After saying our good byes to Chris and Lones we left early in the morning for Semporna (south east Sabah), catching a stunning birds eye view of Mount Kinabalu from the aeroplane. By 10.30am we had arrived, via plane, minibus and speedboat, to our diving destination of Sipadan Kapalai, greeted to a delicious breakfast. And by noon we were in the water doing our orientation dive around the resort’s own dive site – Mandarin Village – which consisted of little wooden houses inhabited by lots of sleeping fish, including clown frog fish (a fish that has fins like claws to grip the coral) and lion fish.
We were staying at Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort which consisted of 60 beautifully crafted wooden chalets on stilts in the azure sea. It is on Kapalai Island which is a sand bank in the middle of the Celebes Sea, some 45 minutes from the mainland and part of the Tun Sakaran Marine Park, which includes Sipadan Island, one of the top ten dive sites in the world. In our rooms all we could hear was the lapping of the sea against the stilts and all we could was the deep blue – except for turtles and rays which sometimes came to play during low tide. We were served 3 delicious meals a day and there were snacks on tap so that we were never hungry after 3 or 4 dives a day.
The diving was varied – sometimes reef and sometimes muck - as we went to different dive sites each time. If you haven’t tried scuba diving it is a very special experience. The colour of the corals, and plant life are too rich to describe, the variety of micro life is fascinating with nudibranch, christmas tree worms (they live in coral and spring to life when you play with them), pipe fish, prawns, speckled rays and much more.
On a bigger scale in Sipadan itself, which comprised the most magnificent wall and cave dives, we were treated to the sight of many giant turtles, some snoozing in rock crevices and a group of 5 having a sleep over. We were overwhelmed by the sight of hundreds of steel coloured Jack Fish all about 2 feet in length all facing the same way and as a group they resembled blank faced commuters awaiting a train - after the electric colours it was a strange feeling of nihilism.
Unicorn fish pointed the way to the many juvenile white and black tipped sharks and a 500 fish shoal of barracuda while clown fish (Nemo) played in the anemones and moray eels guarded their dark kingdoms jealously. Drift diving is the best....a gentle current gently carries you along the face of the coral wall, no effort required just relax and look at the passing parade of marine life. Luckily, the dive sites form part of a marine park and the number of dives is strictly controlled. It was some of the best diving we had done and maybe some of the best we will ever do.
Our fellow divers were mainly Japanese, weighed down with huge underwater cameras and all the necessary lighting. The latter was great as they lit up the smallest creatures for us in their bid to get the best shot.
We celebrated New Year and were entertained by the staff to hilarious dancing and singing, Nikki came second in a solo “statue” dance competition and I failed to win the beer drinking race...you had to use a straw! We were both sad to leave SKDR on the second day of 2010 and still wish we had stayed an extra couple of days, promising each other that we will be back soon.
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