I left at 7.20 on the dive boat for another full and final day of diving. The first dive site was Sebaraya Kecil; today my guide was a lovely Indonesian instructor named Darmin and I had an American couple, along with a French lady in my group.On the first dive we saw so much great stuff as always, including an orangutang crab, unicorn fish, a baby lobster, lion fish, scorpion fish and an unbelievably huge moray eel out of the coral completely! There were loads of schools of fish today and Darmin kept making hand gestures causing them to all turn and dive at once which was super cool!
The second dive, the main reason I wanted to stay here longer, was Manta Point and was my first proper drift dive. Words cannot even begin to explain how incredible this dive was. On a drift dive you have very strong current, so usually the dive group will enter the water together and go down immediately to the bottom, and then let the current just take you! Within a minute of going down we saw our first manta and after everyone had found a sturdy rock to hold on to, we literally lay on the sea floor and watched him at the "cleaning station" for around 25 minutes. The cleaning station is the term divers give to the area in which the manta arrive to be cleaned - where smaller fish eat the dirt, parasites and anything else off the manta ray. Manta rays are beautiful, majestic and graceful and I could have stayed down there watching it forever. They are so large, the one we saw was maybe 5 metres wide, and look like they are flying through the ocean! He did a flip for us and went completely over my head really close to me before gliding away; by far one of the most indescribably magical things I have ever witnessed.
We drifted on to see so many more mantas on the dive, including one pregnant female!!! Such beautiful creatures; I'm so grateful I got to stay to do this particular dive site.
The third dive, my last dive (for now) in Komodo National Park, was at Batu Balong which is a dive site I had done a few days previously where I gained my fish identification skill - as there is such an abundance of sea life at this site! I saw tons of incredible fish and quite a few white tip reef sharks, making the fish all scurry around frantically which was awesome to watch. I saw the biggest turtle ever just chilling on some coral, loads of lion fish and really large fish - I love it so much, despite the fact that the water on this dive was freezing! Back on the boat we saw gorgeous turtles peeking their heads into the sun on the surface and then saw 5 manta rays swimming beside the boat down below - that's how clear the water is here!
I slept on the sun deck for the entire boat ride back; it's so pretty sailing around the national park and I'm really going to miss it here. I can definitely see the appeal in this lifestyle. Liris and I went for dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant, and after that I sat on the balcony with people from the dive shop while some really sweet Indonesian guys played the guitar and sang along - they're always so happy it's impossible not to smile.