Saronde Island

Saronde Island lies on North Gorontalo Regency - Northern part of Gorontalo Province - Indonesia, or 400 km west side Manado City - Indonesia. This island can be reach in 40 minutes from Gorontalo Airport, or 120 minutes from Gorontalo City. Saronde Island is known for its large white sandy beach, and its calm water.

The island had an area of 8 hectares, 20% of which consists of flat sandy land, the rest consists of hill and forest. There are thousands of birds use Saronde's forest as their house. Hundreds of pied imperial pigeon (Ducula bicolor) nest at Saronde's top hill forest. At the northern part of Saronde, we can found vast array of ancient basalt stone... probably constructed when there were a giant earthquake thousands years ago that formed this island.

The underwater life in Saronde is quite rich. All the corals and marine life had a similarity with Bunaken National Park in Manado. There are whale shark (Rhincodon typus) appearances once in a while. Others interesting animals like sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), dugong (Dugong dugon), large stingray (Dasyatis pastinaca) was reported hang around Saronde's island by local fisherman. Cassis cornuta also appears frequently in large group along Bogisa beach, 300m northern Saronde Island.

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  School of fish
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  Underwater view
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  Coral reef near Saronde
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  Turtle Conservation

Saronde Island right now is one of the most popular tourism spot in Gorontalo Province. There are more than 16,000 tourist visited this island in 2016, and with more than 1000 tourist was a foreigners. Most of the tourist had one day visit activity, some of them was staying in one of 9 cottages built within the island. For business gathering, this island had a small meeting room to accept 40-60 guests.

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  Cottage
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  Floating dock
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  Restaurant
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  From far away

There are three other islands around Saronde, namely Bogisa, Mohinggito and Lampu island. Bogisa Island (9 hectares) has an elongated white sand beach, hills and forest with Saronde-like vegetation. Mohinggito Island (30 hectares) is a marine conservation area that has a wide bay and commonly used as a conscious yachts place to visit Saronde. Lampu Island (6 hectares) has a white sand beaches like Saronde. This island has flare lights and government guardhouse. These islands are commonly visited by tourists and become a package with saronde tour visits.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]