Nusa Tengara is the southernmost part of Indonesia. It is a chain of islands that start East of Bali with Lombok and end up almost in Australia with Timor. It's divided in Nusa Tengara Barat ( West ) and Nusa Tengara Timur ( East ). Starting from west the Islands are: Lombok, Sumbawa, Komodo and Rinca, Flores, Lembata Solor, Pantar and Alor. South of Sumbawa lies isolated Sumba, a large island with a character on its own, and South East of Alor is Timor. It's a very unspoiled region, just few areas have developed into resorts and offer tourist facilities. The rest of the country is a wild, volcanic, rugged land difficult to travel but astonishingly beautiful. Dive wise the whole area is fantastic. There are few things to bear in mind though. 1. The only areas where you'll find dive operations are: Sengiggi on the Lombok's North East coast, Labuanbajo and Maumere in Flores and Kupang in West Timor. 2. The current in some areas like Komodo can be fierce to say the least. You'll have to choose between wild exciting dive sites and resort comfort, as usual these two features hardly come in the same package unless you go on a luxurious live aboard. Though some of the dive shops are reasonably equipped you'll be happier to dive with your own gear.
Lombok.
Now don't get too excited by the picture above. Lombok's most popular area among divers doesn't offer anything like that. This picture was taken in the south of the island in a very wild, undeveloped, beautiful area where currents are very strong, the sites are almost unknown and fish comes in size and numbers. It's a place where almost no one ever dived. In few minutes I saw this wall of barracudas too large even to fit into a 20mm. lens. They were hundreds and hundreds and were everywhere making the ring above us, moving upwards and downwards. Then I saw a little hammerhead swimming next to a large one at about minus 50-plus metres. A dive center is pioneering the area so any dive has a certain odd amount of unforeseen circumstances that adds interest to it but makes it potentially dangerous. Be alert. This picture almost cost me my life and I'm not joking.
Lombok's popular spot among tourists and divers is Sengiggi and the Gili islands. Sengiggi isa tourist settlement on the coast and if you are into resorts and luxury this is the place for you. I think it sucks but you'll have to like it. From there you can do many things: go to the volcano Rinjani - be advised that it takes three days to get to the top and it's hard; you can go to Mataram, Ampenan, Chackranegara and their local pubs and clubs; you can visit other spots in Lombok where they make potteries and fabric. You can do all this but you cannot dive. If you want to dive you'll have to go to the Gilis. These are three little islands 25 minutes away from Sengiggi. Gili Air, the closest one to the coast is quiet but not too quiet, has a broad range of accommodations in bungalows and few good dive centers. Gili Meno is very quiet, with fewer people, bungalows and a little lake in the center that provides an everyday supply of mosquitos. Then you have Gili Trawangan. If you like overcrowded beaches and touting and uninspiring guesthouses squeezed on the beach together with drugs and the like you will not want to go there. I know it sounds rude but that's what it is. Sorry. So if you want to dive a lot head to the Gilis.
When I go there I stay at Gili Air; it doesn't really matter for the dives as you will dive the three islands anyway no matter where you stay. I have been there twice and I love it. Dream Divers in Gili Air is a friendly outlet and I like it's easygoing feeling. My friends there do a great job teaching and divemastering the area. I stay at Gili Indah a clean, nice and beautifully located resort that sports some of the best Italian food in Indonesia. I will go there again as long as my friend Ottino owns it.
The dives are good though not excellent by Indonesian standards; you can easily see cattle fish and turtles - on one dive I saw three of them together followed by a couple. There are sharks as well, mostly white tips and in one spot there are five resident ones measuring about 1/1.5 m. Some of the dives are very nice and you might see mantas. There are chances to see whale sharks as well especially on the open sea sides and I have seen a Sperm Whale together with my friend divemaster Ramones ( yeah my man, I checked the books and I believe it was a Sperm Whale). Some places are a fantastic spot for macros and Mamek will point them out for you. He knows the area as his pockets. One of my fondest memories is and encounter with more then 20 giant parrotfish. I was diving with Werner - hi dude, I think you stopped counting them at about 25 didn't you? - when we ended up amidst this cloud of coral eaters. One drawback though, the area has been heavily bombed by fishermen and in some area you'll see big patches of coral turned into a cemetery. Now it's banned but some says that out in the sea they still do it and on my last dive we heard a blast that was unmistakably dynamite. Unfortunately fishermen find this easy catch too attractive to understand that as long as they kill fish nothing wrong will really happen to the environment but when they destroy corals they kill the environment itself and there will be no more fish to catch without coral. They simply throw dynamite into their own underwear.
Komodo. The realm of currents.
We were about to anchor somewhere in the Komodo strait, South of Rinca if I'm not wrong. The sea was as usual tortured by strong currents. I was with Isabella my girlfriend and three Australian divers. Suddenly one of the girls screams "Mantas, Mantas!" we were all hoping to see some so her scream got us there is a blink. Strangely I couldn't see that typical graceful and slow movement but rather a frantic splashing just under the surface. Sharks?. As they got closer was obvious that it was something else, not mantas. One screams " dolphins, dolphins!" but again it all looked too fast and wild to me. Mmm...how about sharks? Suddenly no one said a word anymore, every expression frozen up while jaws dropped down to the deck. Before our very eyes four sharks measuring about 1.5 m. were furiously jumping and fighting, perhaps preying on some fish. Isabella turned to me and said: " Do you seriously want to dive here?" 'Course I do, I love sharks.
I have been diving in Komodo twice and what amazes me is the 'quality' of the current over there: any kind you can imagine all at once. You see it from the surface and it's truly scaring. Our first dive was memorable. Upside down all the time, hanging desperately onto a rock. I saw happening two things I thought were not possible: a diver crying underwater -her mask full of tears; a shark trapped in an upward gorge. Belly up he was strenuously trying to get out of it contorting and assuming the weirdest postures I've ever seen. Needless to say I didn't take one single picture that dive.
Then I got back few years later - last June - with my friend Sergio a dive instructor and terrific expert in equipment servicing He works at the Dream Divers shop in GIli Air and managed to get from my regulator what even Dacor in Singapore couldn't. Now it is as smooth as silk and it was the first time he could open one like mine. Go figure. We had this trip in mind since January and finally we got there by the end of June. We based ourselves in Labuanbajo - a fishing village with few losmen and a couple of very basic dive shops - and dived two little rocks close to Komodo. The first one was terrific as I use to remember: forests of soft corals, dramatic landscapes full of fish and some sharks sleeping on the bottom. Our divemaster - a local one working for a local shop - knew the area inside out and most importantly knew where and when to dive according to the current. There was just a mild one but as soon as we reached the corner where you turn on the other side it felt like a roller coaster: plants and soft corals bent horizontally swapped by a veeery strong current: OK guys, lets get the hell out of here.
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