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Fifteen divers rush into the sea like baby turtles and hope they'll be lucky enough to return to one of the world's best diving destinations. Words by Anna, pictures by Mary, Franck and François. Patrick, the Marsden Bros's resident dive correspondent, decided to take a break from writing this time, handing me the privilege of producing an allegedly fair and balanced account of what happened in Sipadan. He must have later had regrets at not taking on the task himself because he sent me such comprehensive notes and anecdotes that I was tempted simply to submit those as the report - except for the fact that his notes covered everyone but himself. But don't worry Patrick, everyone else had lots of stories about you! Oh, Sipadan! Our first few dives brought us eye to eye with many fish we weren't familiar with, but which by the end of the week we were casually reeling off as regular sights: pyramid butterflyfish, unicornfish, surgeonfish, crocodilefish. On almost every dive we were treated to the graceful white-tip and black-tip reef sharks as well as the friendly turtles. The leopard shark was a real highlight for most of us – fantastic! Several octopuses were seen, changing colour as they pulled themselves along with their tentacles, which seemed to protrude in every direction. Barracuda, moray eels, boxfish and pufferfish galore, leaffish, lionfish, scorpionfish, sweetlips, the list is literally endless. We were beginning to see for ourselves why divers call Sipadan one of the world's best places to dive. We stayed at Pulau Sipadan Resort in self-contained bungalows, each with its own balcony, dotted along the beach. The gearing-up area was conveniently positioned about ten metres from the water and an even more convenient five metres from the open-air restaurant, which as well as serving meals also provided a constant flow of drinks and biscuits and doubled up as the bar in the evenings. |
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