Anemone Fish… (photo by Nia Aritonang)

Today is the fifth and last day of the trip.

Our Temukira ship anchored at the south-east of the Kri island. In the morning, there were also other pinisi ships anchored in this area as their divers also prepared for their first dive of the day. Chicken Reef is our first dive point today. Most of us opted to dive without their camera and just wanted to enjoy the dive and the scenery down there. “We will do another negative entry this morning, straight to the depth of 25 meters…” Weka told us during the briefing. Another strong current area, apparently. Soft corals and hard corals filled the slope, and again we met two turtles who were busy with their breakfast. The third group had small problem when Hadi lagged behind his group due to the current. As per procedure, Joni-Franky-Hari-Reza climbed straight back to the surface. Hadi was already on the boat with the Open. He also immediately climbed back up to the surface and Open’s watchful eye on the boat immediately recognized him and came over. Great crew!

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Wayag panorama, breath-taking landscape…

Third day of the trip…

Early morning  I woke up, as Temukira started moving again. After dawn, I went up to the upper deck. The ship had stopped in the calm waters, and it gave me the opportunity to photograph the sunrise from the top of the ship. But apparently I still had to wait until the day becomes brighter, because as calm as the water was the boat was still moving and it didn’t allow me to shoot photos with slow shutter speed. And the clouds on the eastern horizon was still blocking the morning sunrise. As the day went, I tried to shoot a few frames before the red color of the morning disappears, and quickly joined the others as we prepared the first dive in the third day…

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Temukira At Wayag, Raja Ampat…

It was early dawn when I got out from my room at Je Meridien hotel where we stayed overnight in Sorong. But I was not alone because my other companions were also out of their rooms for breakfast and prepare themselves. Joni & Weka, our guides on this trip would meet us at 06:30 at the lobby and drive us to the pier. A few minutes past seven, four Toyota Avanza which was hired to drive us started moving towards the pier, located about 15 minutes from the hotel. Arriving at the dock, the crew swiftly moved all our luggages – clothes bags, diving gears, photographic gears and supplies – the results of last night snack-panic-shopping – into the small boat to be brought on board Temukira, a pinisi ship with the capacity of 12 passengers with 12 crew that are provided by a dive tour operators to serve divers – or even non-diver tourist – that want to explore Raja Ampat archipelago. Once we all boarded the ship, Alwi, the cabin crew in-charge for this trip, started presenting fresh fruit juice, a perfect answer to our thirst, as the scorching sun welcomed us on board. Exactly at eight o’clock, Temukira started moving, slowly left the port of Sorong. Our adventure begins!

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