January 2010    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 25, No. 1   What's this?

Tufi Dive Resort, Papua New Guinea

everything’s nice - - during the wet season, that is

from the January, 2010 issue of Undercurrent  

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Dear Fellow Diver:

“Well, it’s going to be a little bit bumpy today,” divemaster Glenn Kibikibi warned. The trade winds that kept the skies clear, the mosquitoes away, and the evenings balmy at Tufi Dive Resort also blew the sea into white caps when Talio, our 29-foot dive boat, left the shelter of the fjord. Reef trips that would take 20 minutes during the flat-sea wet season were transformed into kidney-jolting rides of 45 minutes in August.

The fjord region of Cape Nelson looks like a tropical paradise should. After passing close enough to the mountain tops to see the birds in the trees, the Airlines PNG twin-prop taxied down the grass runway to where a sign announced our arrival at Tufi International Airport. Resort manager Simon Tewson stowed our bags in a Land Rover while assistant manager and occasional chef Matt Brugh walked with us the 100 yards to the resort. Tufi sits high on a ridge overlooking the fjord. Each dawn found me on the deck of my room, writing my log as the rising sun changed the waters from indigo to azure and the forest from evening gray to iridescent green. Each sunset, the clouds atop Mount Trafalgar slowly morphed peach to pink to purple while cackling gangs of red and blue Eclectus parrots swept past.

During the October-to-March wet season, the rains fall at night and the seas are flat. By the December holidays, the resort’s 19 units are full and you can make the long runs to the storied Black Jack Bomber and Jacob wrecks “without spilling your tea,” according to Simon. But when the wind is up, the seas are too rough even to get to nearby offshore reefs. On three of my dive days, we did muck diving in the fjord....