So we are first at the booking in point for our 7 hours at sea, so as to swim with the Mantra Rays, where we are quizzed upon our dietary needs, ie cheese or ham sandwiches. We select cheese, un-toasted, in the belief you cannot mess that up........
On the boat and a quick snorkel around some coral about a mile and half out at sea, after yesterday's wind, to say it's choppy is a slight understatement, 3-4ft swell at times due also to incoming tide. We manage it but get no photos or video as go pro says 'No SD card' which has what one can only describe as a detrimental effect on my mood as all the time I'm thinking, you Rodney, how could you forget that, even though at the same time I'm answering myself saying, I know I put it in the camera. That snorkel becomes a blur to Rodney and me......
Out of the water on the boat and check the camera, the card is in it! Take it out put it in and it works, now my mood changes from elation to rage back to elation thinking it will be okay for Mantra Rays.......
Mantra Rays are slow graceful, gentle swimmers so crew of boat full of expectations for a successful swim. Now obviously Mantra Rays don't know it Xmas but they do know how to party, it appears as only we could pick a day when a female Ray is on heat and has 6 male rays chasing her, this changes things in relation to her behaviour, no longer is she slow and graceful at the surface, she is not in the mood and is motoring along almost as fast as the boat and diving deep to try and avoid her so called suitors......
So what happens we dive in three times in groups, whilst the boat moves forward and drops off another group then returns to pick up the first group who missed the rays but have had to tread water for 10minutes in the previously mentioned swell. One of us does not like this after bobbing about for this amount of time holding on to the other one of us and the safety swimmer and is so glad when eventually out of the water and on a bobbing boat, she calls it a day!
The other one perseveres this leap frog game twice more seeing nothing and is by now freezing, (what a wimp, a sensible wimp but wimp all the same) I only had a bowl of porridge to fuel and keep me going, he says........
So the rays are eventually seen, she has lost Four of them but two are still in for the long swim..... Only it's slightly deeper than normal so all we get to see is basically shadowy figures.....
Not to worry let's have lunch, I get mine first, a processed cheese slice in between two slices of I toasted white bread....... I am of the opinion that somewhere in the Indian Ocean are several satisfied little fish who may have thought that processed cheese sandwiches are a treat......
The co-participant of this blog was by now feeling slightly queasy, so another round of sandwiches floated away from the rear of the boat........
In for another snorkel with a camera that is working, it's an okay dive site but I am shivering so much, I have to get out early. When we watched the short video back later we delete it because of the camera shake being so bad........
Final dive and it's the best, I'm in a wet suit, camera working and it's a stunning dive site, no wonder they kept it to last, we see a shark cleaning station, this is where the Sharks come to be cleaned of parasites by fish in the knowledge that the Sharks will behave themselves whilst at this site. Possibly ten sharks some being 10 feet long are swimming 15ft below me, all of it recorded on video, hooray....... Then we see Turtles, one being a baby all recorded on video hooray. Out we get elated and biscuits arrive, they are put down behind us, now I'm not sure where I learnt this bad habit but my hand flew over them and was like a JCB excavator......
An hour later we are ashore purchasing the DVD of the trip, someone, no names but SHE believed my camera may still not work so wanted it, what she wants she gets, so as she said, "I'm going to buy this with your money".......
So we have had some ups and some downs but get back to the van and decide on a sleep for one whilst the other showers. I get back and say stay there it's going to take ages to download 40 minutes of video to the iPad. Connect up and an error message is displayed, 'insufficient memory to import video' at this point obviously being the restrained calm person I am, I just managed to stop throwing the iPad across the campsite....... As such someone else failed to get anymore rest whilst advising me, my plan to drive straight to Perth airport would involve driving at night and therefore unsafe and that tomorrow I would feel totally different about things, have a glass of wine instead, she said, besides what else can go wrong........
Yesterday we decided on skipping the mince we were going to have and just have Xmas pud with custard. Which whilst not being the typical Xmas Dinner, we enjoyed, hence being able to go to sleep so quickly and early. Now having only consumed porridge and biscuits all day, we decide, tonight Mathew, we are going to have mince. The little lady chef gets on in the 4ft kitchen we have whilst I'm playing with DVD and Tv. Dinner is served......... I said nothing, whilst the Chef was, shall we say rather critical of it and placed it in another receptacle that would not be travelling any further with us....... I ate mine, hunger being the driving force but shall we say, it was a fitting meal for the end of a Cr*p day...... Time for a glass of Red.!
Happy Boxing Day, at least we did not have to go to the sales.........
PS: Seeing as the reason for my negative pre wine mood has to do with cameras, videos and photographs, the photos below are from the DVD to give you some idea of what we actually saw but unable to produce our own record of the events.
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