from Dublin to........Mirissa, Sri Lanka: Amazing Pulau Bangka......Sulawesi, Indonesia

A 1-1¼hr taxi ride north east of Manado, basically on the tip of Sulawesi brings you to the shabby seaside town of Likupang. Get the driver to take the main roads and not the short-cut otherwise the taxi will be 4wd-ing through flooded, washed away roads like mine had to. He nearly turned back. From here it is a pleasant boat ride to your accommodation.I had been advised to head to either Ganggi (next to Bangka) or Lembeh Strait (a couple hours south) for good diving. Lembeh is renowned for being one of the best places in the world for muck diving (as the name suggests, sifting through sand, soil and grass searching for little critters). There are a few resorts on Ganggi and all were out of my budget. On neighbouring Bangka, the largest island in the area, there was a new dive centre that seemed to fit the bill. Nomad Divers, run by Sophie and Simon from England. It had been open a few months and offers only four bungalows at this stage. Simon met me at Pantai Likupang, a filthy black-sand beach/estuary (cleaned every Friday – I saw it on two different Sundays and it was pretty bad already), for the ride to the south-eastern end of the island.

The property is nestled among the mangroves with a small stretch of course sand out front and around the beach-front structures. It’s quiet and remote (10-15 minute walk to the village) but I never felt bored – perhaps I was too busy diving or feeling exhausted. The bungalows are spacious, clean, if not a little sparsely furnished, and have a huge outdoor bathroom.
Everything here moves. It is very much a living island. Hermit crabs, lizards, monitor lizards, frogs, geckos, three friendly and playful dogs, small snakes that come out at night and fish in the water’s edge, tarsiers (didn’t see one, only heard the googly eyed things) and god knows what else. It was quite cool.

The village up the bush path was unexpectedly clean and organised. 1,000 friendly people live a basic but sustainable life there. Pigs and chickens roam freely (one would become crispy and delicious on the Wednesday night). A public ferry makes the daily route between Bangka and Likupang, except Sundays.

There was one other guest when I arrived, another James. What are the odds? An experienced diver missing half a leg and still travelling the world. Inspirational stuff. He has a tendency to break his prosthetics as he pushes them to the extreme (and beyond) not letting any obstacle get in his way. Have to admire that. He was a stubborn bugger though.

So the diving…..what can I say. Brilliant. Excellent variety which I like – couldn’t imagine doing the same dive 3 or 4 times in one day over the course of a week. Bangka has walls with deep drop offs, incredible coral gardens, black and white sandy and rocky bottoms for great muck diving, drift dives, pinnacles, boulders, it goes on. It does not however have large pelagics frequenting the waters although there is a resident dugong and I did manage to see an eagle ray. The great thing about the location is that Bunaken and Lembeh the more famous and popular sites are an easy day trip away. I did trips to both and still preferred Bangka.

Lembeh is purely a muck diving location, aside from a Japanese cargo wreck which I dived to get my nitrox certification. We had some poor visibility as it bucketed down the night before and didn’t find too much. It was so bad we lost James on the third dive and had to abort early. Bunaken has a massive wall surrounding the island that descends 100’s of metres and the appeal of venturing out into the blue to search for hammerheads, white tips, pilots whales and mantas. On one dive we went out there. I wasn’t really comfortable with it. It was my first time out there and the absence of a diving watch doesn’t make it any easier. Initially the senses were disorientated and I became a little dizzy. This passed quickly thank god and we went out, saw nothing disappointingly, and headed back to the wall which I was much happier with. We did three dives around the wall, saw one massive beast of a turtle, but drifting along the wall just bored me in the end. The coral was still amazing.

So back to Bangka….the variety of corals, both soft and hard was incredible. And you could spend weeks and weeks hunting for so many species of fish it isn’t funny. This was something I really enjoyed, finding various elusive creatures. I must make a comment here on my guide Rudolfi (Dolfi), a local guy, whom has been diving the area for some time. He had an excellent eye for the macro stuff. I don’t know how many times he showed me something minute and I signaled to him….”how the hell am I supposed to photograph that with this?!?!” Having a camera added an extra element of interest and challenge to the dive a well. The beauty about a good compact is that you don’t fark around nearly as much setting up the camera for the photo and the photos can still turn out reasonable. I did struggle with taking more landscape style photos. Need to work on that. One of the best aspects – I think I only saw other divers once on the 12 dives I did in Bangka itself.

Noteworthy - Bangka is subject to an interesting legal and ethical dispute at the moment. Local government officials illegally issued a mining permit to a Chinese company. They tried transporting some exploration mining equipment to the island and were met with 1,000 hostile locals who won’t have any of that nonsense in their backyard, fearing pollution and run-off will destroy their way of living. Mining is forbidden on the island as it doesn’t meet the minimum area requirement. An indisputable fact I would have thought.

I can’t recommend Nomad Divers enough. Simon and Sophie have something pretty good there and it will only get better as they continue to find their feet. It is a very affordable alternative to the 3-4 star resorts around. The staff are very good (Mama, cook, and Papa Dolfi, boat captain, and Dolfi as guide). And if there is a decent group of people there, get them to organise a spit roast pig over the coconut husks. Have a go at turning the manual wooden spit and carving the tasty beast. Piggy heaven. And one day a local came by carrying some fresh mangrove mud crabs….crabby heaven that night.