Sunday 26 October – diving and snorkelling

Claudette had arranged for two dives with the Homestay she is near, all run by locals. The boat was great and the equipment was fine, but a little worryingly they never checked diving certificates and were rather relaxed. There were two young Korean ladies on board and a man from Singapore, with 6 staff on the boat, the first dive was in the middle of the sea between the islands with a big current. They had little spiky sticks to dig into the coral to hold on. It sounded like they saw some big fish. The two Korean ladies were fascinating, one owned a DIY shop and the other was an engineer, they dive as a hobby and belong to a research group that organises dives every month to take samples of the sea around Korea and make notes on the fish life. After the dive we went to a little island where we had tea and coffee for the required break between the dives. On the second dive Alex and I went snorkelling, they just dropped us off giving us no indication of where to go, but they needn’t have as the current just took us. Luckily I had my big orange inflatable as there were so many boats about. It was great coral and fish, never had to move my legs or arms as we glided swiftly by. We went through really hot patches that are almost unbearable and the coral really deteriorates there. Luckily we were just drifting towards the little island where we had tea, so it was not too worrying that the boat just sped off and abandoned us. After half an hour they came and found us and about 10 minutes later we got out. It was a much better snorkel at the beginning, the last section was pretty dead. Yesterday’s snorkel in front of the boat was better. They had a good dive. When we got dropped off at PolePole, they all wanted to come on board to see the boat, we had the whole crew on board, and then they all wanted photos with us too, which was very funny. They all thought they were going to go on board Profasea but Claudette would not let them, she said it was too many for her little boat.These Homestays are incredibly cheap, it is real backpacker territory.

We were all pretty tired in the afternoon, we relaxed on the boat. We got a message to say our buoy was booked for tomorrow so we will have to move on. We headed to Claudette’s homestay and had supper there with her, she declined initially but when she realised we wouldn’t see her again for a while she joined us. The meal was unbelievably cheap, it was a pretty tasty fish dish buffet style. We saw the Korean ladies and the Singaporean joined us at our table.