Sorido Bay Resort Raja Ampat (Papua Diving)
We were visiting Raja Amapt as part of a 45 day visit to Indonesia. We spent five days in the Ubud area of Bali before traveling on to Raja Ampat via Jakarta.
We were looking for places to visit in Raja Ampat where we could dive a lot of diverse dive sites. Based on our preference for small resorts rather than liveaboards, our travel agents, Anne and Scott with Blue Water Dive Travel (who did a great job), recommended that we start our Raja Ampat adventure at Sorido Bay. That recommendation turned out to be superb.
Sorido is located on Kri Island in the Dampier Strait. The resort is a stone’s throw from Cape Kri, which is world renowned for its biodiversity. While the resort is on the ocean, I would not consider it a beach resort. With its setting in a heavily wooded area, it has more of a high end jungle resort feel. In addition, each guest cottage faces the lagoon with a sandy beachfront providing beautiful water views as well.
Everyone who works at Sorido is laser focused on making sure that the guests have a fantastic experience. We have been to many nice resorts over the years, but few places where the service matched that at Sorida. It is truly world class.
The current onsite management team is made up of a Brit and two South Africans. All three were delightful. They worked very hard and seemed to love what they do. The rest of the staff was mostly Indonesian. Everyone was warm and friendly, notwithstanding the occasional language barrier.
Each evening the dive master plans the next day’s dive schedule for the following day taking into account personal preferences. Each couple is assigned to a dive guide for the entire stay. Our guide was Usal, a young woman from a neighboring island. She was extremely competent and delightful to dive with. The dive boats are custom designed for Raja Ampat conditions and are built at Sorido’s on-site boat yard. The boats are basic but reasonably fast, have reliable outboard power, plenty of sunshade and good ladders. There is limited storage space on the boats. Bring a dry bag.
We typically did three to five dives a day with some night dives. Special excursions were offered on some days. Don’t miss the excursion to the Fam Islands which includes a dive at Melissa’s Garden, which has to be one of the top 10 dive sites in the world. I have been diving over 40 years and thought I would never again see coral as healthy as the coral at Melissa’s Garden.
The Sorido house reef was nothing special and had a surprising amount of macroalgae, especially compared to most of the other sites in the Kri area, which were generally very healthy. But there was little reason to dive the house reef as there were more boat trips offered than most guests could handle. The exception to this rule, is Saturday, when the dive boats do not go out (so the staff can observe their religious day of rest). On Saturday, you can make a self guided dive at the house reef with the tanks left out on the dock near the entry.
Many guests skipped dives so the they could have more downtime, but for me the diving was so good that I was hesitant to skip dives. I stayed busy but still found some time to relax in the afternoons.
In early March, the water temperature ranged between 80 and 84 F. We never wore wet suits, but most people did. Most dives were around an hour, which was plenty. Nitrox was available at no additional charge.
In general, the diving lived up to Raja Amat’s reputation with healthy and diverse coral and marine life. There were plenty of big animals, including mantas. And plenty of very small and unique animals.
In general, the visibility was ok, but not great. The conditions varied considerably from day to day and dive site to dive site. We were glad that we stayed for 11 days as some marginal weather days were offset with some beautiful days. Currents varied widely from site to site and day to day. A reef hook was mandatory on Manta Ridge (but we saw a lot of mantas). Most other dives did not require a reef hook, but some did. I got in the habit of keeping one in my BC pocket just in case.
As with the rest of Raja Ampat, the amount of trash floating near the surface, particularly plastic, was disappointing. But underwater most sites were mostly pristine.
There were always many liveaboard dive boats in the area around around Kri (for good reason) but Sorido’s nimble outboard boats allowed us to mostly have each dive site to ourselves.
The resort is very small with about 10 waterfront “bungalows.” The bungalows have large, comfortable beds and nice waterfront porches (although the lounge chairs were a bit hard). For photographers, each bungalow has a large work counter with plenty of electrical outlets, bright overhead lighting and a dedicated sink. The A/C worked great, although we only used it at night. We did not find that we needed much bug repellant, if any.
There are other small resorts and homestays on Kri Island besides Sorido, including Kri Eco, Sorido’s sister facility. However, none of the other facilities are visible from Sorido and it would be difficult to visit them except by boat. We tried to hike though the jungle to Kri Eco but give up before we made it. The staff apparently does it all the time, but they are quite a bit younger.
The free internet was marginal, which is to be expected in such a remote place. Cell coverage with Telkomsel was also marginal but we could usually get a little data using our Telkomsel sim cards (purchased in Bali).
Meals are buffet style. The restaurant/lounge is a second story, open air facility with elegant Indonesian architecture and stunning views. The food was excellent as was the entire dining experience.
In summary, for world class diving, great facilities and concierge level service it would be hard to beat Sorido Bay. The fact that it even exists in such a remote and pristine area is remarkable. A big thanks to Anne and Scott at Bluewater Dive Travel and the entire Sorido Bay team for providing us with a trip we will never forget.
After Sorido our next stay in Raja Ampat was Cove Eco Resort which I will review separately.
Note: The photos included with this review are not necessarily my best photos. I took hundreds. I am still sorting them out. These are just a representative sample.
