Snorkeling

We were up early to go snorkeling on the coral reef. This entailed an early breakfast, and we and another couple assembled at 8:00am to get on the boat.

The trip is sold as being “swimming with manta rays” but, as with all wild animal excursions, there’s no guarantee that they’ll turn up. The guide and captain were optimistic, however, and gave us a briefing about what to do if we encountered a manta – don’t make a splash or you’ll frighten them away, don’t try to chase them (you’ll never keep up), and don’t panic…they’re gentle giants and won’t eat you! Some of the rays are regular visitors and have names – we were able to see them pictured on the wall of the activities hut.

It was about half an hour’s cruise to the reef. On arrival we donned fins and masks and slipped into the water. There were several boats from other resorts as well, so we were enjoined to stick close to our guide and not get mixed up with other groups. There were only four of us so this wasn’t difficult. The reef is as good as any, and there were vast numbers of fish of all the usual reef varieties that you see swimming in aquaria, just all going about their fishy business, and not being at all bothered by us. The coral was pretty spectacular as well.

We swam for about half an hour before heading back to the boat and going a little further, to the channel where the manta rays usually feed. This is again a coral reef, and the direction of the tide pulls you along so you barely need to swim at all – the moon and ocean do the heavy lifting. There were no rays to be seen on our first pass, so we went back to the beginning and did it again. This time there were…still no rays to be seen. It was a busted flush. Ah well, you can’t win ‘em all. We’d seen many spectacular fish and corals so it was a good morning out. We arrived back at around 11:30, and sat around idling before having our lunch. No pics as we don’t have underwater photo technology.