Black Sand Dive Retreat

Black Sand Dive Retreat is a small, quality dive resort located on a sheltered bay in the natural setting on Lembeh Strait: Indonesia’s exotic critter capital. It is the incredible diving that draws visitors to Lembeh Strait, but the owners and staff are committed to providing an equally memorable resort experience.

The main building is where meals are prepared and served as well as afternoon snacks, with dining guests treated to panoramic views out over Lembeh Strait. The numerous lantern-lit fishing canoes that dot the strait by night provide a romantically memorable setting. The restaurant also offers wi-fi internet connection, a reference library where guests can learn more about what they are seeing on their dives and a TV Room to view and share underwater video footage or just watch a movie or satellite television.

At the sandy beach guests can enjoy current-free swimming and snorkeling in a sheltered environment, or just recline on a beach chair in the shade of an overhanging banyan tree and enjoy the quiet view with a drink in their hand and their toes in the fine sand.

Each of the 6 coconut-wood bungalows offers wondrous views over Kambahu Bay and Lembeh Strait. The bedroom is equipped with both a ceiling fan and a/c for your comfort, with complimentary drinking water, coffee and tea close at hand. Each unit also has a walk-in closet to keep your bags and belongings organized and out of the way as well as a walled open-air “Bali-style” garden bathroom with a hot water shower to help reheat you after long repetitive dives.

Known as the “muck mecca”, Lembeh is famous as the best destination on the planet for exotic critter diving, macro diving, or muck diving. There are five shipwrecks (two of them Japanese WWII ships) and an impressive array of underwater topography, including pinnacles and verdant soft and hard coral gardens, but it is the plain black sand sites that make the area famous with their profusion of strange and beautiful attractions.

Our superb location in Kambahu Bay means that we are right in the middle of Lembeh’s best dives and most of the sites in the strait are within five minutes by speedboat. Directly off our fine black sand beach lies our exceptional House Reef, offering calm and current-free conditions so that dedicated critter hunters and shutterbugs can have fantastic dives at whatever time they choose.

The dive center includes closets for guest equipment to drip dry in the breeze between dives and provide space for easy suiting up. Within meters are showers as well as rinse tanks for washing both diving equipment and for soaking underwater camera gear. Two compressors and the Nitrox blending system have their own room; there is a WC for guests, a rental equipment room, and a briefing center, covering all your diving requirements.

There is a dedicated camera room that is mosquito-screened and fan-cooled, offering two heights of camera stations, each with outlets for charging both 220 V and 110 V.