Day 696 - Underwater heaven

Island life is suiting us just fine, and again we awoke after 9am this morning, leaving only a few hours until Adam and Rita's dive this afternoon (and Liv's snorkel). We spent the morning lazing around in quiet anticipation of the fun to come.

At midday we all got kitted up and jumped on our first longtail boat, which took us through a break in the coral reef to the main scuba launch. Our boat wasted no time in heading out to Nangyuan Island - actually 3 small islands off the tip of Ko Tao that are connected by a sandy beach. This is basically the kind of picture you see in a travel agent's window to entice you to away from wintry Wellington and to tropical Thailand!
We all jumped in the waters around Twin Rocks for a snorkel - though Liv was more than a little freaked out by the thousands of what we thought were jellyfish (they actually turned out to be totally harmless fish eggs!), and it took her a long time to relax and enjoy the amazing underwater landscape. With Liv swimming cautiously on the surface, Adam dove deeper and found a playground of caves that required breath holding of no more than 30 seconds between air pockets. This produced hidden crevices jammed packed of colourful critters that you could basically get face to face with.
At White Rock, the next dive spot, Adam and Rita geared up and jumped overboard to explore the deep blue below. During their almost hour long dive, Liv stayed on the surface, jumping in for short swims and enjoying following schools of bright yellow and orange fish as they fluttered through the water.

Down below the divers swam around rocky pinnacles, losing themselves amongst schools of barracuda, avoiding the aggressive trigger fish, and zig-zagging their way between coral fans, colourful clams, and sea anemones hiding clown fish.

The array of colour marine life (including angel fish, butter fish, blue spotted stingray and many many more) was almost too much to take in, but when Adam spotted the deadly black and white sea snake slipping its way through the waters it was time for an underwater dance!!

The divers reluctantly surfaced and all too soon we were back on dry land. We went out in search of a meal, since in our excitement we'd hardly eaten, and finished the night up with a drink on the beach watching the fire dancers.

Adlibing fish.