The highlights are 'Mexican Hat' , 'Aladdin's Cave' , 'Three
Tunnels' and the night dive on 'Rabbit Island' .
Mexican Hat was excellent! We descended to approx 20 metres from where we
entered a tunnel (3-4 m in diameter) through which we finned upwards until we
did a safety stop at 6 m where the water becomes like a 'heat haze': natural
spring water mixing with the salty seawater. We surfaced in the most amazing
'cavern' and when we turned our torches off we could see the light coming
through the rocks and the sea shone a brilliant turquoise. Another dive site
similar to this one was Aladdin's Cave, but where we surfaced there was a hole
in the top of the rocks and it was equally beautiful with the sun shining
through to the water where we bobbed about on our inflated BCD's. The Three
Tunnels was another 'adventurous' dive as it involved diving in and out of
narrow ravines. The highlight of that dive was waiting for the group to emerge
and seeing the air bubbles permeate through the tunnel 'roofs'.
Rabbit Island night dive was fun as my buddy and I busily searched 'Navy
Seals style'(!) with our torches under rocks and in nooks and crannies and felt
a sense of achievement when, amongst the more usual array of marine life, we
discovered 2 octopus and watched as one changed color to a pale blue and then a
pale pink. We also saw a red baby octopus with white spots, not such a great
camouflage!
There were only two disappointing dives (in terms of lack of sea life and
topographical interest): Aldiana Bay and one of the night dives at Aquarium
Reef . Aldiana Bay, I gathered from general chit chat, is not considered one
of the better dive sites and it is possible that we just got bad timing with the
night dive at Aquarium Reef. Rabbit Island for the night dive, however, we
recommend highly.
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