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Our next 3 weeks of adventure revolve entirely around diving. A typical day is as follows: wake up, go and set up kit and go for 1st dive, come back for breakfast, then go for 2nd dive, quick rest and lunch then in for 3rd dive. Finally come back to the room, shower to get rid of all the salt, sleep, get ready for dinner and if feeling really wild have a cocktail first, then back to bed ready to start the whole process over again. Partly due to exhaustion and due to the repetitive nature of the days, I will just do a weekly blog update.
At Kapalai, the diving set up is like a well oiled machine. A large whiteboard has the divers names and which boat, dive guide and sites to be visited. The holy Grail is to see your name up for the famous Sipadan island. We were lucky enough to be up for this twice (the only downside being that this was on consecutive days and younger to be at the dive centre by 5.15am - luckily our hectic schedule of early starts the 2 previous weeks stood us in good stead). The first morning was not promising as we set off in a storm with howling winds and horizontal rain, but it turned out to be our best day of all. We lost track of how many sharks and turtles we saw, as well as beautiful corals and an abundance and variety of fish that was overwhelming. The big surprise though and what is now amongst our top 5 dives ever, was at Barracuda Point. Given the name it was no surprise when we saw a large school of them. They look so serious and straight, with their shiny silver bodies all purposefully travelling in the same direction. What happened next though was the reason this was so memorable. Instead of a straight line, they began to create a circle - as the circle grew they began to spread upwards to form a solid cylinder of swarming silver some 10 m high by 10m wide. Over 1000 fish going around and around from the sea bed up to the surface. We slowly followed our dive guide along the sea bed, gently moving ever closer. Finally we reached a point where there was a metre or so gap from the sea bed to the start of the Barracuda wall. Very slowly and carefully, trying to breath as gently as possible to avoid creating disturbing bubbles for the fish, we inched forwards and slowly rose up from the sea bed. We were now in the centre of the vortex, within touching distance of the barracuda wall. The scene was even more breathtaking as we looked up to the sparkling surface above us and the sun glistening on their silver skins. We stayed more than 10 minutes in this incredible zone. I think neither Jon nor I could believe it - although I have tried to describe the experience here, I'm sure I can't come close to capturing how amazing it was. Who knew that you could be so blown away by some barracuda!!!
Other than 2 superb days at Sipadan, we also had 1 day at Mabul Island (which was ok) and 1 day at Siamil Island (which was pretty good) but nothing comes close to the Sipadan experience.
By the end of our stay we had completed 14 dives in 4.5 days - not a bad start. The high level of activity combined with the fact the food was pretty poor (the dreaded tepid buffet selection) means that we have also succeeded in avoiding the Christmas overindulgence and in fact conversely have lost more weight - yay!!! We are looking forward to a 'pig out' in Singapore, where we stay overnight en route to our next dive destination in North Sulawesi - bring it on!!
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