KOTA KINABALU, MALAYSIAN BORNEO
Our last day of diving at Sipadan, and of course the weather finally starts to clear up! I shouldn't complain, though, because it really was great to finally see the sun. It really makes things look much brighter above and below the surface, and apparently it also makes all the sea turtles come out of hiding! We saw a huge number of them today, both hawksbill turtles and green turtles, which made Chris happy, since he loves to take pictures of them.
At Sipadan, first we dived at "South Point," where I finally got to see a leopard shark. Very cool, although I didn't get to see it for long, as it immediately passed right by us and swam off into the blue. We also saw lots of reef sharks, some of which were resting on the bottom, which was interesting to see. Mando also pointed out some pink and white leaf scorpionfish, and at the end of the dive, we came across a huge school of hundreds of jacks endlessly circling a big coral head, with some reef sharks and absolutely massive giant trevally mixed in. A real fish stew...
Our last dive was back at the Seaventures "house reef," where Mando had promised to show me some ribbon eels. Sure enough, there was a blue one and a black one under the rig, sticking out of holes in the coral. One more trip to see the pygmy seahorse again, then it was back upstairs to get our stuff, say goodbye, and head back to Semporna.
We had planned to stay there overnight before heading back to Kota Kinabalu, but we had heard that the overnight bus was more comfortable, and somehow the idea of leaving Semporna early appealed to us, so that's what we did. The bus left at 7:30pm, and we arrived in KK at around 5:30am. It would have been fine, but the A/C on the bus was so cold that we almost froze to death! And all I had on were shorts and a T-shirt--Chris at least had a towel he could use as a makeshift blanket. But seriously, you could have stored ice cream in that thing.
Our last day of diving at Sipadan, and of course the weather finally starts to clear up! I shouldn't complain, though, because it really was great to finally see the sun. It really makes things look much brighter above and below the surface, and apparently it also makes all the sea turtles come out of hiding! We saw a huge number of them today, both hawksbill turtles and green turtles, which made Chris happy, since he loves to take pictures of them.
At Sipadan, first we dived at "South Point," where I finally got to see a leopard shark. Very cool, although I didn't get to see it for long, as it immediately passed right by us and swam off into the blue. We also saw lots of reef sharks, some of which were resting on the bottom, which was interesting to see. Mando also pointed out some pink and white leaf scorpionfish, and at the end of the dive, we came across a huge school of hundreds of jacks endlessly circling a big coral head, with some reef sharks and absolutely massive giant trevally mixed in. A real fish stew...
Our last dive was back at the Seaventures "house reef," where Mando had promised to show me some ribbon eels. Sure enough, there was a blue one and a black one under the rig, sticking out of holes in the coral. One more trip to see the pygmy seahorse again, then it was back upstairs to get our stuff, say goodbye, and head back to Semporna.
We had planned to stay there overnight before heading back to Kota Kinabalu, but we had heard that the overnight bus was more comfortable, and somehow the idea of leaving Semporna early appealed to us, so that's what we did. The bus left at 7:30pm, and we arrived in KK at around 5:30am. It would have been fine, but the A/C on the bus was so cold that we almost froze to death! And all I had on were shorts and a T-shirt--Chris at least had a towel he could use as a makeshift blanket. But seriously, you could have stored ice cream in that thing.
posted by John Kuge at 11:31 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home