Are We There Yet?

After more than a year of planning, the day is finally here! Feb. 4, 2025, I flew from San Francisco to Manila for a 15 hour layover. By the late evening I headed to Jakarta and finally Sorong where I will board the Ambai for a 12 day scuba adventure diving Raja Ampat!

After the Manila layover, I landed in Jakarta at about 12:15 am and I booked a bed at the Digital Hotel which had "capsule" like beds, good enough to spend the night as my next flight was not until 12 hours later.

The journey was long and spanned three days but I got to learn about Indonesia and its interesting culture. I learned that Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims worldwide with around 241.5 million which is about 87% of its population. The airport housed multiple prayer rooms and the call to prayer announcements would play over the loudspeakers throughout the day.

I met up with my California dive buddy, Deb Stewart, for lunch and later on, my Canadian buddy, Linda Elliott. They were staying at a nearby airport hotel so we all hung out until our next flight.

After multiple days of traveling, we have finally arrived! We got to Sorong early in the morning where we stayed for one more night before boarding the Ambai.

We got to the boat around 11:30 am and we did our checkout dive near Sorong at around 2 pm. The visibility was quite poor and Linda and I lost our group within five minutes! Oh well, we got to practice our "what to do when you lose the group" techniques 🤪.

It took me about three days to get accumulated to the time change. I also caught a bug and had a low-grade fever. I didn't do all four dives for the first three days and not many pictures for the first three days.

Fortunately, I felt better after a lot of rest. The next blogs are all about the various critters I saw diving Raja Ampat including the very weird Wobbegong shark!

Hasta luego 👋🏼!