Welcome to Raja Ampat, one of the world's most biodiverse dive sites and one of the final remaining aquatic paradises in the entire world.
Now, getting here was far from easy.
It looked a little bit something like this.
I just had the rowdiest check-in of my life.
I'm about that vlog life, dude.
You missed this because you were stupid.
This is crazy.
What?
What?
Zach, put it the right way.
Straight.
This way.
Boys are just crushing it, eh?
Full send.
It is flat out a miracle to be setting foot here today.
Luggage in hand, exit in sight.
Does anyone have a taxi?
I don't think they have a taxi.
We're now going to a place called Cree Eco Resort, which we've got a long journey to get there.
It's like the Titanic send off right now.
We are headed on our ferry into nowhere.
We're gonna be in complete isolation.
There won't be much around.
Hello!
Very excited to go explore.
The local people are so nice.
Welcome to Wai Sai.
You're Marco?
Hi Marco, Christian.
Nice to meet you.
We've just arrived here in Wai Sai.
And Wai Sai is where a lot of people will end up staying.
There's dive resorts all along here.
It's a little bit more of a developed area considering Raj Ampat.
But this area is extremely remote.
We have our very last boat here, taking us directly to Cree Eco Resort, and I'm very excited to head to our resort because it's even more isolated.
We are in paradise.
The water is perfect.
It's like El Nido but with nobody here.
Good morning and welcome to day one in paradise, and the water is the best you'll find in the world.
Right now We're off to go see some blacktip sharks and the best part is I've got this right here So I can finally take you with me.
Properly, you ready to get this bread?
Look at this water.
We are gonna make some fresh loaves of rye bread today.
That's gotta be like 30 40 feet deep and it just looks so transparent.
Guys, we just got back and today's diving was insane.
I did three dives.
I spent like almost two hours underwater today and never in my life have i seen so much biodiversity in a single dive.
I mean, i probably saw 300 400 fish in that one dive and like they were all what The most fish someone has seen is 331.
And you just said 300 to 400.
No, 300 species.
That's not 300 fish.
During certain times of the year, you can catch sperm whales, you can catch dolphins, manta rays, sting rays.
You can catch crocodiles if you're really unlucky.
They literally have every single kind of fish and sea animal that you can ever dream of right out there.
I'm literally just standing at the edge of the jetty here at the resort.
I've seen blacktip sharks doing their circles around here, and you can actually jump right in there with them.
They're not gonna bite you.
They're extremely beautiful to watch.
There's tons of schools of fish.
There's sea turtles that go by, and that is literally all within a kilometer of this here resort.
Now, the other thing that's amazing is again the fact that there's very few people here relative to your average dive site.
So the coral is in great shape.
The animals are actually not scared of humans.
That's kind of uncommon.
If you're a diver you'll know that in most places they've learned to fear divers.
I've had a lot of fun shooting it here and overall I have to say this is the best dive site that I've ever had.
This place is just paradise right now.
I mean, i even have internet.
I just facetimed kathy.
The weather is perfect.
The bungalows don't have ac, but you don't need it.
It's such a beautiful breeze and we're getting ready for a beautiful sunset tonight.
This is probably the most excited i've been in a while about something we got the fpv drone here.
I'm still learning, but you know it's always a fun time.
This is what an fpv drone looks like.
It's literally a flying gopro.
It looks so stupid.
Chase me.
Alright guys, we've arrived here in Melissa's garden about 45 minutes to an hour later by motorboat and we are basically just our boat and one other little dive boat in the corner there.
That is one of the benefits of Raja Ampat.
There's like nobody around, especially if you're leaving the more popular destinations.
So this is more of a shallow dive.
I'm excited about that because I can't go below 10 meters with my water casing.
And after that, we're going to be going onto the land there.
We've been told that this is kind of a spot to find unique, smaller marine life, not necessarily big creatures.
I don't know.
Fingers are still crossed.
We see a manta zach, uh kind of out for the count right now not feeling great.
The stomach is uh, broiling something.
The reason we came all the way over here is actually not just for the diving, but it's also what's behind us here.
These are known as the fam islands and it kind of looks like why egg?
If you don't know what that is well, i didn't know either, but it's kind of like the most iconic side of rajah, but it takes a four hour boat trip one way to get there.
So you have to be willing to spend some serious money and some serious time to get there.
Fiulan Raja Ampat is the most expensive in all of Indonesia, and to rent a boat here will actually run you about 550 US dollars for the day.
To give you a bit of scale here, Indonesia, on average, you could rent a boat from like $50 to $100.
In the Philippines, I've paid as little as like $35 for a boat.
Here, it's just mind-blowingly expensive.
So a lot of that has to do with the isolation of the area.
Some of it is going to be fuel costs.
But most of all, I think it's their way of limiting how many people are coming to Raja Ampat.
They want to keep this place exclusive.
They want to keep this place not overrun with people, so that the marine life can continue to just succeed and multiply as it is here.
It definitely will take a bit of a dent in your wallet, but if you saved up and this is something really important to you I think you'll definitely make it here regardless.
Raja Ampat is a dive heaven.
Even in paradise, heat stroke or food poisoning can strike, and right now Zach is not doing so hot.
Guys, please leave the video a like to help Zach get better.
One like equals one prayer.
Help me.
So we just finished up with the most incredible dive in what's called Melissa's Garden.
And I've never in my life seen coral that looked like it did in the cartoons.
Like when you watch The Little Mermaid and you saw the purple, the blues, the greens, the teals, all the different colored coral.
They were actually there.
Every time I've ever dived before, it's always been kind of sadly really dead looking coral.
The other part that comes into it too is if you get too deep, you also start to lose colors, because red lights actually can't travel as far.
It helped a lot that it wasn't very deep.
Now it was just absolutely stunning, but where they brought us here is pretty much on par with that.
Blue water.
Nothing else around other than one other dive boat.
I'm gonna be flying my drone over there because I saw a photo on Instagram.
Actually, I actually recognized the guest house sitting on top of there Wow, a wild starfish.
Alright guys, we've just arrived here, at the entrance to Pham Island.
The lookout is just right up there.
We're almost there.
Christian got me out of the boat.
Now we're going.
We just met the president of Indonesia.
Yeah, seriously.
I'm tired.
Yeah, it was so weird.
A police boat just pulled in with like probably eight or 10 armed guards with like semi-automatic rifles, all blacked out.
And then we see this guy get off the boat and he's done up like If I was into Indonesian fashion, he was 10 out of 10.
And then him and three other ladies who were all done up with beautiful, beautiful traditional clothing with jewels all over it.
They got out of the boat too.
I didn't want to film it because I have no idea who these people are, but they clearly are important.
I think I need to start traveling with armed guards.
Look at that little environmental touch.
They built the staircase around the trees.
Hooray for sustainability.
What's that?
Did somebody say sustainability?
No.
Come on, Zach.
Give it 100% and then give it another 10.
Traveling is like a journal, and every day left untraveled is a chapter that you didn't read in the book.
So good luck with your test if you didn't read your chapter.
This is the viewpoint from Fam Island and it is extraordinary.
Guys, this is like pretty much identical to El Nido Curran, because you've got those lagoons, you've got the limestone cliffs really jagged, you've got the same colors, but the incredible thing that you will not find in either of those places is nearly having it to yourself.
It is so quiet.
If this was El Nido, there'd be like 50 kayaks right now.
Yo.
Accommodations here in Raj Ampat are actually a little bit confusing because essentially, what you've gotta do is you've gotta decide what island you wanna be on and for the most part, because it's so hard to get around, you're gonna spend most of your time on that island.
You can actually find budget guest houses just by showing up to some of these islands in person.
They might not even be bookable online.
They can be as cheap as like roughly $35 a night.
But what I do want to caution you of is that you'll be stuck on some of the less appealing islands.
Wai, Sai and Sorong are typically the islands you'll be stopping through with the airport and with your ferry.
But I've been told this is not really where you want to stop.
There's not much to see near these islands.
And if you're doing day trips from these islands, you'll end up spending just as much money on transportation.
So it's super important you pick the right place to stay.
I am not in a position to give expertise, But what I can share is that I have had an incredible time here on Cree Island.
Cree has five or six different guest house options, but the one that I have experience with and have loved every minute has been Cree Eco Resort.
It's roughly about 150 euros per night per person.
One word of caution for budget guest houses is going to be that you may find the lowest price for accommodations, but if you're stuck eating overpriced and bad food for an entire week, you're gonna be pretty exhausted and pretty disappointed.
So it's good to research, make sure you figure out if your accommodation includes the food and, if it does, make sure it's good food.
The food here has been freaking awesome.
From beef lasagna to freshly caught fish here by the locals and one of the best coconut desserts I've ever had, it's all been A1 food here.
So the three main costs that are gonna drive up your price here in Raja Ampat are going to be transportation, they're gonna be accommodation and food, which are kind of together, and thirdly, they're going to be a marine fee.
Now, the marine fee is unavoidable.
It doesn't matter who you are, where you're going to, you have to pay 1 million IDR, which is roughly about 80 US dollars.
Now, if you wanna keep things cheap and go from Sorong to Wai Sai, one of the main islands out here in Raj Ampat, you're gonna be paying roughly 215000 IDR for a VIP seat.
By VIP.
It basically just means you have a seat and you're in an.
I think for most people watching this video, it's probably gonna be the way you're gonna wanna travel.
Now one of the craziest prices that I've come across here the price that got me initially really scared when I was coming to Raja Ampat is hiring out your own boat.
Fortunately though, this is not the only way to get around and, in fact, I have not had to rent a single boat for myself on this entire trip.
The first option is that you pay the 550 and you're a lot poorer, but you've got your own boat and you can call the shots.
The second option is going to be to travel in groups.
If you've got a group of 10 of you, well that becomes $55 a person.
Not so bad, but also unlikely you're in such a large group.
The next option is going to be going to places like Wai Sai, where they actually have group boats and you can cut those costs up and make it a bit more affordable.
Now the last option is going to be again choosing your resort wisely, because for me, I've had all of my transportation taken care of by following their diving day trips a couple of their day trips to some of the islands, like the Fam Islands.
I've been able to avoid having to rent out my own boat and I've been able to see Raja Ampat, just as I would have wanted to.
This is definitely a place that would take a few weeks to properly see everything, but I got a really good glimpse and I know that I'll be coming back soon.
My final moments here in Raja Ampat with a beautiful sunset.
Guys, I hope you enjoyed today's video exploring somewhere you might not have even known about.
If you did hit the big thumbs up button, join Team, Get Lost by pressing that subscribe button and the bell button and I will make a new video for you by next Saturday and I'll see you right here.
Until then guys, let's get lost again in the next one.
