Scuba diving at the USAT Liberty Wreck – Bali

After learning to scuba dive in Gili Trawangan, we were pretty keen to get kitted up and get back under the water again! And as it turns out, Bali is home to the (apparently) easiest ship wreck dive in the world, which is just off shore of a northern town called Tulamben. As we also wanted to see the north of Bali, we figured it’d be rude not to head straight there!

The USAT Liberty was a WWII ship that was torpedoed and made an emergency landing on Tulamben beach in Bali, where it sat for 20 years until a volcanic eruption from Mount Agung pushed it into the sea. Its wreckage now sits on the sea bed and has been taken over by coral reef and all sorts of marine life – perfect for diving!

We first spotted it on our first day in Tulamben when we wandered down to the black beach with our snorkels. It’s mostly too deep to appreciate just with a snorkel but you can still see part of it and hundreds of fish, some of which are pretty big! After that little introduction we were SO excited to dive it!

We bought a two night/five dive package with Bali Reef Divers, so we had three dives the first day and two the second. There are three sites in Tulamben – the wreck, ‘the drop off’ and ‘the coral garden’. We didn’t bother with the coral garden, though, as the other two are supposed to be much better.

The wreck, of course, was the best! I thought it would be a bit scary (visions of Titanic’s wreck in my head ha) but it was surrounded with so much life that it was just incredible. There were some really big fish and loads of smaller ones too. We also saw a couple of turtles and a load of sea snakes who were poking out of the sand like they were doing some kind of snake charmer dance!

The lava from the volcano destroyed most of the ship so there are lots of parts where you can swim through the frame into its different compartments, which was really fun. The whole time you still have a clear open access to the surface above you, so we could relax and explore it easily and safely. I felt like the little mermaid haha!

The experience was so great that we did it three times – once opting to do the 6am dive so we could see the massive bumphead parrot fish who have made the wreck their bedroom. There was a whole school of them and they were about as big as I was with a strange big front tooth for munching the coral – bizarre and so cool!

The drop off was also a really cool dive site with the coral dropping down way further than I could see or than we were allowed to go with our open water certification only permitting us to go down 18metres! There were fish just everywhere and I especially enjoyed all the massive, brightly coloured star fish that were there!

Bali Reef Divers were really great, they were dead organised so we could make sure we got all our dives in with a decent break in between. The hotel was also really nice! We treated ourselves to a private double room which had a mini bar, cute balcony overlooking the lovely pool and a terrace out the back where you could sit and watch the sunset behind the volcanos.

To do the two night/five dive package in a double room it cost 3,600,000 rupiah for both of us, which is about £220. Their restaurant was also really nice with tasty Indonesian and western options 🙂