Quick excerpt from my journal from the section about our recent dive trip in Raja Ampat, Indonesia.

So we got up early and headed to the dive shop, where we met our dive guide, Farize. He seemed like a pretty nice guy and he brought us to the boat, and despite looking a bit disheveled it floated and after getting some last minute supplies we took off. The boat, called the Bali Prima, was manned by the captain, the cook, an engineer, and he dingy boat guy, plus Steve and Farize, and then of course its only two paying occupants, Ally and I. That's right, there were no other guests and we basically had a private cruise. Pretty awesome all around. The crew didn't speak any English, apart from the basics, but they didn't really need to since Steve and Farize took care of all the stuff with us and they just opereated the boat. It seemed like a pretty well run operation both from the start and then throughout the journey, and we were super happy with our decision to go with Wicked Diving. The Bali Prima is more of a "budget" boat, or a "backpackers" liveaboard option, and honestly I was surprised that there weren't more like it, since most of the boats in Raja Ampat were much nicer and super expensive. But for us, the Prima was perfect. It was small but not uncomfortable, and we really were only there to dive, eat, sleep, and hangout. So all in all, a perfect choice.

The diving started that day, with two dives, then four dives the next day, and three on the last day. Its hard to describe the diving and to fully do it justice since it was just simply put that amazing. The coral, both hard and soft, was everywhere and was super colorful and in places massive. The fish life was ridiculous, simply ridiculous, and we saw on some of the dives what Steve referred to as "fish soup" and it really was, there was just an endless supply of all kinds of them swimming in every direction. Some of the more common ones that we saw that were also a specialty included huge bumphead parrot fish, baraccuda, Spanish mackerel (which looked like sharks), and then loads of colorful schools of fish. On one dive we were at a manta cleaning station, where they come in to get their skins cleaned by little fish, and we saw at least eight huge mantas cruising around. That was truly amazing, these animals are incredibly large and they just cruise along through the water, it was awesome to watch them. At one point we had just watched one cruise off into the distance, and so I pushed up off the bottom and meant to swim in the other direction in the hopes of finding more. As I turned around there, floating and not moving maybe 4m from me, was another giant manta, seemingly looking at me as if to say "Hey, what are you?" I quickly deflated my bcd and sank back to the sandy bed, and apparently satisfied that I wasn't a threat the manta then cruised on by and off into the blue. So cool. We also saw sharks, including black and white tipped reef sharks as well as one larger gray reef shark. None were that large, and ranged from about 1-2m, but still big enough and sinister looking enough to get my adrenaline pumping each time we spotted them. On the last dive we saw loads of them, including some that were just hanging out in the sand, apparently they sleep/rest on the bottom, but it was odd to see. We also saw turtles a few times, which was also quite cool. All in all the diving was truly amazing and if anyone ever wants to do some absolutely stunning, world class diving then head to Raja Ampat.

So all in all, the diving was epic and definitely recommended. After the trip we hung out with Fareze in Waisai for two days, and the first day we tried to go out to the island of Crea where we could chill on the beach and explore the island. Steve was heading there in the AM to pick up some customers on the Bali Prima, so he offered to give us a ride, however unfortunately the boat broke down on the way there. I say unfortunately, however it was pretty fortunate that it happened then and NOT when we were paying customers. Anyways, the boat was towed back to the port by the dingy, and by the time we got back the afternoon was already well on so instead of heading anywhere specifically we chilled out with Fareze and ended up drinking free coffee at our hotel and playing monopoly deal for approx. 6 hours. We also threw in some other card games as well, but MD was by far our favorite game.