Mermaid I 10D9N

• It’s time to set sail on the incredible MV Mermaid I! Check in between 12:00 to 15:00 hours in Maumere Harbour, Flores.
• After the boat and safety briefing, we’ll set up all the equipment and you can settle into your cabin.
• Dinner will be served at 19:00 hours as we cruise into the sunset on our overnight journey to Kawula Island, east of Flores

We’re going to kick off our trip with a day at the incredible Lewaling Bay, in the north of Kawula Island. The bay is home to two stunning volcanoes on either side, and the scenery is simply breathtaking. We’ll be doing four dives here, and the diving at Lewaling Bay is as diverse as it is amazing. You’ll find everything from walls, slopes, and muck dives here. We’ll be diving with a great variety of creatures, from huge barracudas and schools of fish to tiny pygmy seahorses. We’ll finish the day with a muck dive as a night dive in front of the village of Watu Warawutun, which stands at the bottom of one of the volcanos. After dinner, we’ll cruise overnight to the Alor Islands, which are about 7 to 8 hours away.

The next two days are going to be absolutely amazing! We’re going to be diving around the Pantar Strait, which is the strait between the two major islands of Alor and Pantar Island. There are four islands in the Pantar Strait: Ternate in the north, Reta and Pura in the middle, and Treweg in the south. Between these four islands and the islands of Pantar and Alor, there are several dozen dive sites with an incredible variety of diving scenery: walls with huge overhangs and hard coral gardens in the shallows, fringing reefs covered with pristine hard and soft corals and all kind of sponges surrounded by zillions of anthias and damsels, black sandy slopes covered with thousands of anemones, and muck dives where we can find rhinophias, fire sea urchins with Coleman’s shrimps and zebra crabs, channels between the islands where you just drift with some strong currents and look out for pelagic fish passing by. The water temperature can vary greatly in this area. In the northern and middle areas, the temperature is usually around 27 C. And in the south, it can vary from 21C to 25C. Currents can be extremely strong in the Pantar Strait, which usually makes for 30m-plus visibility.

On the fifth day of the trip, we will skip the 2 morning dives in order to visit a traditional village at Alor Island, where the locals will perform a local dance and where the guests will be able to buy locally made handicrafts. Then we will return to Mermaid I in order to have lunch and do 2 more dives at the Pantar Strait.

Today Mermaid I will start cruising early in the morning in order to get to a small bay at the south tip of the Pantar Strait called Beang Abang, where we will spend the whole day. Or we will do 1 or 2 dives at Treweg Island and then move to Beang Abang. The dive sites at Treweg island consist of rocky slopes covered in all sorts of soft corals, and where one can just drift looking for all kind of pelagic fish such as dogtooth tunas and giant trevallies. The diving at Beang Abang Bay and village is very different from the rest of Alor. It consists mainly of blackish and grayish sand which is the perfect environment to find all kinds of different critters such as frogfish, ghost pipefish and different species of octopi. There is also a jetty at the village with large schools of scads and batfish. And it is also a great place to find more critters and all kind of nudis. The water temperature in the south of the Alor Islands can vary from 21C to 25C. After dinner we will cruise overnight to the village of Lamalera, in the south of Kawula Island

We start the day doing a dive at a fringing reef in front of the whaling village of Lamalera. And then we will move to the small island of Suangi, in the south of Kawula Island, to do 1 more dive. The waters surrounding Suangi and streaming with schooling fish, pelagic fish and it is also a place where sharks are usually spotted. We will again move the boat after the 3rd dive to finish the day in the Solar Strait, south of Adonara Island, in order to do a muck dive as a night dive.

The last day of diving will be at the small island of Serbete, just northwest of Adonara island, where we will finish with 2 dives. Spectacular walls covered in soft corals and sponges, where one can spend time looking for tiny critters among the soft corals and sponges, or just drift along the wall looking at the spectacular views of the walls. Sadly, after the 2nd we will start heading back to Maumere, approximately 6 hours away.

Disembark after breakfast at 8 am.