Coral Bay

12/8/2015

Nice weather so I extended my camp site for another two nights and booked the same dive and manta ray trip for Thursday. After a nice eclaire au chocolat and another coffee from the bakery, I went snorkeling in the late morning. Really nice snorkeling even from the beaches around the little village. Went to the fish feeding at 15:30 and had a good time there too. The fish, called spangled emperors, come really close and are quite big – I've seen a few up close while snorkeling too.

Went back into the water for another snorkeling session, enjoyed a nice dinner and quiet evening.

Distance traveled: 0km

13/8/2015

Woke up early and was delighted to find perfect weather conditions – sunny, no cloud to be seen and almost no wind. Checked in at the dive shop, grabbed a quick coffee at the bakery and off we went, out with the boat again.

The colours were almost unreal and the whole day was a total miracle. The first dive session was amazing – in the 53 minutes bottom time we saw turtles, heaps of fish, an octopus, squid eggs,many different species of beautiful coral. On the way to see the manta rays we saw 3 dolphins hunting.

This time the water was crystal clear and the 3.5 to 4 meter female manta ray that we found was cruising along very slowly and didn't mind us swimming above her. It was sensational to say the least. Every group had three goes at swimming for several minutes, at times the manta came up and really close, and you could even see the cleaner fish that swam with her. Very graceful creature! We even saw a stingray sitting at the bottom, not minding us or the manta ray that went past it.

While the crew was preparing lunch and the skipper was cruising along slowly we saw two humpback whales and then several green sea turtles. Unfortunately I didn't bring the big lens with me and the general purpose zoom lens is no match to the big one. After lunch, on the way back to the dive site, we saw more manta rays and a group of stingrays – despite us being on the boat, you could see them quite clearly – Jess, the professional photographer, jumped in and took some more amazing pictures.

The second dive was amazing too – at Asho's gap, where we were two days ago as well. Again the whole lot and 6 grey reef sharks, from quite large to a tiny young one. Great dive spot! We spent 47 minutes down but I had still 125 bar in the tank – shallow dive and I believe being fit and meditating in the morning helps too! Back on land I put an order in to get Jess's photos – absolutely amazing as it turned out!

Diving feels almost like a form of meditation to me, the senses are stimulated differently and not having to talk and listen to human conversations gives the brain time to get more input from the other senses. I find it extremely relaxing while I'm down there, but in the evenings I'm usually fairly tired. Watched the sunset from the little lookout hill – not bad but the clouds didn't light up as I'd loved them to. Wanted to go to the pub to to see the band but after talking to Stef, Eva and Reini I fell asleep and only woke up after midnight to get undressed.

Distance traveled: 0km