Manta Ray Bay Resort: "Yap has Manta Rays, but ...", Dec, 2016,by Raymond Haddad, QC, CA ( Sr. Reviewer 10 reports with 9 Helpful votes). Report 9460 has 3 Helpful votes. |
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No photos available at this time | |||
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best): |
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Accommodations | Food | ||
Service and Attitude | Environmental Sensitivity | ||
Dive Operation | Shore Diving | N/A | |
Snorkeling | N/A | ||
Overall Rating |
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Value for $$ | |||
Beginners | |||
Advanced | |||
Comments |
We stayed at the Manta Ray Bay Resort for 14 nights during the 2016/2017 Xmas holidays. I will separate the resort in three parts: the resort, the restaurant called Mnuw and the dive center. The resort: Nothing fancy, clean, very slow internet, no TV channels (you can rent a DVD player and videos), it is located in the channel (no beach), it has a small pool with a few chairs, no gym, … not much to do besides diving! Staff is very polite. The restaurant MNUW: Breakfast is included with your package. You can get eggs to taste, bacon, pancakes, bread (plane toast), pastries and fruit which is ONLY bananas, oranges and watermelon. No yogurt, no cereal, no cheese, no cold cuts … The breakfast gets boring after a while! Lunch and dinner is the exact same menu. 50% of the items are bad, 25% are just barely ok and the remaining 25% ok. The bread used for burgers and sandwiches is thick and dry. The salad dressing is always the same one. Chicken is only the upper thigh, no white meat. They offer fish tacos but make sure you ask for it in a burrito or else it will come in hard shell taco … strange! Stay away from the fish taco with jalapenos and pineapple … trust me! The spaghetti is a portion for three people. At night, they offer the catch of the day (mahi-mahi or wahoo) with rice or mashed potatoes with some veggies for $14.95 along with the standard menu. After 14 days eating the same menu, I could not take it anymore! Yap dive center: Each boat can accommodate up to 8 divers with a captain and a guide. There are no toilets on the boat, some shade, no rinse tanks for cameras or masks. They provide dry towels, they set up your gear, they can also clean and rinse you equipment. Two dives are offered in the morning and one in the afternoon. Between dives, water, hot black tea, cake and fruit are offered. They don’t require a check out dive, they look very fast at your dive cards, the typical PADI questionnaire is not what I have seen before, not many questions asked, no chart to log in your nitrox tank number, percentage, max depth … not what PADI taught us to do. They will mix dives of different levels, experience, air and nitrox all with the same guide. A few times, my wife and I waited 10 minutes on the bottom for others. Security is not their main concern. During the winter months, it is not always possible to dive on the outer reefs. Therefore, either you go to the manta cleaning station or you dive in the channel … both with limited visibility. We did not dive the reefs on the east side because the sea was to rough. We were told that the reefs on the east side are bad. We dove mostly on the west side of the island which is only average. The best diving is in the south-western part of the island. It can take about an hour to get there. The manta cleaning station is located in a channel on the west side of the island. You take a nice boat ride through the mangrove forest. The manta cleaning station is about 15-20 feet deep, visibility is average and can get crowed especially if the seas are rough when the boats can’t make out to the reefs. If you want to see sharks, go to Vertigo. The visibility is great and the sharks (grey reef and black tips) are always there … guess why? I found that the fish, turtles… are very shy and hard to get close to compared to all other dive destinations I have been to. You won’t see big schools of fish. I think that they need to do some conservation effort. After doing 24 dives, it got very repetitive. Summary: 14 days was too long. Yes you should go once for 5 to 7 days and combine this with a trip to Palau which you can get a direct flight to. |
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Websites | Manta Ray Bay Resort | ||
Reporter and Travel |
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Dive Experience | 501-1000 dives | ||
Where else diving | Bahamas, Belize, Honduras, Australia, Palau, Fiji, Indonesia, Turks & Caicos, Maldives, Philippines, Cozumel, YAP | ||
Closest Airport | YAP airport | Getting There | United Airlines: LAX, Honolulu, Guam, YAP |
Dive Conditions |
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Weather | sunny, windy, rainy, cloudy | Seas | choppy |
Water Temp | 78-81°F / 26-27°C | Wetsuit Thickness | 3 |
Water Visibility | 40-100 Ft/ 12-30 M | ||
Dive Policy |
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Dive own profile | yes | ||
Enforced diving restrictions | Duration 60-70 minutes, start safety stop at 500 psi | ||
Liveaboard? | no | Nitrox Available? | yes |
What I Saw |
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Sharks | Lots | Mantas | Squadrons |
Dolphins | None | Whale Sharks | None |
Turtles | > 2 | Whales | None |
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best): |
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Corals | Tropical Fish | ||
Small Critters | Large Fish | ||
Large Pelagics | |||
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best): |
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Subject Matter | Boat Facilities | ||
Overall rating for UWP's | Shore Facilities | N/A | |
UW Photo Comments | There was no rinse tank on the boat. If all divers would have large camera equipment, it would be an issue. |
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