"An Around-the-World-Ticket for Two, Please."

More Manta fun!

Posted by Sarah O'Neill , Saturday, 4 June 2011 20:20

Ben woke me up to show me a gigantic spider that was on the inside of our mossie net, which I did not appreciate! Luckily I was too sleepy to care and it was on his side anyway, and only had 3 legs left! At breakfast we all decided to ask Appy to take us on a snorkelling trip, which he of course did! We swam out from the beach, but after a little while Jo’s feet were hurting her from blisters from the flippers from the day before, so Jo and Stefan went back and took the kayak out to save their feet! So the four of us and Appy carried on. The snorkelling is very good here, not necessarily for the fish you see, but the corals are really pretty and what you see is much more like what I have seen when diving, not snorkelling! We were snorkelling for a good hour and were on our way back when Jay came and found us in the boat to say they’d seen mantarays, so we all piled on the boat and off we went. I was about done snorkelling, but was totally up for seeing the mantarays again, and this time there were apparently four! Casey and Michele were quite excited as this was their first time seeing them! This time was very different, as they were in the channel between the two islands and there was a very strong current, and the mantas swim against the current! So they took us up ahead of the mantas, and dropped us in, and we had to wait for the mantas to come to us. Jay went back to find Jo and Stephan who joined us later. The mantas were huge ones this time, between 3-4 metres across! Once they get towards you and begin to pass we tried to keep up swimming with them, but the current was really strong, and swimming against it was tough! Ben managed to keep up a bit longer than I did, but eventually we were all left behind! The boat came and picked us up and took us back up in front of the mantas, and off we went again! Up until this point it had been just us, but we could see the other resort boat on it’s way, but as there were 4 mantas and it was so difficult to keep up with them it was nothing like the day before! They dropped us in another time and we saw three mantas all at once, it was amazing, they were somersaulting over each other and rolling around, they look so graceful and amazing! We kept on chasing them, falling behind, getting picked up by the boat and doing it all again several times, and then we got towards the end of the channel where the current is much weaker, and that’s where we had been the day before. It’s easy to keep up with the mantarays and watch them, which we did for a while, and a few more people were around from the other resort too. Suddenly one manta which was quite deep started to zoom really fast towards the surface, but I think it soon realised that there were a few people in it’s way! So it dived back down, moved over and then zoomed super fast towards the surface and jumped out of the water, it was amazing!!!! We all watched it underwater, and then breach the surface which no one was expecting at all! Everyone was so excited and impressed! Eventually we all got back on the boat and headed back to Barefoot having had an awesome morning!!!!

Lunch was an eclectic mix to say the least! We had fish in some sort of batter, on top of eggy bread, with some watermelon on the side. Although the meals have been ok, they have been pretty basic and a bit odd, so our theory is that they used all their food rations for the Australian couple who come back every year and we’re left with whatever’s left! It seems especially odd that the woman told us she was a chef and loved the food, as what we’ve had I certainly wouldn’t describe that way! The first lunch when the Aussies were still here was lovely, and since they left it’s all gone a bit strange! We all sat around talking, and then Jo and Stephan had to go and pack as they were leaving at 2pm. We all exchanged email addresses, and we put the underwater manta photos on their laptop for them, and they copied over some TV shows to our laptop for us to watch which was great! We went down to the beach to say goodbye to them, and for the first time in ages on this trip I was really sad to see people we’d met go as we’d got on so well! After we waved them off at the beach we sat and sunbathed and read, and Ben broke open another coconut for us to eat, and showed Casey and Michele how he’d learnt to do it from Appy! Casey and I had burnt our bums and the backs of our legs with all the snorkelling that morning, as we had ended up being out for 3 and a half hours!!! So I sunbathed on my back and kept it out of the sun! Ben spent most of the afternoon in the sea as it was such a hot day!!! Ben redressed Jay’s finger, and Jay told him when he’d done it, it was so painful he’d been kept awake all night and it was terrible. Ben said it did look better, and Jay told him lots of puss came out, but Ben was still pretty concerned about it. He re did it all and told Jay to finish the antibiotics. Jay and Olla called him Dr Ben after that!

We had fish and potatoes for dinner, which was nice, but the fish had a ton of bones in! That meant I chewed every mouthful very carefully which makes you feel fuller anyway so that was a good thing! We sat around chatting to Casey and Michele, and it turned out that Michele is a bar tender at the hotel we’re staying at in San Francisco!! What a small world! We could not believe that out of all the hotels we picked, and there were many, and all the islands to be on at the same time, we were both there then, especially when there were only 6 guests on the whole island! We are definitely going to have to meet up with them when we are in San Francisco!