Sun 15th - Wed 18th June (Week 39)

Sun 15th - Spent the day wandering around Labuan Bajo, checking out restaurants, and enquiring at 5 dive shops about prices and dive locations. Booked 2 days diving with Flores Dive Centre as it is meant to be excellent for diving here, and not too many other options for land-based day trips. Its a really small town, so kept bumping into everyone from our 3-day cruise in various shops. Met up with Tanja from the cruise for sunset drinks with fantastic views over the harbour, bay and islands, and saw what looked like a smoking volcano on the horizon, right next to the setting sun.

Mon 16th - Breakfast at 6:30 and headed to Flores Dive Centre for 7:15am. Set off on the dive boat to North Komodo Island which took 2.5hrs to get to, so chilled out on the sun deck and had the dive briefing about how crazy the currents are here ! Did our first dive at Castle Rock, and were amazed at the lack of current - normally as soon as you jump into the water, you have to descend as quickly as possible before you miss the dive site completely, but there were hardly any currents, so it was a pleasant dive. Saw white tipped reef sharks, giant Trevallys (huge !), giant Napoleon Wrasse, giant Sweetlips etc. Everything seems to be super-sized here as there are strick fishing regulations, so the fish actually get a chance to grow to their full size ! Second dive was at Crystal Rock, also minimal current and saw similar fish to the first dive, as well as a large eagle ray. Huge schools of fish everywhere, and happy to just swim right past your face ! Final dive was at Tatawa Besar which was one long wall of beautiful corals, but really strong current here, so we just got swept along for 40mins, trying occasionally to stop and look at something, but mostly just got carried away with the current ! Saw 3 turtles sheltering in the coral, and a lovely spotted eagle ray and huge batfish. Overall an excellent days diving with great visibility, and some amazing amounts and sizes of fish, but didn't enjoy the strong currents of the 3rd dive. Very long day, back at 6pm, quick dinner, and early night ready for another full day tomorrow.

Tues 17th - WHHHOOOOOOOO. MANTA DAY !!!!!! Headed back out with Flores Dive Centre at 7:30 to Sebayor Kecil for our first dive. Nice, gentle, easy dive with no current, and not too much to see. Then headed over to Makazar Reef/Manta point and fairly quickly saw 2 mantas swim around in the distance and thought that was going to be it. But then saw a group of about 20 divers all lying on the floor watching some rocks, and when we got there, there was a gigantic manta - must have had a 5m wing span, just floating around in circles getting cleaned by the cleaner fish ! Just breath-taking and incredible. We got so close, the edge of a wing went right over Brandons head !! Sat there watching it for about 15mins, then started to head back towards boat. Saw a 4th manta coming towards us, so stopped to watch him, when a 5th came in ! All the other divers followed the 4th one, and we stuck with the 5th, and it was just the 4 of us watching this amazing manta circle around and around getting cleaned. We were so close for a good 15mins, and were very naughty and ignored our instructors' banging for us to ascend, and sat there watching it until we'd been down for 69mins !! Got a telling off back on board, but we were with a very experienced diver so felt safe and it was just too good to leave ! Well - after 58 dives, we've finally seen them, and wow are they unbelievable. Not sure anything can top that now ! 3rd and final dive was at Batu Bolong, a site on a deep wall of coral behind a rock pinnacle, with insane currents either side. The current came flying at the rock, split either side and roared past, meeting other currents and causing swirls and whirlpools ! Never seen anything like it ! Bit daunting diving in that, but we stuck in the sheltered area behind the rock, and zigzagged back and forth looking at the amazing coral. Saw Giant Napoleon Wrasse, Giant Sweetlips, 3 turtles, white tipped reef shark and lots more. Such incredible, world-class diving here - think we've been far too spoilt and everything else is going to pale in comparison !

Wed 18th - Checked out and caught a bemo to the brand new 2-month old airport at 9:30am. Very quick and efficient, but did have to pay excess baggage for our 19kg bags ! Waited for our 11:25 Trans Nusa flight, but at 11am, had an announcement it was delayed until 12:30. That came and went, then it was going to be 2:50pm. That also came and went, and meanwhile other flights had arrived and departed. We finally found out at 4pm that they were cancelling the flight, as it had never even left Bali ! What a waste of a day ! But they shuttled us to a beautiful 4-star hotel with a pool, beach and great sunset view over the ocean. Could be worse ! Got a great room, and I went down, had a beer in the pool watching sunset, and chatting to our fellow passengers. First problem flight out of 37 flights on our trip, so not too bad really, and luckily no connecting flight to catch or anything !