We loved the resort, but be aware that it is not located on the beach. We were surprise of this as the web site let you think you are on the beach and they take you by truck to go elsewhere. They put you in a truck, along with your gear, and drive you to the beach. Some beaches are really close (2 minutes drive) and some further (10-15 minutes drive). There is a room for cameras, whit power outlets and desks to put them. As for your dive gear, there are no lockers. Your gear is put in a crate on the floor in the main area by the pool. And it stays there when you don't use it, even during the night. The resort is locked at night but all the guests are free to go around in the resort at night. There is a place to hang your drysuit. There are a lot of rincing tanks, which is great. There are two outside showers to rince. When we were there, there was not a lot of guests, so the loading-unloading in the trucks was ok. A big group came in, and things got a bit chaotic, with everyone leaving and coming back, and all the crates of gear lying around. Only one truck can be loaded at once, because there is no room for more. I just can't imagine how it works when the resort is full! We had a dive guide, which was excellent at finding us nidibranches and all kinds of small stuff to see. The minimum regulation in Indonesia does not require that a person is a divemaster to be a dive guide, but a rescue diver. So our guide was a rescue diver, but still they mostly do everything a DM does.
Just had an eight night stay in this beautiful property and loved it so much again. Everywhere was very quiet, nice for divers, but the almost total absence of Chinese divers has hit Tulamben businesses hard. The staff were are friendly and nice as ever, and the whole resort is immaculate.
I was lucky to have had the same guide as last year, Made. I learned so much from him last year about photography and did again this year. Many of the little critters are less than the size of a grain of rice. Guides like Made and his colleagues are rapidly turning Tulamben into the nudibranch capital of the world. I have been lucky enough to have dived most of not all of the macro top spots in Indonesia and the Philippines and the nudibranch spots are best in Tulamben by a mile. The macro spots are not just confined to nudis, we saw wonderful crabs and shrimps including several harlequin shrimps, Donald Duck shrimps, a bobtail squid, a long arm octopus and a hairy octopus.
The Liberty Wreck is of course a wonderful dive and we had it to ourselves for a quarter of an hour on a dawn dive, highly recommended. I first dived the wreck in 2011 and have never seen so many bumpheads as on this trip.
The resort itself is absolutely beautiful with a wonderful garden visited by kingfishers, bee eaters, a squirrel and numerous dragonflies. I loved chatting to Made, the head gardener, about his beautiful plants and lawns in the morning, chilling by the pool in the afternoon and watching the moon and stars little bats after dark.
All in all a wonderful experience at a very affordable price.
Place was beautiful. It did help that we pretty much had the area to ourselves. 3 Pools, great messages. The food was OK but we didn't go hungry. Liberty Wreck was some great diving and the guide for my wife and I was just right.
We have just spent 4 days at Liberty. As newly certified Open Water Divers we were very excited to test out our skills. The diving was quite incredible. We did not have to travel far to experience the Liberty Wreck Dive, coral Garden and Drop off as well as some diving in Kubu. Tama, our guide was really helpful and conscious of our newbie status. Diving was extremely reasonably priced.
The resort itself has an incredibly friendly staff who are very hard working. The gardens are just gorgeous. The restaurant has great simple Indo and western dishes. The prices are so affordable and the food so tasty that we ended up eating there 3 out of 4 nights.
We did our diving in the morning and spent the afternoons lazing by the pool and getting in room massages.
It was the off season during our visit but we were not troubled by rain, our Dive Master told us that visibility was not as good as it usually is but we were certainly not disappointed.
We will definitely be back.
We have just returned from spending 10 days Liberty Dive Resort and boy do we wish we were still there! Tulamben itself is a very remote part of Bali and is a very small town, mostly known for great muck diving and wreck diving which is why we chose Tulamben as our destination for our first trip to Bali. The resort does not disappoint in any way. The staff were fabulous, professional and friendly. The gardens were among some of the best gardens I have ever seen at any resort we've ever stayed at - just stunning. 'Made' the gardener does an outstanding job! It has 3 gorgeous pools. Food was great, honest food for hungry divers. The rooms are cleaned immaculately every day. The staff make it feel like a home away from home.
As for diving, the instructors and guides were fantastic, super knowledgable and nothing was ever too much trouble. If you want to go to a nearby town for a couple of dives, no problem. Wake up a 5 am for a sunrise dive of the USAT Liberty, absolutely! The sites were teeming with macro and megafauna - from nudibranchs and frogfish to reef sharks, hawksbill turtles and Moray eels. The Boga Wreck at Kubu and The USAT Liberty are two outstanding wrecks that are both shore dives. We could dive them 10 times and still find new and interesting things to observe. Oh and free Nitrox! We did our Nitrox and AOW while we were there - our instructor Wayan Pasek was thorough and really patient. Our dive guide Eric was fab, really easy going and great at spotting tiny little nudibranchs and other macro for us to see. You also get your own dedicated dive guide for the entire time, so you don't have to dive in groups and can control your own dive schedule.
We love our time at LDR. We are already trying to figure out when we can go back!