Underwater paradise. Land isn't too bad either . . .

We are well into our third day of diving here on Gili Trawangan. We started this morning with a sunrise dive at 6am out to Shark Point - infortunately no sharks, but lots of early rising fish zipping about having breakfast, alothough we learned that the appx 3 foot trigger fish are not morning fish and were quite grumpy that they had people around so early. Yesterday was a spectacular diving day with a 2 meter manta ray, many sea turtles, and beautiful coral. Monday was the refresh day with Tim doing two dives and me refreshing skills in the pool before heading out in the afternoon to dive with turtles and even a baby black tipped reef shark. The island is gorgeous, the food amazing, and everyone is super friendly. We have been diving with a great couple from Australia that have been sharing in the underwater photo adventures - and the post dive Bintangs as well.

Tomorrow we head off to Bali and to the cultural centre of Ubud for some mountain time following our stay on this beautiful little white sand rimmed island. Now we're off to pick up our laundry and then back on the boat for our final dive out on the east side of Gili Air.

Ok Tim here... just think I should explain what looks like a shark attack at the end of that video of the manta. I have been sucking through my oxygen on these dives much faster than Catherine, so we were doing our safety stop when we saw the manta, and I had only 10 Bar of oxygen left. When our divemaster, Rusty, saw the ray, it was the first one he had seen in months, so he was really excited and wanted us to share air while we swam after the ray, but that didnt work out the way he planned, and I had to head to the surface. Still, it was awesome to just be in the water with this amazingly graceful critter... We'll post more from Ubud.