The hotel's taxi was there at six. The ride up to Village View took about half an hour. At the resort we were pretty amazed - an incredible beach, nice room, and nice covered, but outdoor restaurant - all of them beat our expectations! We dumped our luggage and headed out for our first dive. The start of the dive was pretty slow - so-so visibility and not a whole lot of life. About thirty minutes in we finally saw a manta ray! She was magnificent and we followed her back to a cleaning station where she mostly ignored us drifting and swooping above us. After the dive the dive master told us that she was just a small one - only an eight foot wingspan. On the second dive two mantas passed us, but the current was too strong to try and follow them.
After lunch we relaxed for a few hours - beach, hammock, etc. In the afternoon the managers two sons, Ken and Suron, took us for a walk to the neighboring village. We started out on the beach since it was low tide and easy to walk. When we got to the village we moved up on to a beautiful, cool, flower lined path that ran through the village. Checked out the giant stone money (kept on the path as who is going to steal a coin weighing several tons?), and the newer men's and women's houses.
On the walk I had noticed these incredibly bright blue and red crabs so when we got back to our hut I set out to take photos - unfortunately I've made friends with the hotel's dogs and they insisted on accompanying me, and then chasing the crabs. We'd decided to do a third dive as it was our only chance of catching the high tide. The visibility was great, easily more than a hundred feet. The dive was pretty dramatic scenery wise - lots of canyons and some fantastic coral, but not much in the way of sea life. Diner was very good - chicken curry. After dinner Stacy and Sue decided not to dive tomorrow. I was exhausted, but tried to work through my photos so that I could dive tomorrow with enough storage to take more photos. Got caught up in it so ended up going to bed later than planned.
