Wakatobi National Park, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

Wakatobi as one of the world's marine tourism objects and one of the Regencies in Southeast Sulawesi Provience. By operating the New Matahora Airport, launced in December 2008, the island will give you more comfortable trip and spend the holiday at Wakatobi, the only real underwater paradise.

Wakatobi is also situated geographically at the world's coral reef triangle center with its 942 fish species and 750 coral reef species from total 850 of world's collection comparing to the two world's famous diving center like Caribbean Sea that owes only 50 species and other 300 coral reef species in the Red Sea, Egypt.

Beside the underwater beauty, Wakatobi has also other beauty and richness such as white sandy beach, clear sea water, sunset in every islands edge, historical ruins like ancient fortresses and cannon that spread out in the four main islands, old village with its pillar house, traditional waving, blacksmiths, Bajo tribe and various particular dances. This nature and culture heritages put Wakatobi as the world's famous marine tourism objects.

  

Wakatobi is well known as the Tukang Besi Island in the map and it is the abbreviation of four main islands name which are : WA (Wangi-wangi), KA (Kaledupa), TO (Tomia) and BI (Binongko), covers an area of 1.400.000 hectares and the coral reef places 90.000 hectares from the total area. The island is also famous as the second largest Barrier after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia consists of 39 islands and 7 of them are inhabited with the total population of 100.563, while the rest remain uninhabited.

Wakatobi consists of multi-ethnic society and Suku Bajo or Bajo Tribe who lives in the seashore, having a particular building architecture connected by the bridge and boats as their main transportation and basic livelihood as the fishermen.
The culinary art of the region serves you a delicious natural tasted food, traditionally made from generation by generation.

  

Beside as the regency, Wakatobi is also known as the National Park, often called as Wakatobi National Park (TNKW) and it gives the unique characteristic of the regency in Indonesia even in the world having the same width with the National Park area. The unique of the island makes Wakatobi more strong and realistic in the effort of maintaining its underwater beauty and preservation as well as other heritages to place Wakatobi as the underwater marine tourism object and the prominent cultural tourism object that is incomparable with other marine tourism places to be visited by anyone.
based these potential, makes this area very comportable for dive tourism activities such as surfing and snorkeling, fishing, swimming, camping, etc.

Best time to Visit
April to June and October to December. Outside the range of that time, waves in Wakatobi is high enough.


Source: http://www.sulawesi-experience.com/news/wakatobi-southeast-sulawesi-island.html