Koh Tao- Turtle Island

---

I don't think I have ever been in a place where I have sweat in such large quantities by standing still in the shade. It is HOT! Good thing the ocean is at our doorstep- quite literally! We have to swim out a bit to get to deeper, cooler water but it's there...along with abundant, colourful marine life. The snorkeling one my first day was enough to convince me that diving would be a must here in Koh Tao.

I enrolled in another course: Advanced Open Water. This means that by the end of the 3 days I became certified to dive upto 40m in depth and also made other "skills" dives. I chose deep dive, navigation dive, night dive, fish identification, and peak performance buoyancy. All of these dives were amazing.

First up was my fish identification dive. We learnt the hand signals for many types of fish, and how to react if the aggressive ones (trigger fish) attacked as they are known to do when protecting their nest. Yikes! We saw a school of baracudas, some butterfly fish, bat fish, grouper, damsel fish, anemones just to name a few. An incredible introduction to one of the most amazing divesites in South East Asia.

Next up, only an hour later we went on for the peak performance buoyancy dive. This dive was a set of skills designed to acheive optimal buoyancy and to control buoyancy with breathing. We fought like Keanu Reaves in the Matrix, did an obstance course, and ran underwater on the bottom. It was good fun and all the activites really helped me stay where I need to be when I am down there exploring.

Later on that night (3 dives in one day!) came the highlight of all my dives so far: a night dive!! I took my usual stride off the boat and landed in the pitch black ocean. We each had an underwater torch but our leader, Torbin, had a mega wattage one for underwater so we mostly followed him. Throughout the course of the 45 minutes dive we saw amazing colours not there in the day. SO much activity underwater starts at night and we saw lots of it. The highlight was 4 or 5 HUGE baracudas out hunting. They dont hunt humans but they were as long as I am tall. Seriously huge fish. They were about 10 feet away from us. I was calm but I am glad that my regulator keeps my breathing relaxed and deep...helps not to get so scared! Halfway through the dive we stopped and turned off our flashlights. Without them I could see my fellow divers about 2 metres away. When we moved our hands a trail of neon green bubbles followed. Phosphorescence! Little tiny plankton that glow in the dark! When we surfaced we all were super excited about what we saw. To top things off the stars we out in full force and we floated on our backs towards the boat gazing above. The perfect night and such an exhilaerating feeling.

The compulsory dives came the next day (deep dive and navigation). Navigation was hard, but rewarding because what we were taught on the boat beforhand paid off when my partner Gesa and I were off on our own trying to complete squares and triangles from our starting point. TRUST THE COMPASS! So my triangle was a little lopsided, but it WAS a triangle! It's an exciting feeling when we thought it would be tough, it was, but we did it anyway. I wouldn't have anyonepick me as the group navigator but I feel like I could be the backup girl. With a little more practice I'll get there! One cool thing about that dive was that when we were measuring our kick sycles on a 30 metres line on the bottom a school of smaller (1-1.5 feet) baracudda surrounded us from bottom to almost the surface, 10 metres down. Cant explain the feeling this gives me, awestruck.

Next dive was the deep dive. We went down to 30 feet where its a little cooler and a little darker. Slowly but surely is the rule here and we moved slowly to conserve energy. The dive itself was amazing, I have never seen so many colourful fish in one place at one time. Unfortunatley I scored a not so hot ear infection from going so deep so diving is on hold until it clear up...but I will prevail!

The remaining days on Koh Tao were spent hangingout at the beach, making new friends, watching spectacular sunsets, drinking beer, exploring on motos with our german friends martin and markus and....snorkeling with black tipped reed sharks!! woohoo!! what a rush. These sharks are about 75cm to a metre and a half long, about the roundness of a basketball and have a black tip to their dorsal fin. They are graceful and want nothing to do with humans. The closest one was about 3 feet away from me. They swim away from humans if we swam towards them so the secret is to stay still and watch closely. They scour the bottom of the sea looking for pray, tails back and forth, teeth sticking out here and there...yikes! I loved it! On that snorkel I also saw the hugest trigger fish ever. Now that was scary.

Sad to leave Koh Tao as we created a bit of a network of friends there. It is a beautiful island with a great balance between serene and quiet but always a bit of a party nearby. Cant wait to go back someday.

---