Absolutely unforgettable 5-days! Signed up for my PADI Open Water Certification so 2-days were spent in the classroom and performed confined water skills in the pool! The weather was lovely and got familiarised with all the equipment- Obescities, BCD, Regulator, weight belts, tanks etc which helped build confidence!

Then after an 7am morning pick up, it was time to hit the reef so picked up our equipment from the ProDive shop and headed out on the 3hour journey to the reef dive sites! The first 4 dives were supervised and required numerous skills up to 18m under the surface! The second I planted my face through the surface was unforgettable... more fish and colour than you could ever imagine literally inches from your face!

To the juicy stuff... after our first four dives we were fully certified and celebrated with a night dive! So at prime feeding time for the sharks which were out in force we set up... walking down to the entry platform, shark fins were literally thrashing about beyond the rescue boat! Nevertheless, in we jumped, buddied up with Jen (Canadian from Ottowa) clutching my torch and followed Yuki our Japanese instructor down. The dive was fairly standard until the final 10mins when we spotted a rare lionfish, Brian the resident 7ft loggerhead turtle hiding under a ledge and eventually had 2 hungry white tip reef sharks turn sharply towards us and swim right by as my respiratory rate hit an all time high, sucking on my regulator like a baby on a dummy!

Food was unbelievable, crew members a great laugh, weather was faultless and coming face to face with green/ loggerhead turtles, blue spotted sting rays, parrotfish, angelfish, butterflyfish, sweetlips, cuttlefish, nudibranches etc made up for the lack of Minke Whale sightings!