Today we had a wonderful day snorkelling around the island. The trip was run by Matt at Maya's guesthouse so I'll try not to mention him too much to avoid confusion! He didnpt come out nto the water with us because it was Ramadan but he was a nice guy with a good sense of humour.
First stop wasTurtle Point where we immediately saw a turtle. I felt a bit sorry for the poor thing because boat-loads of tourists all turned up at the same time and started following him around. He didn't appear to be too fussed but I guess it's hard to tell with a turtle!
Shortly after, one of the boat men pointed out another one and, for a while, it had a small entourage of about 6 people but it wasn't very long before that one too was pretty much mobbed. Matt eventually got tired of being kicked in the face by over-enthusiastic turtle-watchers and went back to the boat but I could barely drag myself away.
My favourite parts were when the turtles surfaced to breathe before suberging again. It was then we got to see its other more conventional fishy companions which were constantly attached to its underside. Less pleasant was having stern words with the morons who kept diving dive to touch it - or even worse, reaching for it when it was trying to breathe.
We had a waterproof camera from Maya Matt and Peter managed to get a few good snaps so hopefully our Matt will manage to post some of them up with the blog.
Next stop was Shark Point. Only Johan saw a shark here but we did get to see lots and lots of pretty corals and fishes, including some pretty hefty ones. Apparently, the shark swam straight past me but I was too busy watching something else.
Next on the itinerary was Turtle Beach. So-called because that's where the turtles go to lay their eggs. However, Maya Matt assured us we would be able to see sharks there. We were all swimming around, keeping our eyes peeled because it was quite a cloudy day so there wasn't much light, when Matt and Janet called us over to where they were because, as Janet said, there were the biggest fish she had ever seen.
She was not wrong! There were 7 or 8 MASSIVE Bumphead Parrot Fish and they were amazing! They were over a metre long with a kind of 'beak' and teeth that you wouldn't want to get close too. They are herbivores and not considered dangerous but it's hard not to feel intimidated by something bigger than you, especially when it has the tools to break and eat tough corals. They can also change their sex which is pretty cool too! Unfortunately, we hadn't taken the camera off the boat with us that time but I think Maya Matt may have given us some pictures that he's taken previously.
Soon after that, we started to see black-fin reef sharks. They were hard to spot because they're the same colour as the water and they are pretty shy but I saw 3 and Matt said he saw 6! They were less scary than the Parrot Fish because they swam away from you pretty speedily, especially if they thought you were following them. It was still an amazing experience though.
After all the excitement of the morning, we stopped at the fishing village for some lunch. It was nice food but I felt sorry for Maya Matt because, even though he joined us, he wasn't able to eat or drink anything. It was still good humoured though and we were glad he was there.
After lunch we went to the Lighthouse where we dived the other day. We saw lots of big schools of fish and enjoyed looking at the colourful corals again but, again, it was quite busy with people snorkelling and jumping off the lighthouse. We could see see the divers below the surface and the place where man-Holly had scratched 'Anji, Matt and Toby were here' into the concrete block that secured the buoy.
Last stop was Romantic Beach. Maya Matt (I haven't succeeded in not mentioning him much have I?) was clearly flagging with lack of food and water by then but he was still happy for us to take our time exploring the reef and looking for the blue-spotted stingray that were resting there. Matt and I managed to find one but there was no chance of getting a picture of it.
We swam across the beach to look around the rocks at the other side and it was sad to see so much broken, dead coral in the middle. This is hardly a surprise when we've seen the number of idiots who stand on the them but it also made us appreciate our impact as tourists too. There wasn't much on the other side so we returned to the first side and explored there until Maya Matt called us back.
After such a full day we were all shattered and keen to get copies of the pictures so we could go and get showered. I haven't had chance to look at them all yet but I'm sure they'll appear on the blog or Facebook at some point.
We had a very lovely evening at Shari' La restaurant, over-looking the sea, eating lots of food at their all-you-can-eat buffet. Matt was particularly impressed by the curious inclusion of old-fashioned British desserts of bread and butter pudding and blancmange.
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