Traveling to Dive Destinations
We’ll be visiting 4 renowned diving hotspots during the Best of Southeast Asia tour. Booking flights to Indo-Pacific dive destinations always takes a fair bit of research, especially when you have multiple legs on the trip. it is essential to consider things like the time of day local connecting flights depart. For example, if local flights all depart in the morning and you arrive in the afternoon, you’ll have to spend a night waiting for the next local flight.
Destinations
- Bali (Tulamben, Candidasa),
- North Sulawesi (Manado, Lembeh Strait, Bunaken, Gangga)
- Raja Ampat
- Papua New Guinea (Kimbe Bay, Kavieng)
So how do we travel to all these these dive destinations? Here’s a quick rundown of our flight plan for each leg of the journey, excluding the boat and car airport transfers:
Los Angeles – Bali (Denpasar): 23 hours total time including a 4.5 hour layover in Taipei.
Denpasar – Manado: 4 hours travel time including a 50 minute layover.
Manado – Sorong (Raja): 6 hours travel time includig a 55 minute layover.
Sorong – Hoskins (Walindi, PNG): 5.5 hours travel time including a 3hr layover to Denpasar, then 7 hour direct flight Denpasar – Port Moresby, then 1.5 hour direct flight Port Moresby – Hoskins.
Hoskins – Kavieng (Lissenung): 8 hours travel time with a 5.5hr layover.
Kavieng – LAX: 2.5 hour direct flight Kavieng to Port Moresby, then 3 hour direct flight Port Moresby – Brisbane, then 19 hours travel time including a 4hr layover.
There we have it. Different itineraries will call for different flights, but overall the travel to resorts in Papua New Guinea and these regions of Indonesia is straightforward. Some divers may want to break up the international flights with an overnight so that they arrive at the resort well-rested, while others may want to knock it out in a single effort.
We’re focused on resorts for this trip, but know that it’s wise to arrive at the destination a day or two early when diving via liveaboard. The Bluewater Travel team is very familiar with all these routes and is always available to help plan and book logistics.
– Brent
Here’s an example of our travel within Papua New Guinea.
