Dive Review of
Nautilus Resort in
Micronesia/Kosrae]

 Florida, Caribbean, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea,  Marshall Islands, New
York, New Jersey 

Dive Conditions

[Unspecified]We were doing laid back diving in Kosrae after doing many of
the deep wrecks on Truk so we never pushed the envelope. We do not think
that there were any restrictions once you showed that you were competent.  

Overall Rating

[None]My wife Julie and I put together a package of Truk(Chuuk) on the
Odyssey(3rd time) and Kosrae(2nd time) for the month of July 2006. We knew
what to expect from Truk but since we had only spent two dive days on
Kosrae last July we really did not know what to expect. We wanted to go
back to the same resort since one of the huts had air conditioning but
found out that it was filled. Since Kosrae has only three or four “resorts”
I used the internet to make our choice. We found out that the Kosrae
Nautilus Resort had both a pool and all rooms had air conditioning. We
booked for seven days but we did not book for diving since we were not sure
what to expect. BOY WERE WE HAPPILY SURPRISED! After about a three hour
flight from Truk to Kosrae we again found ourselves on a quiet, super clean
and friendly island. We were immediately picked up by a staff member in a
large  clean van. Upon seeing the resort from the road it seemed like a
simple one level motel BUT after a super greeting by Doug, the owner we
entered the world of The Kosrae Nautilus Resort. The first thing we saw was
beautiful natural flowers surrounding a gin clear small swimming pool . The
pool is surrounded by an alfresco area for dinning even if it is raining.
Of course you can dine in their air conditioned dining room. When we opened
the door to our room we saw a huge immaculately clean room with two large
double beds. The super air conditioning blew us away. There is an excellent
shower, mini bar, fridge and a 22 channel T.V. Since I bring my computer I
was happy to find internet access(purchase a $5 card for 45 minutes with
fast and easy dial-up). The restaurants food was quite good with dishes
ranging from an excellent fish and chips to surprisingly good pizza! We had
unreal mangrove crab one night. On off diving days you can rent a kayak
right in back of the resort and paddle up the mangroves. At dusk its fun to
sit on the gazebo/swing with a drink and check out the stars. But we were
here for the diving. We had a taste of the most amazing hard corals we have
ever seen last year. The hard coral here are more prolific and diverse even
compared to Sipidan or Papua New Guinea. All diving is done from Doug’s two
motor canopied boat which is moored just five minutes from the resort. All
gear is kept in a great dive room just ten steps from our room. You put
your gear in Doug’s truck and off you go. The furthest site is no more then
½ hour away. The boat is fast and it has a Dan O2 unit on board.
Lunches are fun and filling. There is always plenty to drink. You do two
dives with Adam, Doug’s older son who is an excellent unobtrusive dive
guide. He dives with a float and as long as you keep him in sight he will
not interfere with your dive unless you want him to or if he sees something
special he will let you know. What makes the diving so special is the hard
coral. On every dive you would very lightly drift through at least three
individual areas of coral, some that I have never seen before. The coral is
mostly stacked layers upon layers upon layers. All of the coral are
pristine. I could even see coral as deep as 150 ft. down! You start you
dive right by the wall that gradually descends to the abyss. You can go
down or stay with Adam and then gradually continue up to the shallows in
the 20-10ft level. We saw schools of small to medium fish. We came upon
spotted eagle rays on numerous dives. We saw both gray, blacktip and
whitetip sharks on many dives. Twice we were surrounded by large swirling
schools of chevron barracuda.  One dive day as we were motoring out to the
dive site, Doug got a call from another boat that they had encountered over
100 dolphins. Off we went and we ended up snorkeling with way over 100
dolphins. They loved interacting with us. Turtles were also seen. We
thought seven dive days would be too much but we now plan to go back for
two weeks so that we can do a one deep dive day, skip some days and kayak
and either snorkel or dive the 90 degree blue hole directly across the road
from the resort! Yes a Blue Hole with spotted eagle rays and schools of
fish. What also made this such a special dive experience is that we were
treated as if we were part of the family. Doug, his wife Sally, Adam and
their younger sons all treated us as if we were family. Check out the
price, you will be pleasantly surprised! We couldn’t ask for more except
possibly some bigger fish like hammerheads, mantas etc. but Doug did send
me an e-mail just last week showing his family snorkeling with a young
whale shark. I guess two weeks will help! No diving on Sunday! Religious
observance. 

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