Raja Ampat, Papua, Indonesia | Awesomeness

One may think that Papua is wilderness, danger, full of scary animals, and so forth... Well, you can be really disappointed to find yourself in the middle of a paradise rather than in an Indiana Jones adventure. The nature is well protected, in brief, if you respect the mother nature -as we should all do- you may well enjoy what it is offered to you.

How to get there? Well, I traveled from Istanbul if that would make sense to you, but these few lines will give you an idea. Me and my friends were on a Turkish Airlines (TK) flight to Jakarta, since it was my birthday gift to myself, I took liberty to fly in business by using my long saved bonus miles. In Turkish Airlines, business class is always a pleasure for such long distances. Although not so tired, we decided to spend the night and the next day in Jakarta to catch-up other friends who would join us with the next day's flight. Our stay was in Shangri-La, the hotel was great but the traffic jam in the city can definitely surprise you even if you are from Istanbul or a similar city. There were Uber motorbikes to carry you across the city, adventurous but fast solutions to the jam. I can't say that I saw the city, but have been in some shopping malls to check what novelties they were offering in electronics, well nothing much to be honest. We took the flight to Sorong in Papua at 00:05 from Jakarta, the flight took 4 hours and with the new time zone we landed at 06:10 in the morning. We had a breakfast and a nap in a small hotel until noon, and then, we were picked up by Papua Explorers' speed boats that gave us an approximate 2-2.5 hours of fun until the resort. The resort, I am not going to get into the details, I wrote some few comments in the following lines, but all I can say, it was beautiful, very well organized and was a great place to get you in a peaceful state of mind.

The dives? Underwater world is incredibly beautiful with colorful corals and their inhabitants. Wobbegongs, anemones, mantas, sweet lips are literally everywhere. The corals, despite the crazy captains hitting the reefs are still unique to the region.

All the diving sites are making you feel that your dive should never end. The 'amusement park' named "The Passage" is breathtaking with its beautiful corals and 'Beam me up Scotty!' kind of current.

Mangroves are worth seeing, but don't try to swim there after sunset. Crocodiles may look cool on Crocs or on Lacoste but you wouldn't prefer to come across to them while swimming. We never had chance to see a single one during our 1 week stay, and we were told that they were not around for the past 6 months. Please do not take this paragraph as a warning message but you should always take care and ask advice from locals before playing to Indiana Jones out alone, especially in remote areas.

Local people are very friendly; and while you are traveling to Raja Ampat, bringing some gifts to them, such as clothes or toys, is well appreciated in some villages. Our stay was in Papua Explorers Dive Resort, which I can strongly recommend. Very friendly people in every position, dive guides, management, restaurant, boat crews... The food and the rooms are great, and having a Bali massage on the jetty is a bonus that you should grant to yourselves.

As for the dives please note that they are using 11 lt tanks, so if you are a tank finisher, keep yourself above your group in order to synchronize your bottom time. Some strong currents in some dive sites can well be funny but can also cause difficulties for inexperienced divers. Nevertheless dive guides will manage your plan accordingly. Sometimes the currents may surprise you by being nonexistent during your dive; in my 200th dive at Cape Kri, I was expecting a strong current given past experiences, but the whole dive was a very smooth one.

In brief, Raja Ampat is one of those places that you would want to visit again to meet new beauties, or enjoy the ones that you just loved.

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