Whale Sharks and Manta Rays

January 5 - 6

Doing nothing is not Nando's forte.  When I first suggested that we spend 6 days in the Maldives he asked what we were going to do for 6 days.  The look on his face when I said, "nothing" told me that if I had any hope of staying in my over water paradise for any significant period of time, I better find some things to do and fast.

The first few days have been pretty lazy.  Just some snorkeling, sun bathing, a little diving, eating delicious food and quaffing yummy wine.  Today was activity day though.  We went out on a boat this morning and spent a good hour and a half just soaking up the sun before getting to the area where the whale sharks are supposed to hang out.  We were in luck!  We got to see 3 of them total.

The best part was definitely the fact that the water was so shallow, so we were able to follow them for a long time before we couldn't see them anymore.  On our last swim (we did a total of 4) we spent around half an hour swimming alongside one that was well over 30 feet long.  Unlike my whale shark viewing in the Philippines a few years ago, the water was so clear that we could see the entire thing - from wide open mouth to the tip of it's tail - at the same time.  They are much more impressive when you can see them in all their glory.

Not so fantastic, however, were the throngs of people jumping in from 10 different boats, all trying to chase the poor thing.  After being smacked in the face, pushed out of the way and just generally being jostled around for 10 minutes, we headed back to the boat knowing that we had already gotten the best view we were going to get.

The dolphins playing around our boat

Leaving the whale sharks hopefully in peace, we set out in search of manta rays!  Along the way we spotted several pods of dolphins and they even played around and under our boat so we got a great view of them.  When we got to the general area where the mantas hang out, we just jumped in the water hoping to see them.  After swimming for 5 or 10 minutes, we finally found a couple of them.  We followed one as it pushed against the amazingly strong current and then did somersaults in front of us.  I was excited to finally see mantas as it's one of the things I've always hoped to see diving.  Granted, we weren't diving, but hey, I can now officially say I've seen not only 1, but 3!