Snorkeling in Bunaken National Park

Last stop of our India/Indonesia trip (and therefore also the last stop of our sabbatical year) was Bunaken National Park (a marine national park) - more precisely Siladen Island located within it. Here, we were supposed to relax for a few days - no scheduled program, just sleeping, eating, drinking cocktails, snorkeling...

Upon arrival, it was raining, so we could fully concentrate on relaxation and skip snorkeling. However, while walking around the resort, we quickly noticed that almost all of the super friendly staff addressed us by name and seemed to be waiting to do something for us. We always have to get used to something like this because we are more used to helping out ourselves, which is rather undesirable here. Well, we can live with problems like this.

The next morning, after breakfast, we tried snorkeling from the beach. However, the reef was quite far out, and we had to swim across a large area of seagrass with a lot of sea urchins. Once we reached the reef, we could snorkel along the reef edge or above the reef, but we had to be mindful of the currents, which were quite strong depending on the tide. Unfortunately, it was not possible to circle the island (too long, changing currents, only 2 access points ...). However, the reef was beautiful - finally many different and quite intact corals, although the fish were all quite small, but at least they were plentiful.

In the afternoon, we booked snorkeling from a boat, and we swam with two other snorkelers and a guide around another island in the national park, which was of similar quality to our house reef.

For the next day, we immediately booked participation in boat snorkeling tours for the morning and afternoon, and even a night snorkeling. The reefs were all quite nice and intact, the fish were all quite small, but at least some turtles were impressively large.

On the last day, we snorkeled again from the beach in the morning, and in the afternoon, we went on another boat. This time, we found a spot with a fantastic reef, but it suffered greatly from swimming amidst a lot of garbage. We had noticed this problem before because we had never seen so much plastic and other waste floating in the sea like here. However, at the snorkeling spot, it was even worse, and it felt like swimming through a landfill. Surprisingly, the water was still clear, the reef was as beautiful as always, and turtles and fish were again abundant.

We skipped the last opportunity to snorkel in the morning of the departure day because the female M - during the first of our holidays where it did not freeze (temperatures consistently above 30 degrees) - caught a cold.

All in all, we really liked it here, and it is quite likely that we will come back. For us, the resort is definitely a real alternative to the Maldives in the future.