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Published: November 30th 2009
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Barracuda Tornado - Sipadan
Barracuda Tornado - Sipadan We fly into Tawua in Borneo, to make our way to what I was looking forward to the most on our trip...Diving at Sipadan island. Sipadan island is ranked in the top 5 scuba dive sites in the world due to its diverse marine life. They have closed the island to resorts and tourists, so you require a permit to dive there, and only so many are given per day.
We managed to find a place that had a permit available in a couple of days - Uncle Changs.
We got a boat to the island of Mabul to stay at Uncle Changs for a few days. I was very impressed when i arrived...Uncle Changs was a little wooden village on stilts above the water, looking out over the Celebes sea. Very chilled out and beautiful . And god they fed us well - the homecooked food was amazing! We spend the evenings chilling out with a beer chatting to the other divers that we met there (hello Polly, Alice and Tristan!)
Our day came to dive Sipidan, some people had canceled so it was only 3 of us diving from Uncle Changs. I was very excited (and a
little nervous!) to see a shark, and before we submerged I told the guys that i was hoping we saw a shark. Well it didn't take long...within 30 seconds of going under the water we saw 1, 2, 3, then 4 sharks! I was using my air quite quickly as was gasping with excitement lol!
They were white tip reef sharks, so not big man eaters, but still very cool. Throughout the dive we saw so many things, at least 30 each of turtles and sharks, you could touch the turtles they were so close. At one stage we kneeled on the bottom and had 7 sharks swimming around us, was very cool, only a metre away. (i got a little scared though when one headed toward me!)
We also saw a big tornado of Barracuda fish,(famous at Sipidan) there was about 1000 (no exaggeration, !)of them in a school, making a tornado type shape as the hunt, it looks like a big huge black cloud from a distance. We made our way toward them and you could see the individual fish...we floated under the cloud and the swam along and shaped around us, it was like being lost
in a a big barracuda storm! Even though the visibility was not so good at Sipidan unfortunately (about 15m average)I think it will be hard to find some dive sites that compare to that now!
We liked it so much we were lucky to be able to get a spot to do it again 2 days later (though we had to use fake names as the permits were in the names of Olga from Denmark and Tim from the UK who had canceled ...gotta love the government !).Much the same creatures that day also. It was a awesome few days.
Then we headed onto Sandkadan , and saw the orangutans in teh rehabilitation centre. It is quite devastating what has happened to Borneo with the palm oil plantations, only 20% of the rainforest is left. It is a hard political point, as 70% of the peopel of Sabbah state in Borneo rely on palm oil harvesting for a living, yet it is causing so much devastation for the wildlife and soil erosion, causing habitats to be lost and rivers to widen and land be reclaimed into the rivers due to lack of stability in the soil that the
rainforest provided.
We then joined Uncle Tans (why is there so many companies called Uncle something or other in Borneo?) Jungle adventures, which took us into the jugle on the Kingabutan River. OUr accommodation was very spartan but quite cool...no electricity, running water, and sleeping in the mangroves in a open air hut , under a mozzie net. We did some jungle trecking and boated along the river, saw Orangutans in the wild (beautiful animals, but so lazy.....just stay in one place and eat and eat) , Gibbons, Probiscous monkeys (they have a huge nose!) crocodiles and other bits and pieces. Oh, and some big huntsmans that made there way into our hut (eek!) and about a million mosquitoes! The heat and humidity in the jungle was full on, it must have been about 35 degrees but 90% humidity. Enjoyed a nice long shower when we got back to civilisation in Sandkadan!
Went again to our favourite little Chinese drink place for a few tiger beers in Sandkadan and took our new friends from the jungle tour Pinu, (dutch) Dave (aussie) , Maria, and Eline (denmark). As this was about the 4th time Andrew and I had been
there, our little chinese lady friend who serves us the beer was very happy to see us (as it seemed no other travellers went there, it was a local place) and gave us a cuddle when we left! You sure meet some gorgeous and sweet people here.
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