Coralia Itinerary

Raja Ampat - Batanta and Dampier Strait - 7N

On embarking day, you will be greeted by the Coralia team and get time to settle in, prepare your gear and relax from your travels. Coralia cruise directors will also give you an orientation about the amenities on board, the safety features and procedures, and the cruise itinerary. Typically, we use the afternoon and night to make our way to the first dive destination. So the first dive will be the next morning. 

Starting from Sorong in West Papua, we head to the south of Raja Ampat’s largest island, Waigeo, to the famous Dampier Strait. Here you can expect to dive at some world-class, adrenaline-packed dive sites such as Cape Kri, Chicken Reef, Sleeping Barracuda, Sardine Reef, Mioskon and Blue Magic. 

At the other end of the Dampier Strait is the island of Arborek with a great jetty dive. Lalosi is a drift dive completely full of fusiliers and with a chance to see wobbegong sharks. The well-known manta aggregation sites of Manta Sandy and Manta Ridge are also in this area. 

Sawandarek is on the island of Mansuar and features a fantastic jetty dive. You can also visit Papua Explorer’s coral restoration project here. For those interested, we can take a walk around the village at Sawandarek or Arborek. After a night dive in the Dampier Strait, we will travel to the south of Batanta. We will spend the day here looking for the weird and wonderful, such as octopus, ghost pipefish, juvenile batfish and barramundi cods, and perhaps, for the lucky ones, Rhinopias. 

The next day we will go to Dayang, in the northwest of Batanta, where there is a beautiful small sandy island home to a population of coconut crabs. Dayang is just at the entrance to one of Batanta's many scenic bays and has a colorful reef with wobbegong sharks, schooling yellow snappers and great macro-life, including pygmy seahorses and unusual nudibranchs. Dayang island also offers a great chance to encounter manta rays, the gentle giants, at their cleaning stations. 

We will then travel to Penemu. Famous Melissa’s Garden awaits us with its spectacular, healthy and widespread hard coral plateau in the shallows. At Keruo Wall we can admire large gorgonian sea fans and lovely reef tops, and we might also explore My Reef and Batu Rufus. A short hike to the viewpoint of Penemu offers a spectacular view of the lagoons and their surrounding islands. 

The following day will be spent on the western tip of Gam island, at an island called Yangeffo, which protects a sheltered bay. This small area has multiple world-class dive sites. Famous ones like Citrus Ridge and Mayhem always amaze divers with their vibrancy and biodiversity. The area here is probably so abundant due to the surrounding mangroves. Beautiful hard and soft corals grow under and among the roots of the trees, so a dive at Mangrove Ridge is truly enjoyable. And our crew will be happy to take you out in the dinghy to snorkel in the mangroves in between dives. Sunsets and sunrises are very special at our mooring point at Yangeffo: as the sun drops, the surrounding forested hills become alive with flocks of sulphur-crested cockatoos, and Blyth’s hornbills emerge to return to their roosting places. 

The remainder of our adventure will be spent diving in the Dampier Strait. 

Day 7: 

Our last day will offer two more action-packed dives in the Dampier Strait. We can also arrange for a bird-watching trip on the last morning to see the enigmatic and endemic Red Bird of Paradise. After lunch, we make our way back to Sorong for hearty goodbyes.

On disembarkation day, the Coralia team will equally assist you from Coralia to the airport.

Sample itineraries are for guidance only. Actual itineraries may differ slightly due to factors such as weather, wildlife, logistics and local regulations.