Only 2 weeks left! Oh No!

See this is why I hate going anywhere for less than a month. It has taken me three weeks to grow into this place and now I don't want to go home, and of course the days have started to rush past.

What a brilliant week I've had. Firstly it hasn't rained all week, YAY! Was getting very tired of being confined to my room. There's only so many episodes of CSI you can watch before wanting to murder someone yourself! On Monday I went diving for the first time, with a company called Cross Creek. Bobby Dan was my dive buddy. We went to the north side first to a site called CJ's Drop-off. So named because it is a wall dive. It was wonderful to be diving again but that first dive was mostly taken up with me relaxing into my stride (or even fin-stroke!). The second dive was at a place called Labyrinth. I really enjoyed this one, was very relaxed, there were a lot more fish to see. It's not like the Red Sea in the number of fish seen, but then I have heard people talking about over-fishing. I don't know how much of an issue it really is. But I guess with more and more tourists coming to the island wanting to eat lovely fresh local fish there may well be more pressure being put on the reefs. The other main difference with the Red Sea is the sheer number of hard corals there are here. It does seem a little strange to see such beautiful reefs and not find them teaming with fish. In places you do see huge numbers and varieties but in others it is very sparsely (no idea if that is spelt right!) populated. The dive boats are quite small, and can get a tad over-crowded. That seems to be the norm for most of the dive shops.

Tuesday I was recovering from sun burn! Wednesday I did my first ever whale shark searching trip with the Whale Shark and Oceanic Research Centre. This place is brilliant, run by Dr Rob Davis and Bryan Becker. The boat they go out on is bigger, a hundred times less crowded and they maintain strict rules about the encounters, something that is not always observed by the dive shops. We were not lucky enough to see whale sharks that day but I had the most wonderful afternoon on the boat, searching the seas. I did spot dolphins though and we were able to swim with them. It was a pod (is that just orcas?) of 18 spinner dolphins who were living up to their names and jumping high out of the water and spinning round before re-entry. You have to get in the water really fast and by the time I got in all I saw was a pair of dolphins disappearing into the distance! But I could hear them, all their squeaks and clicks, it was fantastic. The wind had whipped up the waves though, apparently to about 7 feet according to the captain, so it was quite a roller-coaster of a ride and really hinders the search for the sharks.

The next day we heard that whale sharks had been spotted the previous day right near where we had been, but in the morning. The research boats go out in the afternoon to avoid the crush of all the dive boats. By the sound of it 7 dive boats converged on the poor fish. It has rather put me off diving with any of the shops here, although there is a shop connected with the research place who you would assume know how to behave towards the sharks so I might give them a go. I don't want my encounter with the largest fish in the world to be one where I am angry and unhappy at how humans are behaving around the animal.

I did do something worthwhile on Thursday though. I joined up with Jeff from the Cafe Mariposa and we did a major clean up of the water and sea floor around the cafe docks. It took most of the afternoon and we eventually cleaned up a bin and a half of rubbish! Mostly plastic, but also including two toy trucks, two towels (one complete with clothes pegs!) and a pair of jeans! The really great thing about it was the snorkelling there was fantastic! There is a large pile of rocks that were dumped there, these stretch out towards the sea and they are being colonized by young coral. Towards the end of the rocks on the seaward side there were literally hundreds of fish, and I saw several cleaning stations where larger fish were either swimming very slowly or hanging vertically in the water allowing smaller fish to clean wounds and parasites off them!

Honestly it was the best thing I have ever done and I felt so great afterwards. I keep going back to look at our handiwork! I am planning to snorkel there again very soon with my camera and I'll try and get some good underwater shots. It's not easy as my camera isn't as adjustable as newer models so any pictures I take will be pretty crap until I get home and can 'clean' them up, which usually involves injecting some colour and contrast into them.

Friday involved another shark searching trip. Again they had been sighted the day before (story of my life!) by dive boats. Unfortunately the wind was again whipping the waves up pretty high and we had no luck, no dolphins either, although we did stop and snorkel on a lovely reef on the way back. I still had a brilliant time and I'm all signed up for the monday trip! Keep your fingers crossed for me! I took Terrie to Daves in the evening for yet another gorgeous meal. This time my choice was chicken with a red pepper cream sauce. Drool! Followed by Agnes' Swedish apple crumble from Cafe Mariposa! Double drool!

Yesterday I finally had the courage to venture to the free beach, called Chepes Beach. I've had my ear bent so much about the issues here it had made me a tad more cautious than I probably need to be. The beach was lovely, I didn't take any money with me just to be on the safe side, but no one hassled me and no one went near my stuff whilst I was swimming. The swimming is much better than at Bando so I was actually able to get some exercise! Trying to keep up with dolphins the other day has made me realise how unfit I am!

So that has pretty much bought us up to date. My skin is 99.9% healed up, I've lost weight and I feel fantastic! I'm off to the beach again this afternoon with Terrie, and I'll keep you posted on the shark searaching.

Take care all,

lots of love and hugs, Kim the Shark Hunter (in a non-shark killing sense of course!)