Shoreside accommodation at Sali Bay
Hard coral in the shallows
Batfish on the house reef
Emperor shrimp on a sea cucumber of diving in the Lembeh Strait before flying on to Labuha Airport at Bacan Island, the regional hub. The flight on Lion Air is routed via the island of Ternate, where we had to spend that unscheduled night due to unspecified“ operational reasons”.
The problem lies in Labuha airport having no runway lights, so if you get a long delay they put you up in a no-expense-spent hotel. The journey is then completed, bleary-eyed, the next morning. Then it’ s a 30-minute car journey to the harbour and another 45 minutes in the boat, and you’ re there. Where? Ah yes, Sali Bay!
Sali Bay at last!
We arrived in a state of no little relief to finally be at our destination. Sali Bay Eco Resort is located on Sali Kecil(‘ Little Sali) in the middle of the Patinti Strait. Communications with the resort had been very good, so there was someone to meet
us at every step of the journey, despite the airline chaos.
The island is a hilly clump of rainforest giving way to shallow reefs and some pumping currents in the channels. There is a little village in the next bay, but for all intents and purposes the resort exists in splendid isolation. It’ s a narrow strip of bungalows heading down from the jetty, with a laidback dining area before you arrive at the accommodation. There are individual beach villas, and a Diver’ s Lodge – longhouse-style rooms in a row at the end of the beach, an eight-minute walk from the jetty. Meals are a mixture of Indonesian and international food, and the staff are super-friendly.
I was in one of the Diver’ s Lodge rooms at the far end, but didn’ t feel overly jealous of my friends in the palatial villas.
Panoramic image of Sali Kecil, with the jetty and house reef on the left
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