Amazing dive resort, dive location, local staff and diving instructors Marty, Beat and Desi. Rooms were ok wooden villas were great, accom accross the road was baking hot and horrible. Toilets are eco toilets but they smell really bad. Food was top shelf made by the local staff who really add value. Amazing home made ice cream. Vege options were great too but often no variety in meals... Volker the owner however, is a real dirty piece of work. This resort offers discounts for multiple dives however, the owner will often back track on his word. He will lie, cheat and not keep his word any chance he can if it means he saves one dollar... I do not recommend this dive resort for the reason that the owner just wants to take advantage. My suggestion is to stay at another resort on the island an be treated with respect. Its worth the extra few dollars it costs.…
We intended to stay for just two nights at Atauro Dive Resort and ended up staying for a whole week. This place is perfect. The bungalows are beautiful, the beds are comfy, the food is delicious, the staff is very kind and always available and the whole place is perfectly clean and well taken care of. We contacted the owner Volker and Safi in advance and they were very kind and responsive. Oh and the diving is sublime. We went on several dives with Marti and Bailey and had a blast. Such nice, professional and fun guys. We can’t recommend this place enough and would come back in a heartbeat.
My partner and I had a wonderful experience getting our PADI open water cards at Atauro Dive Resort. We travelled there in January during the middle of the wet season, but there was no rain falling on Atauro despite it bucketing down in Dili through the week. The resort is serene and minimal. Generous bungalows are open to the air with basic shower facilities. Healthy, sustaining and reasonably priced meals are provided on site three times a day. The beach is fifty metres away. Hammocks stretch between the trees in a few places. The dive equipment available is practical and carefully maintained. Our instructors Marti and Bailey were both excellent communicators, lovers of the ocean, and great company in the evening. Out in the ocean nearby you can dive in a few different places, to most of which you're delivered by boat. You can readily find yourself at fifteen metres deep on a coral wall teeming with life, with another fifty metres of reef below you. The diversity of crustaceans, turtles, reef fish, nudibranches and sea snakes is pretty amazing. We dived two or three times a day during our stay, once in the morning, once after lunch and sometimes once later in the afternoon or evening. I'd highly recommend this experience to any new diver.…
Marti and the team are hands down the best crew to dive with on Ataúro. We did a few dives with them. They have a great boat and good gear. They know their stuff and showed us some awesome spots in one of the worlds most beautiful places. 5 stars!!
Its well built and eco friendly dive resort. You can see the owner Volker and the staff members looks after the place. It has a compost toilets, communal shower, and communal dining area. The beach is full of dead seaweed though. The dive is just at its doorstep which makes this island so amazing. Love it
We had arranged to stay with Atauro Dive Resort months in advance (Feb 2019), and we were really looking forward to staying and diving with them. We went there in early October 2019. We knew it would take four days to get there, and we were okay with that because we thought it would be worth it. It wasn't. Here's why: We didn't like the accommodations. We don’t know why, but the bungalow we got wasn’t the bungalow we expected. There are only two superior bungalows, and one is very obviously better than the other, location-wise. That’s why we book ten months in advance! It’s not as close to the ocean as we wanted/expected, and way too close to the communal composting toilets. It’s weird and off-putting. The interior of the bungalow is fine, BTW, and Caleb’s great cooking and willingness to accommodate vegetarians is really nice-genuinely sorry we missed out on more of that! Next: we went snorkeling in the house reef right in front of the property. We were out for quite a while, and the first thing we said to each other was, "Lots of nice corals, not so many fish." It would later be explained to us like this: "There are 10,000 people living on Atauro, and they all fish every day." These waters are overfished. It’s not the resort’s fault, but it’s a problem that we didn’t want to make our holiday problem. Let's be clear: we are talking pelagics AND reef fish. We did not expect pelagics; we did expect reef fish, and they are not there in numbers you would expect. It is true that Atauro has nice wall dives and beautiful corals, but there is no getting around the low fish populations. Finally: We did not think that the dive experience we wanted was going to be available there, because of the above, plus we felt that what we were being offered on our very first dive was not what we had agreed upon, also weeks if not months in advance. I've said it before and I will say it again: If you are not comfortable or happy with the dive shop you are with, cut your losses and move on. It almost certainly is not going to get better, and it's for sure not worth the expense, disappointment, or worse. So that's what we did. Within several hours of arrival, after four days of travel, we arranged to leave Atauro and dive from Dili, and we are INCREDIBLY happy we did that. It turned out to be one of the best weeks of diving and touring that we have ever had. I am deliberately not mentioning names and not getting into finger-pointing. We didn't like the place, so we left. We have moved on. In any case, people can argue the diving, but we felt that the shore diving off of Dili east coast was amongst the best we have ever seen, and most of the time we were the only ones at the sites. The best part of going to Atauro is whale and dolphin watching off the boat. Dili is also a really fun town, and we would never have known that if we hadn't left. So, leaving Atauro Dive Resort led to what would become the best trip we have ever had. Life is funny like that.…
All of the staff here are incredibly friendly and the food is very taisty/reasonably priced! The Dive Masters/Instructors are very knowledgeable and are always making trips to all of the dive sights around the island. We had a wonderful stay here and would recommend it to anyone coming to Atauro Island for diving or relaxing. If you are on the island during a Saturday, be sure to check out the market for some taisty seafood and fruit!
I thoroughly enjoyed my stay at the Atauro Dive Resort. Everything was great, from the diving and accommodations to the food. Atauro Island is a fantastically beautiful location. The people are friendly and the geography is stunning. The resort's facilities are well planned and maintained. The diving was stellar and always conducted in a safe and professional manner by the staff. Upon my return home I was asked my opinion of Atauro by friends. My response to them all has consistently been- "You WILL regret it if you don't go there soon!"
A memorable week away, getting a little off grid and learning how to dive. Marty and sam were amazing hosts, and their patience with teaching us to dive (first timers) made this one incredible week exploring the world underwater. And the night sky, wow.
We just spent a beautiful week on this stunning island. I travelled with my 4yr old son for a week of superb diving and relaxation. Yes I know - 4yr old and relaxation are rarely used in the same sentence however, Atauro Dive Resort and their friendly, professional staff made sure our stay was just that. Sammy and Marti are some of the best instructors I've come across both with there knowledge of the area and their commitment to ensure a safe diving experience. The accommodation was clean and comfy and very generous portions of food. Overall it was fantastic - so much so we are going back for Christmas for two weeks :)
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