Day 14 (October 29, 2014)   Kuredu: manta rays

Before   


   Entire journey for relax in Kuredu Island.

Kuredu

After

   We let our bodies decide where to wake up and they do it early. I’m taking my snorkel equipment to the breakfast as I must be at the Sports Center by 8:30 AM. Tour is at 9 AM. The sun is gone today and dark clouds make us feel it will rain.

   On despite of the bad weather with a small rain we’re going to leave for the tour and say good bye to Eva as she has an appointment in the Spa while I’m out. They explain manta rays are big but harmless creatures. They’re surprisingly fast too and the advice is not trying to chase them as they’ll disappear. Two guides come with us: one will snorkel with us and the other will watch from above.

   It’s a short trip by a small boat but we’re not the only ones as there are 3 or 4 more boats with tourists looking for the same than us. This way, the first approach is the easier: we just go where the other boats are. Soon a sort of black fin appears above the water: we’ve already located one. But in the time I get my camera ready for the picture the fin is gone. It seems the task of swimming with these animals is harder than it seems as at the time we’re all ready to jump to the water the animal is not there anymore so we keep at boat. Other groups go down, though.

Seeking manta rays with bad weather

   We keep searching all around the place, with our lookout always looking at sea. It’s like 30 minutes until the animal is located again. They explain some other times here were a group of manta rays but today there is only one. When they tell us to go to the water the manta ray appears over the water showing its 3 meters length and coming back to the underwater world where it belongs with a big splash. We’re told this is very unusual and I feel it like a “leave me alone” sign from it as it happened when the other boats were arriving to this point.

   Once in the water we go all as a group following our guide and trying to see a silhouette on these dark waters. I can see the bottom, with the white sand and full of big fishes, closer than expected, no more than 20 meter deep.

Group at water searching manta rayManta ray place
















   And it appears by the left, its quietly presence is detected by the white front as the rest of its black body mixes with the dark water in the distance and is hard to see. It passes fast around 10 meters in front of us to definitively run away from us by our right. I still hope I’ve started the video on time to get even one single frame of it leaving but later I’ll check it is not and all the media got from this tour is full of pictures and videos I could label as “One second before it was a manta ray here”.

   The experience has been exciting, but also disappointing because we’ve just got a glimpse of the animal. In other tours there are people could even touch it, although there are a lot of tours too couldn’t even have a glimpse of it. I guess this is the reason the tour ends in a snorkel session at the local reef of Komandoo Island, as it is not going anywhere and is a guaranteed experience.

Komandoo Island

   We stop near the island where we can perfectly see the row of water villas they have there and go to the sea to enjoy its local reef, which is more beautiful than the one in Kuredu.

Komandoo's local reefKomandoo's local reef
















   The tour takes around 2 hours and a half and we haven’t got any sun. We’ve even dived with rain, but it is not annoying when you’re doing things mainly underwater.

   When we arrive there is still a small rain, which is the reason of seeing Kuredu’s beaches empty. I, after passing by our bungalow, take a walk in our small bay full of stingrays and sharks as sky is getting better.
Baby shark at Kuredu



   May be it’s just my feeling, but I think there is more life today than other days at beach.

Our small bay in KureduStingray at Kuredu
















   When we’re ready we leave for lunching. Now there is some sun but we’re very grateful could change the Robinson Crusoe experience day as, although we cannot know the weather for tomorrow, today it had been a bad day.

   When we arrive at the huge hut where the buffet we cannot join as it’s 10 minutes after end time. There are still people eating but we’ve completely forgot about it is just one hour and a half for lunching: from 1 PM to 2:30 PM.

   As we’re hungry we go to the most popular a la carte restaurant here: Franco’s. It is an Italian restaurant where we can get full with two delicious pizzas by 25$ in total. I was expecting it would be more expensive than it is.

Beach in KureduHermit crab
















   We reach our bungalow with rain again which will be here for the rest of the day and during the night. With this, we spend the most part of the day at room and only leave a couple of times with the two umbrellas coming with the room. We go for some souvenir shopping and later go to dinner.

   We still haven’t told, but dinners are always thematic. Yesterday we had Chinese food – which means a small part of the buffet is with this kind of food – and for today we have something familiar: Mediterranean food. It means there are a lot of pasta, some moussaka and salad with feta cheese.

Dinner BuffetSwimming pool by night
















   Before going to dinner we’ve got the visit of the heron, which is not changing its favorite place for dinner even in rainy days.