Dean dived Indonesia for fifty-seven days this spring, from 20 April to 15 June. Nusa Penida, Gili Air, Belongas Bay, Komodo, Alor, Bunaken, Bangka and Lembeh, with two weeks of volcanoes, villages and dragons in between. His wife Zita joined him for ten days in the middle. He wrote us a report when he got home, and most of what follows is his.
Nusa Penida and Gili Air, the first two weeks
He landed in Bali on 20 April and was on the boat to Nusa Penida the next morning. Two days in, he had already talked his dive centre out of a second trip to Manta Point and into running north instead. That set the tone for the whole trip: he knew what he wanted from a dive site, and he asked.
Gili Air came next, ten dives over five days, and it is the leg he writes about most warmly.
Gili Air is such a laid-back island. I loved walking around barefoot most of the time I was there. The hotel was a collection of bungalows located on the beach and a hundred meters from the dive shop. Strolling to the shop from the hotel in the morning was a very pleasant way to start the day.
Two afternoons, he was the only diver who wanted to go. Gili Air Divers ran the boat anyway.
So nice to have a personal guide and no one else on the site.
He also found the thing solo divers worry about before they book and stop worrying about on day three. He met other people travelling alone, they ate dinner together and swapped notes. In his words, it made being solo much easier.
Belongas Bay, where the water gets serious
South Lombok faces open ocean all the way to Australia, and The Magnet is a pinnacle out in it with a navigation tower on top. Wild Scuba Indonesia runs a handful of experienced divers out there when the sea allows. I went with him for two days.
The draw is hammerheads. They did not show, and Dean is straight about it: no sharks this time. What did show was a manta cleaning station with, by his count, ten to fifteen animals on it, schooling barracuda, and sea snakes that decided the divers were part of their hunting party.
Being part of hunting parties of poisonous sea snakes is etched in my memory as well as the currents from every direction even though they were “mild” for my visit.
Visibility ran 12 to 15 metres and the water dropped to 24C at times. Hammerhead odds climb as the water cools from May through September, which is the honest answer to when to go, and no more than that: nobody can promise a shark on a given week. He has already said next time.
He liked it enough to write it up for Undercurrent, the subscriber dive magazine, ten days later.
Bali with Zita, and a guide who talks about his own family
Zita flew in on 6 May. They spent four days on the cultural side of Bali: the Jatiluwih rice terraces, Pura Ulun Danu Beratan, museums and temples in Ubud, and a dance performance in the evening. Their driver and guide for all of it was Bernard.
Our guide, Bernard, really made a huge difference in our appreciation of the Balinese people. He is very personable and takes great pride in showing us his homeland. Learning about his family and background helped us connect with the people that simply isn’t possible with the typical tourist interactions.
The other Bali problem, in his telling, was dinner. Balinese, other Asian, Western, even Georgian. Choosing one place a night was, he wrote, both fun and frustrating.
Komodo, where the better dragons were outside the park
Zita photographs wildlife for a living, and she wanted more than the standard hour on Rinca. So Komodo was built around her: a private boat from Labuan Bajo with a snorkel stop and the pink beach on the way, three nights in a homestay in the village on Komodo island itself, and a guide who works in the park and also knows where the animals are when they are not in it.
They did one tour inside the national park. The rest of the time they were out with the village guide, and that is where the trip happened, including a baby dragon and enough time for Zita to work with the critter cam she built herself.
We did go in the park for one tour but we definitely had a better experience outside the park near the village.
The homestay he is honest about, and we would rather print it than not.
This place was a little rough around the edges but the owners provided delicious home cooked meals and the views over the bay were enlightening. Glad we stayed here and got a little exposure to village life.
A week later he was back for the diving, four days on a liveaboard out of Labuan Bajo. Currents, big fish, and a divemaster called AK who he name-checked in the first line of his feedback.
Ruteng, and the cannons nobody can explain
Between the dragons and the liveaboard they went up into Flores, to the cool air around Ruteng, the spiderweb rice fields and a village called Compang Todo. Wae Rebo was shut by rain that week, so their driver rerouted them and added a night in Ruteng. Dean’s verdict on that, at the time, was four words: worked out, no issues.
At the entrance to Todo stand several small English cannons, hundreds of years old, sitting on a stone wall in the middle of the Manggarai highlands.
There wasn’t a clear explanation of how these arrived here. Maybe the Dutch captured them.
Alor, and the one change we made without asking
His contract had him on the Alor mainland with a local dive centre. Two weeks before he got there we moved him, and told him after it was done. Nothing was wrong with the original booking. We had learned enough about how he dives, what he had already seen on this trip and what he was paying to think that a small island called Kepa, and the two people who run the place on it, were the better fit.
La P’tite Kepa is bamboo huts on a strip of beach, full board, cooked by women from the village, on an island you reach by outrigger. Tom and Yle have run it for years. He arrived on 20 May and sent this three days later.
The scenery, diving, and general vibe just put you at ease. It’s beautiful above and below the water as well.
The Alor diving did the rest. Drifts, walls, muck and a blackwater dive off the drop-off, his second ever.
All the cool larval creatures like octopus but most you can’t easily tell what they are. Most are translucent and flash colors around the edges of their bodies.
The week before he arrived, a cold upwelling had pushed deep water into the strait and with it, according to the people who were in it, hammerheads and mola mola. He missed that by seven days. He does not seem to mind.
It will hold a special place for me amongst all of the exceptional diving experiences that I have had from around the world.
That is a diver with 820 logged dives, who has dived the Solomons and Mexico, putting a small homestay in Alor at the top of the list. We did not ask him to say it and we did not expect it.
North Sulawesi, three weeks of macro
The last leg was the long one: fifteen nights and forty-one dives across Bunaken, Bangka and Lembeh in north Sulawesi. He picked up a cold leaving Alor and dived through it. He also moved to Bangka a day early, because he wanted to, and that is the kind of thing a fifty-seven day trip has room for.
Late May and early June is shoulder season up there, which shows up in the logbook rather than the brochure. For two days in Lembeh he had the resort to himself. His words: his own divemaster, his own boat, his own resort.
The people who made it
Dean names people, which is the part of a report you cannot manufacture. Bernard in Bali. AK on the Komodo liveaboard. The village guide on Komodo who knew where the dragons were. Jay at Wild Scuba. Tom and Yle on Kepa. The team at Gili Air Divers who launched a boat for one customer, twice.
On our side: Rachel ran his day-to-day logistics from the office, and Simon built the itinerary in the first place.
What actually goes wrong on a trip this long
Fifty-seven days is long enough that things break. A video light flooded on Gili Air and we shipped a replacement to his hotel in Ubud. A battery in the new light failed in Alor, so we ran the warranty claim through the shop in Bali while he kept diving, and the manufacturer replaced it. His pressure gauge flooded before Manado and we found the one shop in town that had a spare on the shelf. Rain shut Wae Rebo. Two flights moved. The park hours in Komodo came out different from the plan and we covered the difference the day he mentioned it.
None of that appears in his report, which is the point. It is also most of what an agency is for.
Ocean Earth Travels has done an outstanding job with planning this adventure. Located in Bali, they planned this stop and everything came together seamlessly including arranging lodging and drivers.
Dean Christofolis, writing for Undercurrent, May 2026
Plan your own
Dean’s trip was built from scratch around one diver, his wife’s photography and a hard rule that the good dive sites came first and the flights fitted around them. Yours would look nothing like it, which is rather the point.
- Alor, which is the one he would go back to first, and La P’tite Kepa, where he stayed
- Komodo, best April to November, dragons and current in the same week
- Belongas Bay, for experienced divers only, hammerhead odds rise as the water cools from May
- Our dive safaris, or tell us what you want and we will build it
Talk to us: get in touch and say roughly how long you have, how many dives you want in it and what you are hoping to see.
The trip in pictures
Photographs by Dean Christofolis, and by Zita Quentin, whose work is at zitasphotos.com.
