Dive Review of Gangga Divers/Gangga Resort in
Indonesia/North Sulawesi

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Gangga Divers/Gangga Resort, Aug, 2007, by Michael Emerson, MN, USA ( Contributor 13 reports with 1 Helpful vote). Report 3489.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity	N/A
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$	N/A
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Getting There--Compared to the three day ordeal we had to get from Minneapolis, the 3 hour journey from Lembeh Resort to Gangga was a piece of cake. The last kilometer of the road to the Gangga jetty was a bit of an adventure. I would hate to see what that dirt trail looks like after a rain! The Resort--The atmosphere of the resort was entirely different from Lembeh Resort where we had spent the first week of our Sulawesi adventure. It is much larger and spread out so it can be a pretty good walk to the bungalows in the back of the resort. The beach and views and beautiful. The bungalows were roomy and had AC and a TV in the room. (The TV had HBO and the Discover channel on every single channel except for one channel of CNN Asia.) It was very much like a resort you might find in the Caribbean but with cheaper drinks. The clientele is definitely European and primarily Italian because of the GM who is from Italy. We saw one other American couple during the week. Unlike Lembeh Resort which is purely for divers, this was much more of a mixed activity group which included some families and a lot of couples where only one member dived. This is a good place to show off your summer resort fashion, although half of the audience wore their t-shirts and swimming suits to eat as well. The food was always very good and the choices were enough to please anyone. We did not use the spa facilities but did look at them and they looked very nice. The massage beds were overlooking the soft turquoise waters of the Sulawesi sea. It looked like a great alternative for the non-divers at the resort. The Dive Operation--This is a big time dive operation with a fleet of 10+ boats, several of which were capable of pretty good distance to Lembeh and Bunaken. The resort location was ideal for anyone wanting a good taste of North Sulawesi diving. The boats were quite large and all had an onboard head. They could reach the sites in the area within 45 minutes to an hour in nearly all cases. Everything seemed well run and organized. Typically dive boats left at 8 AM and came back at lunch after two dives. The afternoon dive was at 3, a mandarin fish dive at 5 and a night dive at 7. The dive guides were a bit uneven, but generally very good. They assigned one guide to myself and my son and he was always looking for good photographic subjects. He even had his own digital camera and took some nice shots of us while diving which made a nice addition to the fish shots that I took. We had a couple of challenging dive sites and they got us back in the boat in an efficient manner. The resort did very well to serve the needs of divers of a wide range of skill levels. The facilities for underwater photography were also first rate. They always had some tubs of water on the boat to place our cameras in after every dive. We had a bench in a dive photography room for all of our gear and plenty of plugs in of all shapes and voltage. My son was even able to charge his Nintendo game which required 110 amps.. The Diving--the diving was very good, although the lack of any bigger fish was disappointing. The walls at Bunaken were beautiful and we saw some large Napolean wrasse and a big turtle in the distance. The coral throughout the area was healthy and colorful. The island of Bangka has several very nice sites with beautiful topography and a couple of spectacular pinnacles. We did learn that while August is considered high season, it is also a windy time and it does limit visits to some of the better sites that are not wind protected. The resort has a great mandarinfish dive which I found to be the best I have seen. It has a nice place to steady yourself for photos and the night we were there, the fish were definitely in the mood for love, even though it was a full moon. There are several nice dive sites at Pulisan on the main island of Sulawesi which are well wind protected. Unfortunately these can be over visited if the wind persists. On one dive, we saw several varieties of rare nudis, a clown frogfish, and three kinds of ghost pipefish. The coral reefs were generally in very good shape and provided great vistas for wide angle photography. It doesn’t get much better than Bangka and Bunaken. There were plenty of macro subjects as well, just no fish bigger than a large angel fish.
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	251-500 dives
Where else diving	Galapagos, Caymans, Cozumel, Solomons, Fiji, Burma, Palau
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather		Seas	choppy
Water Temp	80-82°F / 27-28°C	Wetsuit Thickness	0
Water Visibility	60-100 Ft/ 18-30 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	Dive by computer
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	N/A
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	None	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	See below

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Dive Review of Gangga Divers/Gangga Resort in Indonesia/North Sulawesi

Gangga Divers/Gangga Resort, Aug, 2007,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Gangga Divers/Gangga Resort in
Indonesia/North Sulawesi