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As this island also serves as sea turtle conservation park, if you are lucky, you may also find baby turtles which were going to find their way to the ocean after birthed. If you come on the right season, it is also possible for you to witness a turtle breeding during the night.
Personally, the atmosphere that this island offers is so awesome since it is guarantee that there will be not much people available there during sunrise & sunset. The resort is made private & it also has a decent dive centre to accommodate your underwater passion. Have I been there? Of course! Have I stayed there? Of course.. not. It is just out of my budget. Anyway, I was traveling solo, so why would I spend a lot of money in a deluxe cottage just to be - alone..
Besides for its wonderful white sand beach, Sangalaki has Manta Point which will give you around 80% chance that you will encounter the mantas. I’d say 80% because under the water, there is no such absolute certainty. I dived there 2 times during that visit and I met only around 3 mantas during the first dive, then I was greeted around 20 mantas for the 2nd dive.
Somehow, it will be easier to meet that manta if you do snorekeling because you can see clearly their wingtips. But if you are dropped at wrong location, or when you are just not lucky enough, you’d meet none of them - just like what my friend experienced when he dived on that spot - to see nothing. Correct that nothing is able to give you a warranty that you will meet manta, but from the experiences of the divemasters there, the chance is quite high and it is worth to try. At least once if you plan to dive in this archipelago.
Tremendous white sand beach line
Witnessing the turtles hatchling
Dive / swim with Manta
So, What's special in Sangalaki?
About Sangalaki Island
Well known for its manta point, I dropped by to this island during my diving surface interval. The island is positioned about in the middle of Derawan & Maratua which in other words, require around 1 hour of sailing distance by speedboat. Since the island is part of the conservation park, so you need to pay around 20k for local & 100k for international tourist in order to get into this island. Resort is also available there if you plan either to witness the turtle breeding or just to enjoy its large pristine beaches.
I’d say that the beach is simply wonderful. The vast area of with soft sand is available for further exploration. When I was there, I just feel like that this island truly represent the famous travel photo of tropical beach. It is just remarkable & in my personal opinion, at least during the moment when I visited this island last time, Sangalaki will be the best beach scene that I ever experienced so far. Believe me that it is not an empty crap or kind of tour advertisement because I don’t get any profit by saying this. However, I just want to emphasise that the beaches there are purely amazing.
