Diving Siamil Day 3 (Mar. 30, 2015)

Mar. 30, 2015

Today was another fantastic day. I think I am getting used to the location and so many daily dives. The past couple of days, I came up with a bit of a headache, that subsided within an hour or so, but today I didn't have any headaches. I think it was the pressure and depths, and perhaps that I had flown, been around sick Yulia, and hadn’t slept well for a couple of days while traveling. In any case, today I felt great, and enjoyed all three dives, without any headaches or other issues, body wise. Yeah!

Breakfast was scrambled eggs, weiners, noodles, potato wedges, toast of two kinds, and the wonderful fresh fruit. I said watermelon and guava, but I actually meant papaya. It is the sweetest, most tender papaya I have ever tasted, and ate that, with a few scrambled eggs. It was the perfect start to the day, and I didn’t feel full for diving. The past couple of days, I’ve overdone it, so today I decided to go a little lighter and felt a lot better. 

The dives today were far enough away, that we didn’t come back for any of the intervals. We went to Siamil Island, which is a real paradise. When I load the photos, you will see how magical and perfect this island is. Not many people live there except military people, so it is super quiet and untouched. 

• pic of Siamel Island beach

Our first dive site was called Monkey Pocket, and is a deep dive, down to 29 meters, with lots to see. The visibility wasn’t too good today, but it didn’t seem to matter, because we saw a lot anyway. Just after we descended, our guide, Kai, who is a local and fantastic at finding things, pointed out a two meter Marbled Ray, which I’d never seen before. It was lovely and swam around a couple of times so we could see it, then took off. It was mottled brown and black, just like a Cat’s Eye Marble, and was beautiful. We also saw a Frog Fish, a Crocodile Fish, and a small Cow Fish….(hmmm, seems like the animal fish day), an Orangutan Crab, and a Barramundy Cod, which I’d never seen before. So it was a good dive even though the vis was only about 8 meters. We stayed down for 52 minutes, as when you are deep, you cannot remain down as long for safety reasons.

Then  we went back to the beach at Siamil Island, got off the boat and had tea and cake on the beach. This looked truly like a paradise, deserted island from a magazine. Not a bad place to do your surface interval. Once our hour was done, we got back onto the boat to go for our second dive. This was at a site called Meditation Wall, and it was exactly that. A long, sloping wall covered in marine life, coral and beautiful things. It is quite steep with big jutting rocks and overhangs here and there along the wall. There is so much life on this long wall, that you get carried away, just looking at everything. I think they named it perfectly. This dive was 61 minutes to a depth of only 21 meters. The visibility was really poor, at 5 meters, but it didn’t matter, as you were close to the wall and could see things well. You just had to keep your eyes on the Dive Master and your buddy, because if they ventured away, you couldn’t see them quickly. 

This site gifted me with my first sighting of a Flamboyant Cuttlefish, which I had never seen before and really wanted to. This is an animal that looks like your regular Cuttlefish, but when it changes colour, it becomes fluorescent pinks, purples and greens, and looks like a psychedelic light. It is incredibly cool and I was so happy to have seen it. One guy was filming it, professionally and had a fancy camera with a bright light, so I found a spot just beside him, but out of the way, and watched for a long time. It was fantastic.

I looked under a rock and saw a Blue Spotted Ray, lying on top of a Pufferfish, which was the most curious couple I could think of. Anyway, they seemed to be cool together so it was nice to watch. There were also Lionfish and many different coloured Reef Fish to see. A stunning dive.

After this, we went back to the island for lunch. It was again, a most pleasant place to eat, and chill out for our surface interval and food. We had cashew chicken, with glass noodles, and a mixture of coconut broccoli and cauliflower mixed together. It was delicious. There was also the fresh fruit, and the rest of the homemade cake to eat. Again, I went light, so I felt much better. Maybe the headaches were related to being too full. Who knows.

- pics of lunch, group and the beach at Siamil while we did surface interval

After that, we went to our last site, which was called Smuggler’s Cove. The dive lasted for 61 minutes and was a Muck Dive. I like these kind of dives, because you don’t go very deep, we didn’t go deeper than 12 meters, and you are located on a sandy, weedy bottom where there is sometimes a lot of garbage, but along with this garbage, there are many many things to see. We saw Peacock Manta Shrimp which is super colourful, Sea Moth, Painted Frog Fish, Reef Scorpion Fish, three types of Lion fish, a Spotfin, a Zebra, and a Dwarf. There was a Banded Sea Snake, Pharaoh Cuttlefish, Cow Fish, Blackfin Snake Eel, Stick Pipefish and many more colourful reef fish. It was a haven for life and I enjoyed it very much. 

We returned around 4 pm, and I showered, had a drink waited for dinner. Dinner was Pineapple Chicken, stir fried cabbage, bok choi, rice and noodles. Fresh fruit including pineapple today, was the dessert. After dinner, I got Adam, that friend I dived with, to copy me his 6 days worth of diving photos here, including the dives I did with him. It was really nice of him to do so, and now I have all the photos I could ever want, from Mabul and Sipidan.

Later, we all went down to the beach where there was a fire, music and everyone just chilling. There were a lot of locals with kids there too, which was really fun. I talked to a nice retired (39 yr old) guy from Australia who was in the Military and made many investments. He was nice and super interesting.

Then I headed for my bed, happy and nicely tired from my day.