whatever size creature I encountered.
The level of service from the dive guides is of a very high standard even for Indonesia and attention to safety is impressive. Dive information is recorded by the guides and you receive a spreadsheet of what you did at which site following your stay.
Pontoh’s pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus pontohi) is named after a dive guide who discovered it who now works at the resort. In an impressive bit of guiding my guide Ilham found this on the same morning I was introduced to Pontoh at the dive centre.
Overall our stay here made for an excellent way to finish off an already great trip. Being able to get all our laundry done using the free daily service was a definite plus and saved us some effort when we arrived home.
A small white-tip reef shark turns to face the camera.
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