Why choose Nusa Penida for your Divemaster course?
When you start thinking about doing your Divemaster course, there are many options to choose from. You’ll have to choose the dive centre and this you might do online by looking at their website or chatting to their instructors. But first you need to choose where you are going to go and there are so many great places.
Here are a few good reasons to choose Nusa Penida for your PADI Divemaster course.
The diving is awesome.
You clearly want to do your Divemaster in a place with memorable diving. In most dive centres, you get pretty much unlimited diving for the duration of your course so that diving better be good, right? Nusa Penida offers incredible coral reefs, manta Rays, mola mola, barracudas, bamboo sharks, massive shoals of fish and, yes, the occasional big shark (think thresher or whale shark). You see turtles on almost every dive and sea snakes make a very regular apparition. There’s plenty of small stuff too for small critter lovers, with orang utan crabs, squat lobsters, sexy anemone shrimp, mantis shrimp, octopuses and the odd frog fish if you’ve got good eyes. Manta ray diving attracts many people, so you get to share in the joy of others as well as enjoy your own thrills. The great thing about Nusa Penida diving, you will never get bored and you’ll never know what cool creature might just appear on your next dive.
Nusa Penida diving is varied
Nusa Penida offers such varied diving that at times you feel like you’ve been diving in two different countries in the space of a morning. The south coast consists of steep white cliffs, has swell, waves and offers temperate water temperatures in June, July and August. Temperatures have been known to drop to 17 degrees and the underwater scenery is of great rock boulders, small soft coral and sandy patches around manta point. The scenery is similar with more massive coral near Crystal Bay. The wall in the pass between Nusa Penida and Nusa Ceningan will offer sheer walls covered in colourful but very small algae and coral, and strong currents, the North and East coast will wow you with their world class coral reefs, warm tropical waters, great visibility and surprise big pelagics. The coral here is very varied and has some awesome formations, vivid colours and incredible variety of species, shapes and colonies.
If you can dive here, you can dive pretty much anywhere
Nusa Penida is a great place to do your Divemaster because you will be exposed to all sorts of different dive conditions. You’ll experience strong currents at times, cold waters some days, down currents and whirlpools make the very occasional apparition. Some days you’ll have no current at all and can search for tiny crustaceans. With the possible exception of ice diving, you’ll have experienced most diving conditions over your course in Nusa Penida and will be able to confidently start a diving career elsewhere.
The community and island are authentic and fun
Apart from the awesome diving, Nusa Penida is also a fun place to stay. It only properly became popular with tourists a few years back, so it still has a very authentic feel and most locals are genuinely interested in interacting with foreigners but your might have to pull out your Bahasa Indonesia dictionary! The foreigners living and working on the island are mostly chilled, down to earth people who enjoy simple living, ‘kampung’ (village) life and beautiful nature. There aren’t too many distraction in terms of night life but that’s a good thing when you are diving and studying everyday. There’s still plenty of awesome beach bars with happy hour to grab a cocktail or a beer at sunset and plenty of cool new restaurants and cheap and tasty local warungs(local restaurant) to choose from too. The island itself is stunning with plenty of wonderful land-based exploring to do and stunning views to soak in. You’ll soon feel at home with the friendly community and chilled island vibes.
The dive centres are professional and offer career opportunities
Despite having the laid-back island feel, Nusa Penida offers very professional outfits in terms of dive centre. Some centres have PADI Course Directors who train people up to instructors and also train the dive masters dive master candidates with very complete dive master programmes. The overall teaching level is high for most of the dive centres with dedicated instructors aiming to train the best dive professionals. These centres certainly have nothing to envy the big Bali dive centres. Here, the training is much more personal and hands on and you’ll get to assist a little with every aspect of the diving. You’ll get to truly experience what it’s like to be part of team and work in a dive centre; a good way to see if this may be a carrier for you. With the possibility of continuing your training up to instructor level, Nusa Penida offers great diving career development possibilities. You may just find yourself going all the way to instructor and landing yourself a job.
If you feel this is the right place for you, check out our Divemaster internship in Nusa Penida!