Dive Review of The Arenui in
Indonesia/Raja Ampat

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The Arenui, Jan, 2011, by Nili Hudson, CA, US ( 2 reports with 2 Helpful votes). Report 6276.
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	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	I have dived on The Bilikiki in the Solomon Islands and an Aggressor in Turks and Caicos so I do have liveaboard experience. I took a January 2011 charter on the Arenui and loved it so much in fact that I immediately came home and booked it for this coming December 2011 to Ambon and Raja Ampat. If that doesn’t say I loved it, nothing does. Let me break it down for you. The boat itself is remarkable in comparison to others I’ve been on. Aesthetically and functionally both. You get the sense that you are staying in a boutique hotel in Ubud, Bali not on a utilitarian fishing vessel. Every square inch is spectacularly beautiful with gorgeous wood carvings and details that you know were lovingly and well thought out. The rooms, the beds, the storage, the bathrooms, the salon…..Magnificant. Forget about bunk beds! Not that I spent much time in the bedrooms which were gorgeous, spacious and had every conceivable amenity, all I did was sleep in there. At all other times I was diving, eating, swapping out batteries & memory cards, sunbathing or reading on the oh so mind blowing upper deck (with hose to cool off, canopy's to sit under and dining tables). Or I was lounging in the salon reading a dive magazine, changing bathing suits, looking at someone else’s photos, or sipping on my made to order Latte’. Life doesn’t get much better. The diving? The dive guides? The pangas? Nothing short of spectacular! Let’s see, I would rise in the a.m. roll out of bed into my bathing suit, grab a quick bite before jumping in my wetsuit. But not before they came over with a clipboard and asked me what I wanted for breakfast? Didn’t I just eat breakfast? “oh no, just a snack. How would you like your eggs cooked”. Seriously. Okay, so continuing on. I check my camera and make sure it’s set up, leave it in a basket and walk over to the Panga. All of my gear is set up and ready to go, all I need to do is walk down a few steps and climb aboard, sit down and wait for them to taxi us out to the site, usually a 3 minute ride tops. Now did I mention that the basket with my camera is also now on the boat? I didn’t actually bring it on, they did. Entry is a back roll and getting back on the panga equally a breeze because you just handed them your BC and tank in the water so you’re light as a feather on a really nice ladder (wonderful as I was post foot surgery). After the dive I leave all of my gear on the panga, step up a few steps to the shower, peel off my wetsuit and they hand me a dry towel! After every dive! After night dives they bring you a towel and a hot cocoa. So there you have it. You can use your imagination as to how the rest of the day proceeds. It’s literally dive, shower, change, eat, dive, shower, change, eat….the most work you do is getting in and out of your wetsuit in between dives. It’s just heaven on earth with a staff to match on a boat that exceeded my every expectation. The diving is about as good as it gets anywhere in the world that I’ve been including Sulawesi, Solomons, Fiji, Central America, Carribean and more. Beyond words. The trip itself is also just mesmerizingly beautiful as you cruise past all the gorgeous islands and the seas were calm the entire time. There were some strong currents on some dives but nothing we couldn’t manage. The Manta dive was so phenomenally out of this world that they brought us back to let us do it again. More Mantas than you can imagine with some stopping at a cleaning station so close we could almost touch them. Not like previous Manta dives on other trips I’d done where they were flying by so fast that I had to whip my head around or miss them, these guys were just hovering! I saw an explosive amount of sea life that included every single thing on my wish list without fail. Including a dizzying amount of anemone fish, ornate and ghost pipefish, pipefish, mini warty frogfish, blue ringed octopus, crocodile fish, wobbegong sharks, walking sharks, porcupine whip ray, bumphead parrotfish, schools of batfish and juvenile penant batfish, spearing mantis shrimp, blue spotted rays, longspine waspfish, red tooth and clown triggerfish, tons of nudibranchs, hawksbill turtle, cometfish, Amazing Manta Rays, giant clams over 4' long, scorpionfish, OMG Pygmy Seahorses!!!, cuttlefish, gorgeous eels, snake eels, manderinfish, velvet fish, flying gunards, and so much more! We even saw whales! Not to mention exquisite corals, hard and soft. We had a few excursions including a visit to a village overflowing with the most precious and friendly children, so sweet and a pearl farm, where we got to watch them extract pearls and learn how they farm and raise the oysters, fabulous. Yes, the trip there is a bit brutal in terms of travel time from Los Angeles, but let me tell you, worth every hot and sweaty airport I had to visit to get there. But by the way, The Arenui even mitigates those issues by having someone every step of the way to help you get through customs and more. There’s so much more I can tell you but e-mail me directly if you want…I think you get the picture.
Websites	The Arenui
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	251-500 dives
Where else diving	Solomon Islands, Fiji, Lembeh Strait and Gangga Island Sulawesi, Roatan, Belize, Bonaire, Caymans, Curacao, Martinique, Turks and Caicos, Key West...and more
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, dry	Seas	calm, currents
Water Temp	83-86°F / 28-30°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	50-200 Ft/ 15-61 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	None
Liveaboard?	yes	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	Lots	Mantas	Squadrons
Dolphins	Schools	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	1 or 2
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	N/A
UW Photo Comments	Extra large area for photography gear on the boat - baskets and towels...We left whatever gear we wanted in our baskets on the table and the crew brought it to us when we got in to the panga. We put it back in the basket and they brought it back up to the boat.

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Dive Review of The Arenui in Indonesia/Raja Ampat

The Arenui, Jan, 2011,

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 The Arenui in
Indonesia/Raja Ampat