Promised a lie in until 6.30am. However no one told the wake up call phoning person who called at 6am. And I was the only room woken up. Oh well. It was a lovely view of beautiful islands.

First dive – a sloping reef at sun island. The south west corner of South Ari Atoll. The visibility was lovely – around 40m. And so blue.

Lots of white tips. A white tail ray. And no whalesharks.

So back up onto the dhoni and we proceesed to sail up and down the white sand bar. On the look out. And then one was spotted. A WHALESHARK!! Armed with fins and a mask, we all jumped in. I couldn’t see it to start with. Then wondered why. It was huge. A dark shadow moving along. And moving so fast! It was impossible to keep up. It barely looked like it was moving, yet we were all left in its wake. We spent ages with it. Massive. So cool. Waited a long time to see one of these!!

And then a short while later, a second one! Yay!

By the time we got back to the boat it was already 10.30am. Time for breakfast!

Very happy.

The second dive was on another wreck – this time complete with 2 stone fish and a leaf scorpion fish. Apparently they are rather rare around here and subsequently are a massive event. These are the sorts of things I like, and didn’t realise they were so uncommon here. In Malaysia, they are everywhere and are completely normal.

And lunch. Too much food.

Then the next dive – a submerged pinnacle. Looked totally like a dive site in Borneo (lobster wall). Except nothing on the wall. A few grey reefs went past, which was nice.

And something different for the evening – off to an island! A small uninhibited island. We were taken over in the small tender and the men had been busy carving a whaleshark and a manta out of the sand. So cute!!! The island was small, palm trees and a nice sunset. We had a barbecue, as usual the food was amazing and I ate too much. This was the first time we had been on land since Saturday. I felt quite weird. Land sickness. I was still rocking back and forwards.