Snorkeling with whale sharks, the ultimate experience - Picture by Jason Risley
Snorkelling side by side with whale sharks was the most splendid and literally breath-taking experience I ever had. I had to move those fins really fast to keep up with “mine”. So close it got that I had to move out of the way.
It is impossible to describe how I felt swimming next to this speckled, slow moving giant. Around its gigantic mouth floated a school of transparent small fish. Desperately I tried to get in front of the whale to see if those fish were disappearing soon. No matter how hard I tried, the whale shark did not allow me to watch this. It also must have noticed that I was getting exhausted from paddling so hard: it slowly dove deeper and deeper until it vanished and everything around me was bluish again. That this snorkeling trip was such a success was even more surprising because we had to find the whale sharks twice! Our first trip had to be aborted after four small children on the boat would not start screaming. Their parents tried their best and felt utterly embarrassed. Although five whales were jumping all around us, we had to go back to drop them off. But luck was on our side: we found others!
Needless to say that I dreamed of repeating this encounter and hoped scuba diving would bring me even closer. How wrong! These trips head for the reef, but the whale sharks don’t. Since our destination was Manta Reef, I expected at least the reef to live up to its name. It did, but not for me: only for those in my group who were diving on Nitrox. Exactly during those 15 minutes they stayed longer the manta rays were gracefully flapping by. Darn!
Not that my underwater safari was disappointing: there were lots of colourful tiny folks. Most memorable: a giant Potato Grouper pouting his big lips was not moving out of the way. He stood completely still, face to face with me. I am sure he would have allowed being touched. A big Yellow Trumpet Fish joined me for a while, whereas a large moraine was swaying in the current showing its teeth, just in case. And many more fish whose name I never knew or forgot…
Both, the snorkeling and scuba diving trips, I booked with Diversity and they required relatively short trips by boat, which I appreciated, being prone to seasickness. A lesson learned from diving in Bazaruto, I dressed up warmer! Quite an experience in Tofo is returning from such trips: the boats are driven full speed towards the beach. Once there, they slide a bit on the sand before they come to an abrupt stop. Something I never got used to.
Picture by Jason Risley.
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