This expression pretty well sums up my trip to Wakatobi (an acronym for The Islands of WangiWangi, Kaledupa, Tomia, and Binongko) in South East Sulawesi. I had been hearing about how beautiful Wakatobi was since the early 1990s, I looked it up on the internet, all I could do was drool. The only site providing any information was from a Swissowned resort costing hundreds of dollars a night. Even getting there cheaply seemed impossible, the only transport I knew of was the hotel's private plane tickets cost hundreds of dollars. There was no way I was going to pay that.
Finally, a few months ago I received an email via Face book from a fan of TNT called Bardin who invited me to his new dive centre on Tomia Island. His selling point was that he was the only local dive operator there and he is actually from Wakatobi himself! I quickly got together my travelling friends who had also wanted to go.
Of course, getting there was not as easy as I had hoped. The easiest way is to take Express Air on the JakartaMakas sarWanci route. This was the first time I had heard of this company, we could not even book our tickets online, and none of the numbers on the website seemed to work. In the end I convinced my regular travel agent to look into it for us and let me know what to do. I was so amused when we received the tickets: they were still issued in the old style paper format! We couldn't buy the return ticket from Jakarta because apparently their system was not yet online. When we tried calling their office in Wanci the line kept dropping because the signal was so bad. When we asked them the price, we had to wait while they asked their office in Jakarta. Finally, I asked Bardin to help us buy return tickets, and even then he could only book us as far as Makassar.
The flight left at 5:00 a.m. and we had not had a lot of sleep, afraid we would miss the alarm we had to leave home at 3:00 a.m. Fortunately, the plane was fine and we were even served food. A tuna croissant and an instant coffee between Jakarta and Makassar and then Oreos and water on the way to Wanci. The flight to Makassar was a Boeing 737, and so empty I could sleep stretched out across the back three seats. However, the onward flight to Wanci was an old propeller engine Donier 328 that seated 30. With one line of seats on one side of the aisle and two on the other, I wondered how it would balance. The passengers were certainly not being weighed the only rule was no more than 10kg of baggage.
We arrived at Matahora Airport on WangiWangi Island around midday. From there it was an hour offroad by taxi to the town centre. Taxis in Wanci were all metered Toyota Avanzas, of which there were a grand total of five so if you have not ordered one you might be out of luck. Because the public ferry to Tomia left every day at 9:00 a.m. we had to spend the night in Wanci. The VIP room cost IDR132,000 and was looked after by a young guy who was stuck up and not at all helpful. The worst part was, because it was still the Lebaran holiday period49, most of the food stalls were closed, so we spent the whole day sitting around with nothing to do.
The speed boat left right on time at 9:00 a.m. It was only supposed to carry fifty people, but there must have been twice that on board with people sitting outside, and even on the roof, bringing their motor bikes and bags. The trip from Wanci to Tomia takes three hours and costs IDR100,000. Just finding a place to sit is not easy, and there is no chance of catching up on your sleep. At Tomia harbour we were picked up by Bardin in a minivan and set off on the thirty minute drive to Waha.
Tomia Dive Center has two rooms in a twofloor house right on the seafront. Fortunately it is airconditioned but the electricity only ran between 6:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. There was plenty of fresh water. However, we could only get a signal from one mobile operator so I had to buy a new sim card. Because it was low tide in the morning we were transported over to their big boat on a ketinting (a kind of small sampan that was not very stable). As you can probably guess, we spent our whole time there diving, snorkelling and enjoying the sunshine with Bardin and his brother, Anto.
After Pulau Tomia it took us three hours to get to Pulau Hoga on a boat we rented for IDR1,200,000 it was a good thing there were five of us to split the bill. From my research on the internet I had found a Dive Operator based in BauBau called Wasage Divers. From them I learned that you could stay on Hoga and, surprisingly, their Dive Instructor, Imin, came over to show us around. We stayed in a wooden house in the middle of a forest infested with mosquitoes and monitor lizards.
The roof was leaky and when it rained the water went straight onto the bed. The electricity only worked between 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Because there was no fresh water reserve on the island we were rationed to a single bucket of water per day for two people. At IDR200,000 a night for two, including full board, we had no choice but to accept it. From Hoga we returned to Wanci on the public boat, which left at 5:00 a.m. and arrived at 7:00 a.m. We were late waking up and we had to wade out into the water to catch it! However, all the hardship was worth it. Wakatobi was amazing, especially under the water! Getting to heaven is not always so easy.
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