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Just finished a 8d/7n Bali-to-Komodo-Bali journey on the Mermaid 2 liveaboard.
Summary:
This was time very well spent. Komodo is an absolutely superb diving destination. The Mermaid 2 is a very comfortable, well organized and highly professional boat from which to dive. Its crew is truly fantastic in every way.
The Mermaid staff picked us up at our hotel and took us to the boat dock in Benoa. The drive to the boat was less than 30 minutes from the hotel.
The Mermaid 2 is very, very well run. The crew is AWESOME AWESOME! They are highly professional, very friendly and thoroughly informative.
Montse is the long-time, currently outgoing crew director, and is being replaced by Jordi. Both Montse and Jordi run a very tight and efficient operation. Yeray, Rama, Angela and Ketut are incredible dive guides. They are so skilled in finding everything underwater that you would think they placed the critters in specific locations themselves! Marcello is an outstanding videographer - a true artist.
The Mermaid has a lot of crew for a dive boat - there were 17 crew members on our boat. This results in an incredible level of service by the crew. You don't touch your tanks or gear or wetsuit at all - you just dive, eat and sleep. The crew clearly loves diving and views their vocation as more than just a job. They go out of their way to ensure that you are happy, comfortable, safe and satisfied with your dives. I will dive with them at any time.
The sleeping quarters on the Mermaid 2 are very comfortable. They are kept very clean by the crew during the dives.
The food is copious, varied and very tasty. There is a mixture of local and western dishes. You WILL eat too much. Beware.
Mermaid 2 departs Bali, sets course for Komodo and spends most of the week there. After concluding 20 dives over 8 days, I can conclude that the Komodo National Park clearly ranks among top 2 or 3 in the world.
Komodo offers a spectacular, best-in-class, coral-reef focused dive environment. You should think of it as a big hodgepodge of high quality everything.
Komodo offers a deep and varied mixture of big animals (mantas, sharks, rays, bumphead parrots, napoleons, barracudas) and small animals (just about any type of small critter imaginable) in very large quantities. The Park has a mixture of high intensity, rip-roaring currents, no current, "swim-in-a-fish-tank" dives, sheer walls, vast coral gardens and highly inhabited muck. Komodo offers the works.
In Closing:
Just go. Do not hesitate. It is definitely worth it! - via 