|
Just came back from a week of diving in Yap with Yap Divers (www.mantaray.com). The diving is similar to that in Palau with plenty of nice wall dives. The marine life is very healty and there are usually plenty of mantas, eagle rays, various types of sharks, bumphead parrotfish, Napolean Wrasse, spiny lobster, barracuda, and turtles to be seen. There are also macro critters to be found such as leafy scorpion fish, nudibranchs, wart slugs, emperor shrimp, pipe fish, mandarin fish, and various small crabs.
The underwater terrain in dominated by hard coral formations. There is very little soft coral and as such the sites are not as colourful as soft coral sites can be. However, the coral is in pretty good condition for the most part with very little bleaching at the sites that we visited.
The current can be very strong so it is a good idea to bring along a reef hook if you will be doing a dive where you will need to stay still for any length of time, for instance on manta or shark-feeding dives.
There are a few hotels in Yap and some are more expensive than others. We stayed at the ESA Bay View Hotel which is a family-run place a short walk down the road from Yap Divers. It's a small hotel run by a Yapese family who really make you feel at home. It's less expensive than the Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Traders' Ridge. Unlike Manta Ray and Trader's Ridge, ESA does not have a swimming pool but the pools at the other two places are very small and can only accommodate about a dozen people or so.
If you're heading to Micronesia, Yap is definitely worth checking out. Here are some links of interest:
ESA Bay View Hotel: http://www.yapesabayview.com/
Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers: http://www.mantaray.com/
Traders' Ridge Resort: http://www.tradersridge.com/
General Info about Yap: http://www.visityap.com/
Safe diving!
Lamduan
|
