Anyone who has ever donned a wetsuit, weights and a mask, and slipped under the depths anywhere along the archipelago—from Pulau Weh to Raja Ampat—has surfaced, eyed the empty shore on the horizon and silently dreamed of opening up their own dive resort.
But Gilles Brignardello, a tanned, thin-haired Frenchman and his lovely wife, Neya are among that small, defining club of divers who saw their dreams grow from laughable grandeur to baffling, life-altering fruition.
Pantar, where Gilles and Neya built their dream resort, is just one of a handful of volcanic isles in a chain of capless, jade slopes that slip into some of the clearest water in the world along the east end of the lesser Sunda, an hour by plane from Kupang in Timor.
From the moment the plane makes its final approach along Alor’s tiny airstrip in Kalabahi, your eyes move down from green hills that slope like the small of a woman’s back toward the beach and the pristine reef
that seemingly rises up, providing guests with a real life screensaver.
that seemingly rises up, providing guests with a real life screensaver.
Once you land at Alor, it’s a 30-minute trek through the tiny streets lined with pink houses and banana trees, women whose smiles reveal betelnut-stained gums, Indonesian toddlers sans pants and proud roosters.
Then from the dock it’s 25 minutes in the boat through glass waters soaked with anticipation to Lamhule and Alor Divers.
As the boat approaches Gilles’s island it’s easy to differentiate first-time guests from Alor Divers’ old-timers. Jaws drop on newbies and smiles rise to full-mast on the resort’s veterans.
The clarity of the water is deceiving. Gilles explains that the reef is three meters below the hull, but rookie divers still worry about it scrapping.
On shore Junko, who’s been guiding divers on Pantar with Gilles for two years and for half a decade in Sulawesi before that, shows you to your room, one of seven bungalows strewn across an empty sand beach and set atop one of the most beautiful house reefs in all of Indonesia.
There’s no check-in desk. No T-shirts pinned up in a plastic case for sale. No welcome drink with an umbrella or orange slice.
Everything’s basic, not that anything more would be needed. There’s plenty of bottled water, coffee and tea, flower-scented soap, toothpaste and shampoo. There’s a fan, a shower with dodgy hot water and a comfortable bed.
All anybody does on Pantar is eat, sleep and dive.
But that’s all the travelers that fly three hours east of Bali and bypass Bunaken want. Over dinner, new guests shoot inquiries at Gilles and his wife.
While the couple must have endured the same cross-examination a million times since the resort opened in 2005, they both smile and field each question with poise.
Most of the divers that come to the resort stay for eight days. “We have a man who is coming back for his third stay,” Neya says. “If he comes back for a fourth time I’ve promised to bake him a chocolate cake.”
Five years ago, Gilles and Neya beached a boat on the shores of Pantar, around a kilometer across and 50-km long, and walked to the village in hopes of purchasing their own piece of heaven.
They stayed three nights in the tiny village 45 minutes from the spot Alor Divers was born, speaking to the man who owned the beachfront, swallowed tasteless soup and nodded as negotiations blossomed.
Neya explains that she stayed on Pantar alone for two months while Gilles sorted out paperwork with their business partner in Kupang.
“It was just me here by myself,” she says. “The people here thought I was some kind of superwoman.”
She was—she is. She braved rain and rats, or coconut squirrels as they’re called on Pantar.
Every day she busied herself teaching kitchen employees recipes and making sure the tiles in the bathrooms of the bungalows were laid straight.
Gilles, an electrician back home in France, has been diving in Indonesia for nearly two decades.
He put himself in charge of everything, from making sure the base of the bungalows was square to mounting the 175-horsepower motor on the dive boat.
But every night ends with talk about tomorrow’s dive. The German couple at one end of the table are there for 10 days. The Dutch couple at the other end of the table decided they were going to stay with Gilles for two weeks.
Penelope Lepeudry and her husband, who are on their second trip to the island, hopped over from Singapore for eight days. If you’re in a pinch you can have the time of your life in just five.
Up and down the table everyone explains his wishlist: thresher sharks, mola mola (ocean sunfish), dugong (seacows) , manta rays. Gilles and Neya have heard it all before, they’re on autopilot.
But like all dive center owners, Gilles promises nothing. He can’t cage a white-tipped shark or an eagle ray and keep it there for everyone. He can only tell you, with a nod and a knowing smile that “tomorrow’s first spot is a good one.”
The next morning, slick pods of sun-drenched dolphins play in the bay just off the reef, which hides a family of nine pygmy seahorses and an elusive dugong.
Twenty minutes later guests are in the water. Penelope follows the guide rope down first. Gilles leads everyone down to 20 meters —and the show begins.
The reef wall is insane. Above each diver’s dark shadow, innumerable fish flurry across the horizon and swim past at neck craning speeds.
Everywhere there’s something else: A parrot fish, a school of barracuda a handful of huge tuna and dark outlines of millions of other fish on the horizon. As you settle at 25 meters, the tank tapping begins.
Guides, instructors and divers tap their tanks with steel rods to grab the attention of others. If you have a tap stick, pack it. If you don’t have tapper, buy one.
Gilles, in the lead, is tapping furiously and pointing out everything from schools of tuna to white-tipped reef sharks.
The wishlist continues, eagle rays, gray reef sharks, bump-head parrot fish, napoleon wrasse.
Back on the boat Gilles, picks up on the smiles of his guests, leans in close and says with a smirk: “You can’t ever guarantee what you’ll see. But that was good, no?”
Everyone pulls at the arms on their wet suits, lost for words but nodding emphatically.
“The check dive,” Penelope says. A check dive is meant to ease divers who might not have been in the water for a few months. “It was raining fish,” Penelope adds.
“I’ve never seen so many fish before. The reef here is so pristine. You always have this feeling this impression that you might see something you’ve never seen before, that something might happen.”
The next morning brings more bread and more dolphins. The first dive is over to the eastern tip of the island where a runway of anemones blanket a rocky slope for what feel like miles; neon pink and orange shag carpeting sways with the current.
Kalabahi bay, a 20-minute boat ride from the island back toward Alor proper offers visitors the muck dive of a lifetime and more mind-bending sights that leave you wondering if Darwin had it right.
Gilles has a million spots like these tucked away in the back of his mind. But as you enjoy the beauty of Alor, he’s out there, working.
After a few days, you realize that owning a resort would wear you down.
The fun would rub off, which makes it all the more easy to let Gilles bear the burden while you enjoy the vacation of a lifetime.
Alor Divers
Tel. 081317804133
info@alor-divers.com
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