The alarm went off before 7. A shower and bite to eat, and then we went out the front to wait for our pickup from “Divers Den”. There were a couple of people already in the bus, and we had to pick up another couple before going to the marina, where we boarded our boat. It took us about 90 minutes to get out to the reef.
On the way to the dive spot I was given a briefing. Not really a refresher though – I had luckily had Dan come round during the week to refresh my memory on diving, or I would have been much more concerned. Eventually we were at the site and in the water we went. When we were ready to descent I wasn’t moving anywhere! So the dive master put an extra 1.5 kg on me, which did the trick luckily. The breathing and moving in a scuba suit all came back to me quickly and the 50 minute dive went without further incident. Meanwhile Kaoru was snorkelling.
After lunch I did another dive (and Kaoru did another snorkel). We had some fruit, and then the boat took us to a larger boat, which was our “liveaboard” for the night. The 6 of us who arrived together all changed to that boat (and we later found out a few people also changed from the liveaboard boat to the one we did our first dives off), and then the first boat did the 90 minute trip back to shore. We, on the other hand, had a nice “welcome aboard” cheesecake and safety briefing, and moved to another dive site. We found our room and relaxed for half an hour or so.
After a pre-dive briefing we were back in the water for our 3rd dive of the day (again, Kaoru snorkelled, which was great!) My confidence was growing with the number and frequency of dives. Once out of the water we had some time to relax before dinner was served. Dinner was a massive meal of a curry, which was nice; and then it was time for our night time encounter…
Looking off the back of the boat, there were a number of sharks and other large fish hanging around – as they were being fed off the back of the boat. Kaoru did “Sharks in the Dark” – with just a snorkel and mask, she held on to the rear cage of the boat and was lowered into the water to be up close and personal with the sharks. She thoroughly enjoyed this, especially the part where a shark bit the go-pro stick of the person who was next to her! Meanwhile I did my first night dive. Wow! The fish were much bigger, and the whole experience was so much different to a day dive. It was very enjoyable.
After our dive (4th for the day) we had some dessert, and then a number of us played Uno (there were a few people who were already on the boat and had played on previous nights – they were doing 5 days of this!). A couple of beers and I was knackered so we went to bed.