Richard Ness : Blog : My Trip To Buyat Bay

My Trip To Buyat Bay - 03 Mar 2007
by Eric

Last week I finally had the opportunity to sit in court with my Dad in Manado and hear the presentation of the Replik by the Prosecutors. It was an interesting experience. As a son, it is extremely difficult to sit through and watch the prosecution fudge the “facts” when your Dad is potentially facing a 3 year sentence but, all that is for another blog.

Anyway, what I really wanted to write about today is my trip to Buyat Bay. Buyat Bay is about a four hour drive south west of Manado and it is beautiful. I wanted to go for essentially two reasons: first, I wanted to go and check Buyat Bay out for myself and second, my Dad and Jerry Konjansow wanted to take me diving in the bay.



It’s actually hard to describe how great the diving is in Buyat, which was one of the first things we did. I’ve been diving since I was about 14 years old and I’ve been fortunate enough to dive in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Thailand, the U.S. and a number of different areas throughout Indonesia and I can unequivocally say that Buyat Bay has the best diving I have ever seen. It’s no surprise that Jerry and the North Sulawesi Tourism Office has recently put out a dive book trying to promote the area as dive destination.

Here is a panoramic shot of Ratatotok from the boat on our way out to the dive site.



Here is a photo of Dad diving over some large fan coral.



Behind dad is this beautiful underwater bridge.



Here is a photo of me being a bit cheesy.



Another great shot of Dad.



Jerry took this pretty cool shot of Dad, Tobie, and I.



After the dive we went down the beach to where a fisherman had just come in after catching two pretty big fish.



We then ate lunch with a couple of the villagers.



I also got to meet some of the kids from Buyat.



My dad then took me up to look at the old mine site that is currently in the process of reclamation.



Essentially, this concluded my trip to Buyat. On the four hour trip back to Manado I kept reflecting about one thing; if you forgot everything you had been told about Buyat Bay, the case, my dad, everything - how could anybody after seeing where I was diving, talking to the people, eating their food, and seeing the beauty of this charming place even for one second think that Buyat Bay was polluted?