Raja Ampat: a week at Gibran Homestay, Kri

Our last week in Raja Ampat. Another good one. We stayed at Gibran Homestay on Kri’s south coast. Another beautiful spot. Here’s the bungalow.

A short trail took us up to a viewpoint where we could see Gam, Batanta, and even the Pam Islands — everywhere we stayed in Raja Ampat.

We had some good snorkeling, of course, but here at Gibran we had the funnest group of the trip. We were excited to see Emilia and Brett (from Dayan) again. We snorkeled together a few times.

We also had fun meeting, snorkeling, and talking with Moon. Here he is with a couple women who showed up a day or two before we left.

On the map it looks pretty easy to walk over to the north side of the island (Kri (aka Koh)) and snorkel from there. We did that a couple times, but it’s certainly harder than I expected. The trail connecting the south and north coasts is steep, muddy, and slippery. The trail between the first two (farther west) piers on the north side is overgrown and littered with broken down bungalows. Getting from Yenkoranu Jetty to the one in front of Kri Eco Resort required walking through the water (we scared at least ten small black-tipped reef sharks when we stepped in the water there; exciting!) — first to avoid cliffs, then to avoid the fenced-off land at the resort. However, there’s no point making this trip because the snorkeling off the Kri Eco Resort isn’t very good.

The best snorkeling over there was from about 400m east of Yenkoranu Jetty west to about the end of the beach. It’s not better (or worse) than the snorkeling on the south shore. It’s different and worth going.

On Kri I saw clown triggerfish for the first time.

We had seen Titan triggerfish a number of times, and everyone warns about their aggressive behavior. At least twice on Kri they came toward me quickly, and I quickly moved away. I never got close. Here’s the best photo I have.

I don’t seem to have great snorkeling photos from this week. Mostly I was trying to get photos of fish that I hadn’t photographed yet. I saw quite a few different species of puffers.

This one was hanging out at a cleaning station. I watched a wrasse disappear in and out of the its gills as another wrasse was inside its open mouth.

Here’s my best trumpetfish photo of the trip.

At Sawandarek Jetty I enjoyed hanging out with the school of colorful sweetlips.

One afternoon at the Yenkoranu Jetty there were three lionfish pretty close to each other.

The biggest clams of the trip were not far from our bungalow.

It was at Kri that Emilia first started noticing (and pointed out to us) the batfish changing colors between very dark and very light.

Not as dramatic as the cuttlefish but very fun to watch.

One day I decided to take photos of the different butterflyfish that I kept seeing. I think the following eight photos show nine different butterflyfish species.

Well, that’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?

I definitely want get back to Raja Ampat. I understand why so many people we met there were returning for another visit. Moon already has reservations for Kri again for later this year. We visited only central Raja Ampat. It wouldn’t be hard to put together other six-week itineraries in just the north or south part of Raja Ampat.

I’ll end this series of snorkeling blogs with some anemonefish. They’re always so fun to watch.