Alor and Wakatobi: Best of Two Worlds!

The following itinerary is for example purposes only. Your actual itinerary may vary due to weather or other environmental conditions and at the Captain's discretion in order to seek out the best available diving during your cruise.

Leaving Maumere, diving highlights around Alor Island include Kalabahi Strait: great muck diving at Mucky Mosque, you can easily spend a few days going to the same site! Similar to all top muck spots - black sand and small rocks with great marine life - rhinopias, octopus, shrimps, crabs, seahorses, cuttlefish, scorpion fish etc. Just outside Kalabahi there is superb diving in the Pantar Strait. This area can have high current and very cold water, down to 20 degrees! You have to pick and choose your best times but it’s all great diving. One of the most unique sites is Anemone City. On the island of Pura there is anemone after anemone. There is also plenty of opportunity to shop for locally made and dyed Ikat fabric and goods. The boat usually also visits Kumba Volcano to do some day diving and also to watch the sunset and volcanic activity.

Leaving Alor, the boat will head up toward the Wakatobi area and the first diving area will be Karang Koka,  around 13 hours motoring from Kumba. Karang Koka is a large reef system all underwater that can be dived and explored. Some areas have had bombing damage, however there are still some great coral gardens and walls to explore and enjoy some lovely reef style diving.

From Karang Koka we will head towards Binongko, one of the main four Wakatobi Islands (Wangi Wangi, Kaledupa, Tomia and Binongko). These pretty green islands have lovely white sands and beautiful reefs. The boat then heads directly in front of the Wakatobi Resort on the Island of Tolandono. Diving here is around the reef system of Lintea Island – absolutely pristine reef systems teeming with colour and life. Night dives will be where the boat will be anchored near Tolandono and there are a number of very nice mini wall sites and last year we were lucky to find a number of Halimeda Ghost Pipefish, pygmies, nudis, leaf scorpions and so on.

From the main Wakatobi area the boat will head towards the Southern tip of Buton. There are a number of different options here dependent on timing. So there could be a day muck diving at Pasarwajo.  However last year we could not fit it all in, so we headed to the South tip of Buton and dived a new site which we called Treasure Chest. We had great critters lots of fantastic nudis, eels, batfish, octopus, leaf scorpionfish, ghost pipefish and more. The boat then heads into the bustling port town of Bau Bau.