25% Off | 13-Day Alor, Forgotten Islands & Banda Sea | Tiaré | Sep 7 – 19 2026

25% off Tiaré’s crossing from Flores to Ambon, 7 to 19 September 2026. Thirteen days, twelve nights, around 36 dives, running east from Maumere through Alor and the Forgotten Islands to the Banda Sea. This is the long way across, on a route almost no boat runs, and it needs a diver who has done some work.

Price and cabins

USD 4,085 per person, instead of USD 5,445. Same price in all three cabin types, all on the lower deck, all ensuite with air conditioning:

• Double Cabin: one double bed.
• Twin Cabin: two single beds.
• Triple Cabin: three singles, two of which join into a double.

Single occupancy is USD 6,535 instead of USD 8,710, the same 25% off. Six places are open at the time of writing, including one female twin share, so ask us what is still there before you book flights.

What the price covers

Included: twelve nights on board and roughly 36 dives, tax, airport and hotel transfers, all meals, snacks and a beach barbecue, drinking water, soft drinks, tea, coffee and welcome cocktails, wifi, laundry, all towels and toiletries, kayaks, paddle boards, snorkel gear with a guide, and the land excursions.

Compulsory, on top: national park and port fees for 2026, USD 250 per person, paid in advance. A fuel surcharge and evacuation insurance also apply. The operator has not published a figure for either, so ask us and we will get it in writing before you pay anything.

Optional: equipment rental, courses, a private dive guide, alcohol, massage, crew tips.

Level: Advanced Open Water or equivalent, minimum 20 logged dives, and the number is not decorative. Alor runs current strong enough that the boat hands out Enos locator transmitters, and several sites on this route are a long way from anything. If your logbook is thin, take one of the Komodo trips instead and come back to this one.

The route

Sites are chosen by the captain against weather, current and what the group can handle. What is fixed: board in Maumere around midday on 7 September, three to four dives a day including a night dive where conditions allow, two dives a day when the boat is covering distance, and step off in Ambon at 9am on 19 September.

Eastern Flores, Adonara and Lembata

The first days are muck. Adonara has ribbon eels and frogfish as standard, with rhinopias and wonderpus turning up for people who look properly. Off Lembata the gorgonian fans hold pygmy seahorses, and the water around Lamalera is a corridor for whales and dolphins moving through to the Banda Sea. Indonesia has recently agreed to protect these straits for exactly that reason.

Alor

Alor is where the trip stops being gentle. Sites are named things like The Bullet, the current is genuinely strong, and the diving is big. The guides scale the day to the group rather than the other way round, which on this coast is the difference between a good trip and a frightening one.

The Forgotten Islands

A chain running roughly a thousand kilometres from Timor towards Papua, with no development, no population centres and no other liveaboards. Walls, black volcanic sand, water you can see a long way through, and reefs that genuinely have not been dived much. There is a spot on this stretch where the boat has found schooling hammerheads, which is the sort of thing that does not appear in a brochure because nobody can promise it twice.

There is also an active volcano on the route. Tiaré times the pass to sit off it at dusk and watch lava run down the slope into the sea. Volcanoes keep their own schedule, so treat that as the plan rather than the promise.

The Banda Islands and Ambon

The Bandas close the trip: walls, clear water, sea snakes, and Banda Neira, where the Dutch fought over nutmeg and left the architecture behind. Then the run in to Ambon.

The last dive is on the afternoon of the penultimate day, around 4pm. The operator asks for 24 hours before flying, which is stricter than the usual 18, so book your flight home for 20 September at the earliest.

The boat

Tiaré is a 46-metre phinisi built in 2016 from Sulawesi ironwood, six cabins, twelve guests. On a twelve-night crossing the things that matter are the ones you stop noticing: the laundry, the indoor saloon when it rains, somewhere dry to leave a camera.

Getting there and back

In through Maumere (MOF) on Flores, out through Ambon (AMQ), so this is two one-way tickets and not a return. Both connect through Denpasar or Jakarta and neither has many flights a day, so book them early and leave yourself a night either side. Transfers at both ends are included. Ask us if you want the flights arranged with the trip, this is the itinerary where that saves the most trouble.

Other departures on our liveaboard pages, and the rest of the current offers on the deals page.