A few snaps from Sipadan, Borneo
In August I spent a great two weeks in Sabah, Borneo, with girlfriend Rachel. We did overland stuff for a week, including a couple of nights at a wildlifecamp in the rainforest, where we saw a wild Orang Utan amongst other things, then spent a week staying on Kapalai and diving Sipadan.
Sipadan blew me away. I’ve done loads of dives in the UK and Egyptian Red Sea, some in Thailand, Tenerife, Cuba and the Maldives, but Sipadan trumped them all for fish and animal life.
On the first dive Rachel had a bit of ear trouble which meant we couldn’t follow the guide and group down to the edge of the drop off as quickly, so we tracked them from a bit further up the sloping reef. We soon realised that this was going to show us more life anyway. Turtles were everywhere, we must have seen ten on that first dive - a theme that continued throughout the week - and we came across three whitetips in the first few minutes. There were several large Jacks, Moray Eels, loads of Batfish and Sweetlips, to name only a few. Towards the end of the dive we came across a huge shoal of Barracuda making a cone shaped vortex up to the surface - magic.
I was grinning like a fool behind my reg, I couldn’t believe we’d seen so much on the first dive. We got back on the boat to find there were two Sperm Whales at the surface, blowing and showing their flukes before diving back down to the depths. Fantastic. We’re in a for a great week here I thought, and indeed we were…
Anyway, rather than waffle on any longer, here are some of the better pictures I took. The hardest part was concentrating on any one subject long enough to do it any justice…
Whitetip Reef Shark
Grey Reef Shark
Anenome Fish
Giant Trevallies
All pictures full size here: My Picassa Photo Albums
