Manta rays!

Another early morning swim to shore and then a hike up to an amazing viewpoint looking out over Komodo National Park (see the extra photo - my boat is the one on the left).

Next was snorkelling at Manta Point. It had been almost exactly nine years since I first learnt to scuba dive as Mantaray Island in Fiji but failed to see any manta rays. This time I was much more lucky and we saw at least a dozen. One of the crew stood at the front of the boat and shouted every time he saw the large dark areas in the water below. We then jumped in with our snorkelling gear and spent a while watching them from the surface.

Unlike my experience with the turtle and the other reefs, this water wasn't very clear but that's precisely why the manta are there: to feed on the plankton! Even with the poor visibility it was still an amazing experience and some of them were about four metres in width. Huge!

In the late afternoon half of us visited Komodo Village and got surrounded by the local children. We then watched the massive fruit bats ('flying foxes') from the boat as the sun went down.