Not a great nights sleep.  Many Europeans believe air conditioning will give one a cold so we slept with only the central fan on.  Needless to say it was a warm and stuffy night.  I was up before my wake up knock, having a coffee and enjoying the morning view.  Loads of other liveaboard diveboats had anchored around us so it was fun to pick out the boats I recognized from my online dive trip company’s website.

At 6:30am we were divided into 3 groups for our dive briefing, based on language rather than ability.  2 French groups and one English.  There’s always briefing before each dive to go over what to expect on the dive, the conditions, how long we’ll dive for and how deep, etc.  The first dive is always an easy one as it’s an opportunity for people who haven’t dove for a while to become reacquainted with the necessary skills, for people to check their gear is working properly or for people like me who rented gear, to familiarize themselves with the setup.

The dive site wasn’t spectacular as it’s so close to the “city” but there was a nice variety of fish and we saw 2 rays and one white tip shark.

A buffet breakfast awaited our return.  Not grand – dollar pancakes, mystery meat hotdogs, toast, eggs, and sliced fruit but definitely welcome.  As I understand, liveaboards are all: “Dive”, “Eat” and “Repeat”.

The Theia picked up anchor after breakfast for our 4 hour voyage to our next dive site in the Ari Atoll.  Time to try out the above mantra! It was a bit of a rocky ride, it was obvious the boat does not have stabilizers, so a perfect excuse for a nap.

our dhoni passing a resort

Dive Briefing #2 was at 1 pm, followed by a 5 minute trip in the dhoni to the dive site.  There was a fair amount of current at this site and I struggled a bit in the beginning with my cheapo fins not giving me enough propulsion. Luckily we got out of the worst of it and headed down in the lee of the coral head.  It was still strong enough that you couldn’t stop kicking or you’d start to go backwards! Many divers had a Reef Hook – a metal stick with a curved end they’d snag a rock with to hold them in place.  As I didn’t have one I just held on to the divemasters’ tank, fluttering like a flag in the wind.

This was a much better dive as there were clouds of little fish, good corals, a school of 7-8 sharks, a turtle feeding on the underside of a overhang, a couple of moray eels poking their heads out of their holes, and a baby lobster scampering across the bottom.  As we neared the end of the coral head and faced into even stronger current, the DM motioned for us to turn around and we drifted backwards till it was time to surface.

Back to the boat and a quick rinse before eating lunch at 3pm!  It’s going to be a long day at this rate!  The afternoon plan is to go to another site, hang out for the afternoon sunbathing, kayaking, or whatever and at 6:30p turn on the underwater flood lights to see if some Manta Rays will be attracted and if so, we’d go on a night dive with them!

At 6:30p it was fully dark so on went the lights and almost immediately you could see the plankton gathering under the false “sun”.  Schools of fish soon followed and after 20 minutes or so 2 manta rays showed up!  Incredible graceful creatures, they would swoop up towards the flood light, then do a back flip right as they reached the surface, mouths open wide to catch as much plankton as possible, to arc back and circle around again.  3 revolutions seemed to be the magic number of turns they’d do before swimming off somewhere.  After a 1/2 hour or so and 3 appearances of the mantas, the divers suited up for a night dive to go sit on the bottom under the boat to watch them.  I’m not big on night diving as I get chilled easily in the water when I’m not moving so I passed on the dive.  Which ended up being a great decision as I had a front row view on the stern to watch the mantas feed!

The divers returned cold & hungry about 9:00p, so it was a very late dinner. Maybe not unusual for all these Europeans but I was starving and sleepy! I ate, then hit the sack right away. We have a generous (not) 6:30a wakeup knock tomorrow!