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| Palau & Australia : Trip Report |
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Sun Dancer II Live-a-board
After about a week of travel and short stays in various places we finally got to board the Peter Hughes Sun Dancer II! We checked out of Caroline Resort and took the free shuttle down the hill to the nearby Palau Pacific Resort (PPR) where the Sun Dancer staff was scheduled to pick us up. They had a day room available for us to drop off our stuff and to freshen up. We left the bulk of our luggage with the PPR bellhops. The day room is shared by all Sun Dancer guests so we just changed into bathing suits and grabbed our mask, fins and snorkel and went for a snorkel right off their beach. Learn from my mistake, WEAR LOTS OF SUNSCREEN! I got a nasty sunburn after only about 20 minutes of snorkeling!The Sun Dancer shuttle bus arrived on time and took us and our luggage to the boat. We were very impressed when we first saw the Sun Dancer II docked at the rather industrial looking docks! The boat was large and had plenty of room. The only thing that was small was our room. The bed was large but there was very little space around it. On the other hand, the room had more than adequate storage space. Our dive gear was immediately shuttled to the dive tenders where it remained all week and all the rest of of luggage was easily absorbed by the available storage in the room. The size of the room was never a problem as we only slept there.
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I can't say enough good things about this experience. This was our first live-a-board experience and definitely not our last. The food was consistently excellent and the service was always prompt and courteous.Ever wonder what life is like on this live-a-board? Here is a typical day:
- Get up at 6:00am and drag yourself upstairs to the dining room for breakfast. Breakfast included the typical cold cereals, oatmeal and breads. Different hot breakfast items were available every day.
- The bell rings the call to the dive briefing. The briefing took place on the deck just outside the dining room. A diagram of the site was drawn on a whiteboard including where to find the interesting stuff.
- Immediately after the briefing we moved to the tenders and got our gear ready including testing the O2 content before each and every dive.
- Return to the Sun Dancer II where hot showers, hot towels and fresh snacks are available. The snacks were great and were things like chocolate chip cookies, brownies or other sweets. Yummy!
- After a surface interval the bell rang to notify us of the next dive briefing. Afterwards we proceeded to the tenders for the second dive of the day.
- Second dive complete we return to the boat with enough time to dry off before the bell rings again this time letting us know that a delicious lunch is about to be served. Lunch is usually served buffet style. During lunch we are asked to choose an entree for dinner that evening.
- Well fed and rested the bell rings yet again to start the third dive briefing of the day followed by the dive.
- After returning from the third dive we are again treated to snacks again. This time they are a little healthier than the morning snack.
- Bell again for the late afternoon dive. This dive is usually the calmest and most relaxing dive of the day.
- Returning from that dive we clean up and dry off then the bell rings for dinner. Dinner is served on white tablecloths and we usually had at least two choices for an entree. Wine was also served but the rule was that if you drink you're done for the day. We only tried the wines on days we didn't have a night dive scheduled.
- After sunset the bell would be rung yet again for the night dive. The night dive is usually someplace pretty close and an easy dive.
- After the night dive hot chocolate was available as the evenings in Palau are surprisingly chilly.
- We would relax and socialize only a short while longer before we were pretty much exhausted.
How was the diving? I thought it was excellent. I read some reviews of Palau and expected to see dozens of sharks on every dive. I was a bit disappointed as there were rarely more than two or three sharks at each site. I was also surprised how shy the sharks were. Some reviews I've read said that the sharks were everywhere and bumped into you. I think the closest I ever got was about 5' but usually the sharks wouldn't allow you to get close at all.
We did enjoy the huge Anemones we saw all over the place and especially the Anemonefish found in almost all of them. I just couldn't get enough of watching them swim among the tentacles. In addition there were many Green and Hawksbill Turtles, schools of Chevron Barracuda, many schools of many different fish, Clams, Batfish, Lionfish, Mandarinfish, Triggerfish and even Eels. It seemed I saw several new fish on ever dive that I don't recall ever seeing before. Wow!
On the downside, the effects of El Niño were evident in many places. There were quite a few places with severe damage to hard corals. In other places the hard corals looked consistently healthy. Soft corals on the other hand were quite impressive at many sites. I even saw large groups of Black Coral. One of the other guests was on the same live-a-board almost exactly a year prior to this trip and he said that there were noticeably fewer fish, especially sharks, this time. It's possible the El Niño effect isn't completely over yet as the water was consistently around 84°F-87°F.
The following are some of my favorite underwater pictures from the trip. I took all these pictures with my Sealife Reefmaster RC. I do have an external strobe (VERY important!) as well as the 3X close-up lens. Also on this trip I tried out the new 8X and 16X macro lenses that just hit the market and I was very happy with them. Also new for this trip I use 200 speed slide film for the first time since the Sun Dancer II has E6 processing onboard. Only the last two dives were taken with standard print film. Clicking on these pictures will take you to the dive log entry for that dive for more information. You can also go directly to the dive log.
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One day after the late afternoon dive we found the crew had been chumming the water with the previous night's dinner leftovers. By the time we got back there were at least ten Blacktip Reef Sharks enjoying some cold shrimp tempura. We quickly got our cameras and enjoyed the action. They were really exciting to watch. What was interesting is that even when they ran out of the shrimp and threw in some old bread rolls the sharks would still circle and or bump each piece even if they didn't end up eating it. Interesting.Afterwards we just hung out and enjoyed an incredible sunset, the first we've seen due to the rain the previous couple days.
Click on thumbnail for a full-size picture The following was an attempt to get some of the video together of the sharks swimming around the boat. I found it amusing how us so-called adults acted like children watching the sharks around the boat. It didn't turn out quite as well as I had hope but here it is anyway.
I did mentioned that the crew was great and went out of their way to make our trip enjoyable. One of my personal favorite things that were done was that the boat photographer would join us on most dives and took pictures of various wildlife and us underwater.At the end of the week he put together a slide presentation of the best pictures he took. That was fun. The guests then had a chance to put together their own slide show of their favorite pictures. But the best part was that after the slide presentation he put all the pictures that were taken of us in ziplock baggies for us to take home at no additional charge! Below are most of the pictures both below and above water that was taken of us during the course of the week.
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After several days of pretty intensive diving the last couple days are quite a bit more relaxing. Besides more relaxing and much shallower dives we were also taken around the islands.We visited a small island with one of the few sandy beaches we've seen. Most of the islands around Palau are rocky outcroppings with sheer cliffs. This one had a nice sandy beach on one side with palm trees. The sand was the most powdery soft I've ever felt!
On the last full day the large boat made a slow trip among the Rock Islands to the east side of Palau to do a couple dives. The drive was calm and serene and we got to take in some of the really nice scenery. Lily preferred to just lounge and read most of that trip.
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In Conclusion...
We really enjoyed this live-a-board! It was a blast and we got to dive more in one week than we ever have before. We will definitely be doing it again. We knew the reduced number of fish and sharks were beyond the crew's control and they did usually go out of their way to make sure we saw interesting things. Except for one guide who seemed to get lost a couple times, the guides all knew they sites like the backs of their hands.The food was excellent and diving nitrox was great! After a couple days we noticed that we were very tired in the morning but felt great after the first dive. We debated wether that was the nitrox or the fresh cookies we were given after the first dive.
There are several other live-a-boards in Palau, the ones I know of include: Aggressor, Deep Blue Explorer and a small one on a sailboat. From the other guests who have been on Aggressor boats we heard that this was definitely a deluxe live-a-board but couldn't conclusively say wether Peter Hughes or Aggressor is consistently better. The impression I got is they both are at the top of their league with one better in some areas than the other.