Papua diving

Russian traveler Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay lived in those places in the 19th century. Reaching the shores of West Papua is quite challenging and until very recently, quite dangerous. The island of New Guinea is divided in half between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Several dozens of years ago the government of Indonesia began resettling the people from the overpopulated island of Java to the western part of the island that they control. The indigenous inhabitants of Papua went to live in the jungle and launched a guerilla war against the uninvited guests. Some say the Papuan war is still raging on somewhere up in the mountains.

The shore was at one point in history inhabited by pirates. Today, the pirates have been appeased, but some 10 years ago the local waters were extremely dangerous for seafarers. Dry cargo ships and tankers disappeared without traces to be found abandoned off the shores of Vietnam and China with no crew members aboard. The search for sailors lost at sea amidst a labyrinth of 17,000 islands among the indigenous tribes with more than 400 nationalities was nothing short of an exercise in futility seeing as the aggregate population triples the present-day population of Ukraine.

Today, the tourism industry in these distant places is flourishing and local filibusters have moved on from their romantic professions to more prosaic and hospitable jobs. This perhaps is precisely what Somali pirates are lacking, as it would be cheaper to engage them in some productive work instead of mobilizing the entire military might of the EU, the U.S. and the Russian and Ukrainian united navies to chase them down.

Aircraft is the main form of transport around these islands. In Indonesia, there are 560 airports alone! The destination of our trip was the Raja Ampat archipelago, which consists of four large islands and 1,500 smaller islands, including reefs and sand spits. This archipelago is the home to the National Maritime Park of Indonesia.

The unique underwater world on the fringe of powerful streams from the Indian and Pacific Oceans is known for its 500 species of corals, which constitute two-thirds of all varieties in the world, and approximately 1,000 species of fish. And thanks to the guerillas and pirates, all this tropical beauty has been left untouched by modern civilization.

We started looking for the choice set of flights to this diver’s paradise last September and finished our research only at the end of this winter. The most suitable route was from Kyiv through Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur on to the final destination of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. Those flights took us almost 24 hours. After we disembarked from the plane in Jakarta, we understood that we had only traveled a half of the distance.

Then we boarded a small plane from Jakarta to Amvon that took off at midnight and landed only the next morning. There we had to take another plane to the port of Sorong, the capital of the Raja Ampat archipelago. A Spanish dive instructor named Selso, a professionally trained diver for safari cruises, welcomed us there with his assistants.

We then boarded a yacht, held a short briefing and went to sleep in our cabins. Then we spent two wonderful weeks aboard an Indonesia-build powerboat named Ondina.

One can find diving to any taste in this place. There are calm places where beginners can dive with snorkels while professionals will be delighted with a whole range of underwater grottoes with strong and often unpredictable flows, vertical walls submerging in a blue haze and forests of corals. The clarity of the water is 20-25 meters on average and the temperature is approximately 30 degrees Celsius, while the air temperature is at 30-32 degrees.

One can dive here year round and although these places attract divers from all over the world, they are not highly promoted. We dived with experienced divers from Germany, France, Spain, Norway, the U.S., Canada and even Thailand. When we gathered in the evening after diving it became clear that the Red Sea is a desert compared to this place, where the underwater landscapes give a 100- point handicap to the Galapagos Islands.

The main principle of diving in Raja Ampat and any other place on the planet is “hands off” from the perspective of individual safety, as many of the underwater plants are poisonous and certain species of corals are also dangerous to the touch.

These waters are inhabited by a variety of species of fish – in schools and loners, beautiful and ugly. There are so many of them swimming among the reefs that you often lose sight of your fellow divers. You will come across a devilfish, sometimes as many as a dozen in sight. Shellfish and mollusks can be so large they can swallow a newborn infant. The sharks in these waters are satiated, meaning they pose no danger to divers. While crocodiles are rare, they pose a greater threat to human intruders.

The diving industry in Indonesia is just beginning to flourish. Only several dozens of ships work on this massive aquatic territory and only a few hotels propose diving not far of the coast of Sorong. Over the two weeks of the diving safari, we only met fellow divers on a safari boat once. This gave us the sensation of being on the edge of the world throughout the trip, which afforded us the most striking impression: we felt like pioneer discoverers here!