Break 1 - Day 11 Manta Rays and MORE

We rose to a very overcast morning with high winds. We weren’t quite sure if the tour would run – there were rumblings around the camp that some tours were not going out. But we packed up hopefully and headed over anyway. The Whale Shark tours go out past the reef – and their tours were being decided upon still – but the Manta Rays come inside the reef and so our tour did run (that's our boat at left). The boats are assisted by spotter planes to direct them to the rays/sharks.

Although it was still windy, the sky soon cleared and we ended up with good weather after all (ho hum, another beautiful day). The spotter plane had little luck at first – and even when he finally spotted a ray, we lost it almost directly once we got there. But they finally found another one, and we all got in the water to check it out.

It turned out we had found a ray who was visiting a cleaning station. We all had a nice long swim with it as it hovered around. The water was quite churned up due to the winds, and the manta was mostly down fairly deep, but it did come up higher on occasion. We could see the cleaner fish working over its body and the larger fish swimming along by it also. It was very majestic and smooth. We were at the surface floundering around to try to stay put, and it just glided around effortlessly. It was an incredible experience!

Next we headed over to see some green ocean turtles in an area where they come up to breathe and feed in the shallows (out deep – just in the midst of the outer reef). The turtles were a variety of sizes, some very large; close to metre in diameter. They were fast though! They would come up for a quick breath or two, and then they were gone. Hard to catch on film.

We also spotted dolphins en route - a group of 4. There were 2 mothers and 2 calves, feeding in the shallow water. It is easier for the small dolphins to fish in the shallows, so the mothers bring them there to teach them to fish.

We then headed over to a section of the outer reef for snorkelling. We all (3 of us that is – actually all of the boat less one fellow who was nervous of the sharks) did the more challenging swim with the guide. We first visited the area where the reef sharks come for cleaning – there were a couple of big ones there.

Sorry - no photos of the sharks this round. It really is amazing swimming near these creatures. One or two of the reef sharks are okay to be round, but when they start to accumulate in numbers (as they did at Lakeside on our previous snorkel), it does become a bit unnerving - and we would take off. But here there were only a couple and it was intriguing to watch them get cleaned.

We then swam across a ‘canyon’ in the coral where the tide currents were a bit stronger, but the reef was spectacular. It was great to see the variety of coral on the outer reef especially – there were many different types here from what is in the inner reef.

The fish out here somehow seemed brighter also – but that was perhaps my imagination.

All in all it was great day – one of the best for sure. I think we got great value for our money given that we spent $140 pp for this vs. $360 pp for a whale shark swim (by the way – they did end up going out on rough seas, and they did get to swim with one – but it was not smooth!)