Labengki & Sombori 6D5N: Extended Island Expedition

The longest itinerary we run here, and the only one that reaches Handprint Cave and gets you to Love Bay by boat rather than in passing.

Six days is a lot for two small islands, and that is the point. Nothing on this itinerary is a rushed stop. You get two separate Sombori days and two separate Labengki days, which means the guides can read the weather across a whole week instead of a long weekend and put you at each site when the light and the sea are right.

The extras over the five-day trip are Handprint Cave, a set of ochre hand stencils on a limestone wall whose age nobody has properly established, and a slower run through the Labengki side that includes Love Bay and the Swimming Pool Cave on a dedicated afternoon rather than squeezed around a crossing.

This is the trip for people who want to photograph the place properly, for divers and freedivers who want repeat visits to the same reefs, and for anyone whose reaction to a good lagoon is to want to swim across it twice.

Getting there

Everything starts in Kendari, the capital of Southeast Sulawesi. Haluoleo airport (KDI) takes daily flights from Makassar, and Makassar connects to Jakarta, Bali and Surabaya several times a day. We collect you in Kendari at 08:00 and drive to Tanasa Port, then it is roughly three hours by wooden boat to Labengki. Plan to arrive in Kendari the night before. Same-day connections do not work.

What the accommodation is actually like

Simple, and worth knowing in advance. Rooms are twin share with a shared bathroom, either in a homestay or in a cottage a step above it. There is no air conditioning, hot water is not guaranteed and the electricity runs on a generator that goes off overnight. Mobile signal is patchy on Labengki and mostly absent around Sombori. People who come expecting a resort are disappointed; people who come for the water are not.

A note on price

The per-person rate falls sharply as the group grows, because the boat, the guide and the fuel cost the same whether one person or six is aboard. Two people pay roughly double what six people pay each. If your dates are flexible, tell us and we will try to pair you with another small group. Cottage accommodation is available on every departure for a supplement.