My wife and I are experienced divers and we have travelled all over the world scubadiving. Now we are getting a little bit older (50ties). We like to be able to relax between dives even if we dive a lot. The wife gets sea-sick easy so we tend to like shorediving better. Thats why the diving in Bali/ Tulamben suits us.
This was our 4th trip to Tulamben and our 2nd trip to Matahari. We have stayed for 2 weeks both times. Matahari have some very good special offers that no one really can equal.
The Resort
Matahari si not a luxury resort. Its a little bit worn down, but everything is clean and tidy. The location is very good by the water. The resort has a very good layout. You have a short walk from your room, down past the spa, to the restaurant with a beautiful view of the Tulamben shoreline. Next to the restaurant is the diveshop. And from the diveshop its 5 meters to the first divesite.
The Rooms
We have stayed in 2 different rooms, a deluxe room and a bungalow (Its not at bungalow, its a bigger room). The rooms are just like the resort, a little bit tired, with crooked henges and some rust here and there. The rooms have aircon (old, but functioning) and good beds. The rooms are cleaned and the floors washed (Not only brushed like many other places) every day if you put out the cleaning sign. They change bed sheets and towels when you want. You get pool towels from the reception any time.
The Restaurant
The restaurant is perfectly layed out next to the water. You have the fantastic view of the sunrise over the water to enjoy your breakfast even more. They have a meny with a good selection of asian and other dishes. My wife like to try out new food, and she never had the same dish twice in 2 weeks. All the food was tasty and fresh. We ate every meal in Matahari except one evening that we ate in Hops and Chops across the road from Matahari. The staff in the Matahari restaurant are friedly, even if they work long hours. Sometimes misunderstandings happends, but the staff allways try to help us the best they can.
The Spa
We had prepayed one hour of Balinese Aromatherapy Massage, and we both liked it a lot.
The Diveshop
There is usually allways a lot of Divemasters/Crew around the diveshop that will help you. When we arrived they checked our certifications. We brougth our own dive equipment and we got a big plastic box to keep it in. You can choose to dive with a Divemaster or you can dive indepentently. You can dive locally (within walking distance), go by car to the divesites a little further away or you can go on daytrips. We dived independently on all the dives we dived locally (Drop-Off, Suci place, Coral Garden, Liberty). We would probably have seen more stuff if we had brougth a Divemaster, but we are good at spotting stuff and there was plenty to see. Its sometimes relaxing to dive whenever you want without any timetables. For the dives we did locally by car we had a Divemaster with us. Usually we talked to him the day before and we planned time and place. Tanks, equipment, drinking water and towels was loaded on to a truck and we drove to some of the fantastic local macro sites in the area(Seraya, Batu Ringgit, Bulakan, Melasti etc.) The local Divemasters are really good at finding stuff and if you go to look for macro-stuff they are invaluable. If you take photos like me, he is just waiting to show you the next weird creature he has found. Back from the divesites our Divemaster always rinsed our equipment if we were done for the day. We went on 2 daytrips to Padangbai and Bondalem and a half day trip to Amed. These trips were in airconditioned cars and the Divemaster came along. I like the diveshop a lot and there is always someone there to help us, if we need a big tank ( I use 15 liters), if we want to analyse our nitrox tank, if we need a porter to bring our gear over to the Liberty wreck or for something else. We are very experienced divers. If you are not that experinced it may be a little difficult to see who is in charge and who can help you. But you just have to ask, and someone will help you for shure :-)
We had transfers to and from the resort included in our package. The driver picked us up at the airport and dropped us back there at the end of the trip. So easy !
All the crew at Matahari is very helpful and friendly. They will allways greet you with a smile.
Matahari offers World Class diving and they offer it at a very good price. We are just counting the days until we can come back to Matahari and explore more of Bali underwater.
