Sipadan

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Well we had been looking forward to this diving ever since we read about it at the start of our journey. At man. Different point we thought we might not be able to but here was the day. Matt and I were stoked, all week we had been hearing other peoples stories as they came back from their own diving trips to this crown jewel of south east asia. We grabbed our dive gear checked it all to make sure we were good ( the last thing we wanted was to arrive at sipidan with malfunctioning gear) then jumped on the boat with about 8 others. The boat ride only took about 20 minutes prompting speculation about secretly swimming over from Mabul.

When we arrived Matt and I got put into two different groups because he has his advanced. It didn't really end up mattering because our group ended up followin his anyways so we were always close. When we arrived at the first dive site I geared up quick and jumped into the water first awaitin the rest of my group. I was instantly rewarded as a massive school of barracuda swam right below me. Some of the others got into the water quick enough to see them as well. That ended up being he first highlight in a huge series of highlights as he day progreseed. We swam with barracuda, green turtles, grey reef sharks, white tipped sharks, parrot fish and all sorts of other huge marine animals. You could get close enough to almost touch most of them as they swam past or rested on a sandy ledge.

Sipidan reef is a massive cliff that extends 300 meters down so we went down a ways and then let the current carry us along the ledge. There was also tons of small critters but they were dwarfed by the large guys that are the highlight of sipidan.

One of the dive sites we went to was called turtle cave. We went to the entrance and then in about 15 meters before heading back out. Apparently it stretches kilometers under the island but we would have needed more advanced dive trainin to do it. We expoorer lots of other nooks and crannies though and saw lots more cool stuff.

The 3 dives at Sipidan definitely exceeded my expectations even as hyped as it was. I. Definitely is one of my top highlights of the trip.

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