Nabucco Island Resort

Note: Scuba diving at Nabucco can be easily combined with going to Sipadan (Tawau airport, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia).

More about Nabucco Island Resort

Nabucco Island Resort occupies its own two-hectare private island inside the protected lagoon of the Maratua Atoll, about 60 km off East Kalimantan in the Celebes Sea. Built in 2001 with the buildings worked carefully into the vegetation — the story goes that not a single tree was felled — it's a small, genuinely back-to-nature place: eight duplex bungalows and one single, all in local materials, each with air-conditioning and ceiling fan, mosquito net, minibar, en-suite bathroom with hot water, and a big roofed terrace a few steps from the water.

The dive centre is run by Extra Divers, and the headline act is minutes away by boat: The Channel, better known as Big Fish Country, one of Borneo's great dives — current-swept, thick with schooling barracuda and trevally, patrolled by sharks, with early-morning hammerhead sightings from time to time. Around it you get walls, the lagoon's macro life, and day trips to Sangalaki's mantas and Kakaban's stingless jellyfish lake.

Book your stay at Nabucco Island Resort

Off gas between dives on the little beaches at high tide, at the stilted restaurant with the lagoon view, or at the Sunset Bar. The island itself is half the entertainment: monitor lizards, coconut crabs, flying foxes and kingfishers all live here.

Access is via Berau or, on the right schedule, directly to Maratua's airstrip with a 20-minute boat hop. Nabucco pairs beautifully with a Sipadan stay for a two-country Borneo dive trip — contact us to arrange it.