Words and photos by Juan Gallardo, a born-dventurer from the Spanish city of Seville and has lived in the UK, the US and Europe. Juan first visited Myanmar in 2012 and has been living in Yangon since 2014. He is passionate about photography and Burmese cuisine, which he captures in his book: “Delicious Myanmar – Discover Myanmar through its people and food”. www.MyanmarTravelEssentials.com
I recently spent eight days on a liveaboard in the Mergui (Myeik) Archipelago and it was the best diving adventure I’ve ever had. The fact that we didn’t come across other boats at any of the dive sites made it extra special, especially for the underwater photographers amongst us.
The diving sites are incredibly beautiful with colourful, soft corals, swim-through caves, macro life, and a big chance of meeting a whale shark or giant manta rays.
The boat I chose had an amazing crew and the diving instructors were super friendly professionals with great respect for the environment. They conducted clear briefings before every dive, which made me feel safe and comfortable under water.
The boat has three decks and eight cabins, all of them with air conditioning and a sea view window that can be opened. The upper deck is the chill-out area and the area where briefings take place before each dive. Instructors are so familiar with the diving sites that one of them has created maps of the different islands, which are used to explain the diving plan prior to every dive.
The upper deck is also the dining area where you can help yourself to coffee, tea, toast, water, electrolyte drinks, fresh fruits and, my favourite, pineapple jam biscuits. If you have ever dived in Thailand, you will be familiar with the biscuits I’m talking about.
Special mention goes to the chef on board and her assistant who prepared the most delicious Thai food. The wide variety of food included meat, fish and vegetable dishes far tastier than in most restaurants. In the mornings we had a European style breakfast including corn flakes, muesli, fruit, brown bread, pancakes, omelettes, fried eggs, sausages, tea and coffee.
We did a total of 22 dives, starting in the early morning before breakfast, with the fourth and final dive just before sunset. We also had the opportunity to go on a night dive, which is always exciting.
There was plenty to do between the dives, such as paddling out on kayaks to explore deserted islands. The untouched white sand beaches and the clear water felt like paradise.
Apart from diving, kayaking and eating, my other favourite activity was to head up to the top deck to relax on the sunbeds. This is the perfect place for reading and naps, especially after breakfast following the first dive of the morning.
The highlight of the trip was our visit to Black Rock. We arrived on the third day and nothing could have prepared us for what we were about to witness. We jumped into the water just before 7 am and were immediately greeted by manta rays. We saw several mantas on the second, third and fourth dives. We were so excited that we voted to stay a second day at Black Rock. And guess what? It was as good as the first day; we saw mantas on every single dive. The same thing happened the next day, so in the end we spent three days at Black Rock doing 12 dives.
On one of the dives I was surrounded by six huge mantas with wingspans of about four or five metres. They swam so close to me! Truly unforgettable!
After three days of diving, we all put our pictures together and identified no less than fifty individual mantas. Because manta rays have unique spotted patterns on their underside it is quite easy to differentiate between them.
While the manta rays were amazing, let’s not forget the other incredible underwater life we saw. The area is home to numerous species of brilliantly-coloured soft corals on limestone rock. I particularly enjoyed looking at the massive gorgonian sea fans with the colourful reef fish playing around in the background. The large moray eels hiding in cracks were awesome and the scorpion fish and octopus camouflaged on the purple and violet algae-covered rocks were really cool. I also saw my first turtle, a large stingray, and a small shark.
For those with a keen eye, seahorses, ornate ghost pipefish, frogfish and stonefish are common on many sites as are the schools of barracudas, rainbow runners, tuna, trevallies, and Spanish mackerels.
To top this all off, I was also able to advance in PADI by doing the Enriched Air (Nitrox) course during my first two days. What a wonderful trip!
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