How to Get Maratua Island: A Secret Diving and Snorkeling Spot in Indonesia
A Year Trip Blog
Maratua is a small island east of Kalimantan (Borneo) in Indonesia. Malatur, an atoll island, is attracting attention as a diving spot with a natural marine environment.
However, getting to Maratua didn’t seem to be easy. The information online is limited. Some bloggers say that it’s very complicated to get to Maratua, although getting to Derawan, another island nearby is relatively easier to get by boat.
Derawan is a much more famous place for tourists. It’s a tiny island between Maratua and Kalimantan; It takes you only thirty minutes to walk around the island. Apparently, because Derawan is so popular amongst tourists, the marine nature is not as nice as Maratua. That’s why we didn’t go to Derawan and came to Maratua instead, even though the living cost is a bit more expensive here.
How to get to Maratua was not complicated at all, in fact. We just took a speed boat from Beraw (Tanjung Redep) in Kalimantan. Or you can fly from Beraw or Samarinda. There are also boats from Tarakan. For more details, please read our blog:
We don’t dive, but we came here for snorkelling. Not much information about snorkelling around Maratua either. Therefore, there are no snorkelers at all but us. We are staying at the beach and we almost have a private fine white sand beach. No other tourists.
We went snorkelling from the beach every day and saw a manta ray, huge bumped head fish, hundreds of barracuda, a school of trevally, lionfish, puffer fish and other millions of tropical fish.
We are very happy to have come here. And after Maratua, we are heading to the Malaysia side of Kalimantan. We still have three months left to travel.
