We had an excellent time, and really enjoyed our stay at Tawali Resort.
Having flown 3 hours from Brisbane to Port Moresby, 50 minutes from Port Moresby to Alotau, about 2 hours by bus to a remote jetty in the middle of no where, then 20 minutes by boat ..... it was certainly an expedition getting there. But, well worth the trip.
It never ceases to amaze me how they manage to produce such excellent food, when the ingredients also have to do the bus/boat thing I just mentioned.
The coastal diving around Tawali is really good, with Mandarin Fish on the house reef, Muck sites, including the famous Dinahs Beach (Lawadi) within 15 minutes by boat, and walls plunging to 100's of metres all around.
We saw frogfish, pygmy seahorses, demon stingers, orangutan crabs, pegasus fish, and ghost pipe fish, leaf scorpionfish, rhinopias and much more.
The weather conditions weren't ideal for the outer reef, but we were happy to spend more time on the coastal sites. My favourite of all time would have to be Deacons. I think we did this site about four times, and I could have gone back there over and over again.
After 9 days at Tawali we flew back to Port Moresby and on to Loloata Island which is about 30 minutes by bus and boat from the international airport. Again the weather wasn't great, but we still had some very enjoyable diving, with one site - Dianes Delight standing out in my mind. Again we saw Rhinopias and Pygmy seahorses amongst other things. We also dived the Pacific Gas, a wreck in about 45 metres. (Aarons was very happy - he does love his wrecks).
All in all we had a fantastic trip, and are already planning our next trip to PNG.
