Indonesia is the cornerstone of our Sabbatical. It’s our longest visit - 6 weeks - centered around a dive destination we’ve been dreaming of for seven years. 

Rainbow at Misool Eco Resort in Raja Ampat, West Papua

The diving has been mentally and physically overwhelming in the best way. But that means our photo editing and blog writing is falling further behind. 

In 2017 Andrew's job sent him to Australia and he had the opportunity to dive the Great Barrier Reef. It was great so in 2018 we returned for our first serious dive trip - a week living on a boat diving all day, every day.  We weren't sure if we would like this style of vacation, but as you all know by now, we loved it and were hooked. 

At that time we thought the Great Barrier Reef was the pinnacle of diving - it's the biggest coral reef after all, and famous worldwide.  But while the Great Barrier indeed has great diving, as we got more serious about diving and met more well-traveled divers, we kept hearing "go to Indonesia". 

So when planning our honeymoon for November 2018, Indonesia was at the top of our list. Vera's colleague, Fabian, advised her that Misool Eco Resort in West Papua was the most beautiful place in the world and home to amazing diving, so we started there. We cheerfully emailed them about availability 10 months in advance, proud of ourselves for planning so far ahead, only to receive a very polite reply that they book 2 years out! We visited Komodo instead (also on Fabian's recommendation) but Misool remained a dream. When we started thinking about traveling again in 2022 after the worst of COVID, we reached out again and it was up to a three year wait, so we booked for 2025!

At that time we were thinking it would just be a regular dive vacation, it wasn't until much more recently that we decided to take a Sabbatical and the entire trip took shape around the Misool booking. And it truly lived up to the years-long anticipation. 

Andrew on the balcony of our over-water bungalow at Misool, taken from the upstairs balcony. Right below our feet was the gorgeous house reef where we often saw black tip reef sharks and turtles swimming by.

Indonesia lies at the core of the Coral Triangle, a marine region often called the world's epicenter of ocean biodiversity. The Coral Triangle includes Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands, and has about 3/4 of the world's coral species and some 2000 species of reef fish.  The geography of this area's islands, warm equatorial waters, and convergence of ocean currents seem to create the perfect breeding ground for diversity. Some think that coral reef ecosystems first evolved here, and then spread to the rest of the world, so the species had had more time to diversify here.  There are hundreds of creatures here that find Australia too cold, or haven't made it out of their small bay. 

This exceptional biodiversity means that diving in Indonesia isn't just "good"—it’s consistently considered best in the world.  

Above water it's a beautiful, huge and diverse country as well. In its 3000+ mile stretch across the equator (wider than the continental US!), there are more than 17,000 officially listed islands, some 700 languages, and 280 million people.

Hike to a scenic viewpoint of Piaynemo in central Raja Ampat.

 Bird-watching in beautiful but damp forests of Sulawesi.  