Bunaken National Marine Park

A Marine Park In The Coral Triangle Built Around Vertical Reef Walls That Drop From Shallow Water To Over A Thousand Metres; More Than 390 Coral Species Recorded · Manado, North Sulawesi

Bunaken is built on a single feature: A VERTICAL WALL. The reef starts in water shallow enough to stand in, runs out a short distance, and then DROPS STRAIGHT DOWN FOR MORE THAN A THOUSAND METRES. You swim to the edge, look over, and there is nothing beneath you - which is why snorkellers get as much out of this place as divers, something almost no other world-class dive destination can claim. The wall is covered in sea fans, sponges and hard coral, with MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED AND NINETY CORAL SPECIES recorded, and green turtles are so common they stop being an event. IT SITS IN THE CORAL TRIANGLE off Manado in northern Sulawesi, and A SHORT BOAT RIDE AWAY IS THE LEMBEH STRAIT, black volcanic sand with almost no coral and the strangest small creatures on earth - the two together are the reason divers come to Sulawesi, and the reason four days here is worth more than a stopover on the way somewhere else.

Bunaken, Manado Bay, North Sulawesi, Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia

THE PARK IS REACHED BY BOAT FROM MANADO, roughly thirty to forty-five minutes, and MANADO HAS FLIGHTS from Jakarta, Makassar and Singapore. A PARK ENTRANCE FEE IS CHARGED and is collected as a TAG OR CARD - carry it, because it is checked, and the foreigner rate differs from the domestic one. MOST VISITORS STAY ON BUNAKEN ITSELF or at a Manado-side resort; dive operators run two or three boat trips a day on their own schedules. THE PARK IS OPEN YEAR-ROUND. Conditions are best in the drier months and the wettest period brings runoff that can cut visibility near the mainland. THE LEMBEH STRAIT IS A SEPARATE TRIP on the other side of the peninsula, usually one to two hours by road, and is worth building into the itinerary rather than treating as a day excursion.

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