Alami Alor Dive Resort

Alami Alor sits on the volcanic shoreline of Kalabahi Bay, in the village of Wolwal on Alor Island — well off the usual Indonesian trail. The resort is deliberately small: seven bungalows right on the water, fourteen guests at most, forty local staff and one communal table where everyone eats together.

The location was chosen for the water. On one side lies the Pantar Strait: coral walls, anemone fields on red volcanic sand, black cliffs and caves that run from the surface down. Cold upwellings from the south push through the strait after every new and full moon, keeping the water fresh and feeding the reef — which is why the coral here is dense and healthy and visibility in the dry season reaches forty metres. On the other side is Kalabahi Bay itself: black sand, rubble and silt, in other words classic muck diving. Alami is the only operator in the bay, and most of the muck sites were put on the map by their own crew.

Critters are the reason people come. Rhinopias, often called the holy grail of macro photography, wunderpus and blue-ringed octopus, frogfish, harlequin shrimp, bobbit worms. On the way to the sites you often meet dolphins and melon-headed whales, sometimes larger whales, and when the moon is right the crew goes looking for mola-mola brought up by the cold water.

The house reef starts at the floating platform on the pier. Ten years ago the resort turned it into a no-take zone together with the village and the island government, and now mandarinfish live at three to five metres — you can shoot them among the rocks during the day and catch their mating ritual at sunset. At eighteen metres there is a cleaning station with cleaner shrimp, leaf scorpionfish and morays.

The resort caters to certified divers, snorkelers and underwater photographers: no courses are offered, but there is an air-conditioned camera room with personal workbenches, rinse tanks large enough for full-frame housings, and an on-site photo pro running the photo academy. Guests are split across two speedboats and again into two groups on each, so no guide looks after more than four people.