My Itinerary to Raja Ampat
Broke my own rule of never visiting a place twice in one year, but Raja Ampat quickly became my favourite place in the world when I first visited, a title I had always struggled to give to just one location. The second time I visited I opted to go to places that I had heard about on my first trip, the islands that I was told were “even more incredible”, something I didn’t think was possible. I was proved wrong.
Batanta Island
On my first trip, an Australian family I met was continuing their journey to Batanta Island, an island I hadn’t heard of in my initial research. I checked in with them after their trip to see what it was like, their response was “the best snorkelling of my life”. So I sent a message to my Dad, the only person I can manage to convince to spend their annual leave off-grid, and said “we’re going back to Raja”, he owed me a 30th birthday present so this is what I chose. Much better life value than a Van Cleef, which is what my bratty self originally wanted when I was a corporate square.
Batanta Island is considered more isolated than the others and a lot less visited, which is saying something given the islands are already considered a trek to get to. My favourite island in Raja out of the 5 I’ve been to, we stupidly went to the best island first but it made the most sense with travel. Instead of getting the ferry from Sorong to Waisai and then a private boat to Batanta, it’s best to get a private boat from Sorong wharf directly to Batanta. The journey is about 4-hours and around $500 AUD, this can be organised via your homestay on Batanta.
Yenkarom Homestay (Batanta)
My first homestay was Yenkarom, a single hut on a secluded beach. I booked all my homestays via stayrajaampat.com, a website that collates all the homestays in the region and provides helpful info. Yenkarom had the most incredible house reef and my first snorkel of the trip I encountered a massive reef tip shark but I was exhausted from the 1am flight from Bali to Sorong, so it didn’t hit me how big it was until afterwards, which is lucky because I would have freaked out. All homestays provide breakfast, lunch and dinner as there is obviously nowhere else to eat. I personally find the food delicious but that’s because I’m a lover of Asian food and no meal is a meal without rice for me, but I did hear one Swiss girl complain about the food on Raja and that the rice had no seasoning…Expect rice, veggies and fish or rice, veggies and egg. There’s also no electricity, so get used to room temperature water and a lot of tea!
Dayan Dive Homestay (Batanta)
We took a 1-hour boat ride from Yenkarom homestay to Dayan Dive Homestay Raja Ampat and when we arrived, we dumped our bags and were asked if we wanted to go swim with Manta Rays. Obviously the answer was yes.
We jumped in a boat and went a total of 5 minutes before being told we’ve arrived at Manta point. I’ve snorkelled at a few manta points in Raja and this one was easily the best. I’ve never seen so many mantas in my life and the current wasn’t super strong so it made for a much more enjoyable dive. At one point I saw my Dad motioning to look behind me so I turned around and saw 5 giant manta’s (the size of small cars), swim straight past me in a line. A bucket list moment for sure, I was in complete awe.
We ended up diving with the mantas 5 times in 4 days. Manta Point is restricted to a particular local family, so you can only snorkel / dive there if you’re staying at one of the homestays that are located in the bay. We stayed at Dayan but also heard good things about Snonbepur Homestay, which is located directly next to Dayan. Dayan has starlink however, if that matters to you. It was the only homestay I stayed at that had wifi.
The food here was also the best I had, pretty diverse and we even had fresh coconuts daily.
The focus of the homestay is around diving…hence the name.
