Elephants, Tigers, and Manta Rays! Part 2

Well we are back from diving the Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea 200 miles off the west coast of Thailand.  The islands consist of 9 islands that are part of a National Park that has been protected for over 30 years.  The Islands are incredible, unlike any other we've ever seen.  Giant boulders dotting pristine beaches where turtles lay thousands of eggs every year:)  I surmise that the boulders were thrust up through the magma a few thousand years ago.  Then sand, water and wind did their job making them smooth and beautiful just for us to take these nice pics....

The reason we went through all the trouble to get out to these remote islands was to dive with Manta Rays.  This is one of the the best places in the world to see them.  For divers there is the holy trinity: Whale Sharks, Manta Rays, or a "real shark" (Great White, Tiger, or Mako). Hopefully we would scratch #2 and maybe #3 off the list.  The first dive was off an island called Koh Ban.  Have mercy! The water was warm and beautiful at first; but as we started our decent I felt the current slap me in the face!  As we were struggling to grip the mooring line, waiting for other divers to go down, we were getting thrashed against the side of the boat!  The current was so strong that we were flung to the other side of the boat and got thrashed against the other side for good measure.  After finally getting down to about 60 feet we let go of the line and began kicking for dear life!  There were billions of plankton and tiny white creatures, single celled jelly fish stinging, and thermaclimbs (cold water coming up from the depths) mixing together to create this surreal vision of life that is probably the closest way to get an LSD trip without taking it!  The fish were everywhere!  More schooling fish than anywhere we've ever dove, even more than the Great Barrier Reef!  The colors were absolutely brilliant.  Trigger fish, giant snapper, sea turtles, moray eels, file fish, barracuda, grouper, parrot fish, sea snakes were all partaking in the feast. But the guest of honor never showed for lunch! We didn't last too long in that current, Carmen ran out of air at 25 minutes (half usual time) cause I later learned she sucked her air dry after she was stung in the face by a killer single celled jellyfish:)! No one in the group lasted long and the whole boat was huffing and puffing like chain smokers at the top of Mt. Everest!  Divergence: What is it with 300 lb Europeans in Speedos?  Damn that can ruin a perfectly good afternoon on a boat!

We did three more dives which were much easier than the first. The reefs got even more brilliant, the day even more sunny, and the fish more abundant.  The numbers were spectacular!  And they came so close!  A turtle almost ran right into me!  He was looking the other way and when he turned around we were eye to eye!  He jumped and changed direction as quick as he could..  The group got a kick out of that one:)  No really big fish (except one very fat 6 foot barracuda with a shrimp in its mouth cleaning its teeth), and disappointingly no Manta Rays nor Whalesharks.  It goes that way sometimes;(  Oh well, we had two great days of diving in one of the remote places of the world.  Met some great people who regaled us with their travel stories and even better dive stories.  Like the guy who says oceanic whitetip sharks in the Indian Ocean bumped him twice while he was trying to get a picture of him! Wait a minute... where's my knife?  Shout out to Neal and Giles.  Great times:)