Today is our planes, trains and automobiles day…

3/12/09 (entered by Theresa Gulledge, PADI Diving Society Manager, PADI Americas) Sport Diver editor, Ty Sawyer, and I got up early this morning to catch a flight from Kota Kinabalu to the little town of Tawau. It’s a quick flight, just long enough to grab a few extra zzzzz’s to make up for our 4:45 AM wake-up. Forty minutes later we were on a tour bus bound for Semporna, our gateway to Borneo Divers and the islands of Mabul and, ultimately, Sipadan. Clement Lee from Borneo Divers is with us and has promised that we’ll start diving as soon as we arrive at the resort. (Are we there yet? Are we there yet?) We arrive at Borneo Divers on the island of Mabul slightly before lunchtime following a short boat ride from Semporna. So, we didn’t exactly do “planes, trains and automobiles” today, but we did do “planes, buses and boats” to get here. My motto … the more types of transport it takees to get there, the bigger the adventure! Ty decided to do a little shopping at the resort gift shop prior to our going diving (OMG … hurry up!). Something about needed new swim trunks. A few minutes later, he’s standing on the dock in these amazingly bright, fluorescent green shorts saying something about the shorts matching his lucky, “fish-love’-em” dive socks. Well, I’m glad the fish love ‘em, because I don’t think he’s going to pick up any chicks in those things… Donning his sunglasses, Steven, our PADI Divemaster, collects Ty and I and we board the dive boat bound for Sipadan Island. Now a marine protected area, Sipadan can only be reached via boat – there are no accommodations on the island and only a limited number of dive passes are issued to the dive operators from the neighboring islands each day. This is the real deal … diving on the wild side, baby. I had read a little about Sipadan, but words simply can’t do justice to the real thing. We approached a small island that reminded me of the place actor Tom Hank’s was stranded in the box office hit, Castaway. Sipadan Island is lush and dense with tropical vegetation that magically stops about 20 feet (6.069 meters) from the water. Gleaming in the sun between the edge of this tropical jungle and the crystalline sea is a perfect stretch of white sand beach which wraps around the circumference of the island. This is the tropical island everyone pictures in their dreams… We made our first dive at Barracuda Point. If you were to only make one dive off Sipadan, this is the dive to make. Apparently a major underwater highway for reef residents, anything and everything that you would want to see while diving passes through here. Just during the descent I saw every type of tropical fish imaginable. There was a slight current, so we adjusted our buoyancy and drifted through the “traffic”. True to the reef’s name, we quickly came across a school of barracuda that was so large it looked like a solid silver wall at least 10 feet (6.096 meters) high and 25 feet (7.62 meters) long. As if to accent the magnificent school’s presence, a lone black tip reef shark would occasionally cut through the pack. We drifted past the barracudas and the current slacked off. At that point, I was thinking, “…and now, we begin the turtle portion of our tour.” There were turtles everywhere! Big ones and little ones; some lazily swimming by and some lounging peacefully on the bottom. I settled down in the sand to take a closer look at one turtle, only to realize there were four more resting only a body length away. I think the turtles were much less interested in me as I was in them, because they didn’t even budge an inch while I was there. Instead, they just looked at me through those heavily lidded turtle eyes as if to say, “Don’t you know it’s nap time?” Our second dive took place at Hanging Gardens. True to its name, a variety of sponges and gorgeous sea fans hang from the vertical coral walls, decorating the sides of the reef much like hanging pots of flowers decorate a patio trellis. Happy fish (yep, they were happy … I could tell) schooled all around us and I surfaced for the first time feeling as if I was actually one of the locals and not just a bubbling observer. Bedtime came early again and I dreamed of happy fishes and flowing silver rivers. Can’t wait until tomorrow!