Feeling small, in the very best way

I can't lead in to this any other way - this weekend I swam with a whale shark. Right, now that's off my chest, I can actually try and put in to words a rather magical Eid weekend.

Eid is the Islamic christmas, where family get together to celebrate the end of the month of fasting. They called a four day holiday, which I was pretty convinced I'd have to work all the way through, so was dreading somewhat. Then at the very last minute, Simon called and told me they had a spare space on their dhow trip up to the Mussendam, and did I want to join. After a lot of prevaricating I finally decided that really, I'd broken the back of the strategy presentation and really, no one would look down on me for taking the holiday along side the rest of the country. So off I went.

Simon gave me a lift down to Dibba port, and I ran around like a loon buying dive snacks (Choitrams is a treasure trove of random american sweetstuffs - like mini cookies called Nutter Butters, or Extreme Gherkin flavoured Pringles. Tasted like Big Macs. We think McDonalds should sue.)

Did a lot of listening to the iPod and catching up on the drive down - I was nervous I think, as really didn't know anyone and hadn't actually spent much time with Simon or Tom or Ben for a while. Unneccessarily nervous, as it turned out, but still. Dibba Port is a typical fishing village dock, buzzing at 8pm with people unloading unlikely items, or just settting off out to sea to fix nets or whatever it is you can do as a fisherman in the middle of the night. Met most of the people, all lawyers from an international firm with an office in the DIFC, apart from a couple of 'other halves' and me. Oh and Ben, who was the other PR person. We plonked bags in the cabins, I was sharing with Nicola & Allison but they had bagsied the lower beds, leaving me with an upper berth which basically lay across the cabin (port-starboard, rather than bow-stern... just to throw in some lingo totally unnecessarily...) and I pretty quickly decided that I was about 80% sure I'd fall out of that, directly on to the heads of two petite strangers, and that I'd rather take steps to avoid that eventuality. Avoided that uncomfortable conversation by staying up till 2.30am drinking with the boys, and falling on to the lounge sofas rather than wake them up.

We sat on deck gazing up at the stars, and listening to random chill out tunes. Four of us in a line, listening to the dhow bounce along the waves, and spotting about one shooting star an hour, on average. The milky way draws a thick white line across the night sky, like a faulty camera screen, and the constallations peskily disguise themseves amongst other, less recognisable collections of matter. Apparently Cassiopea was obvious in the middle of the sky. I nodded sagely at that spotting, and went back to gazing at nothing, and everything.

The 530am wake up call was less of an alarm, and more of a steady traffic of divers making tea and getting ready 2ft from where I slept on my sofa. I somehow managed to throw on a bikini and down some black coffee and throw myself on the dive boat, pointing groggily at my kit and staring vaguely at the air gauge. All looked fine. The viz wasn't great, but I was buddying Simon and it was working out pretty well, similar air consumption, similar swimming ability/speed etc. Then Markus went nuts with the tank banger and shot off towards a ledge hanging aove us. I couldn't see anything, and then suddenly, there it was, a shadowy figure about 6 or 7m away from me, a 4m juvenile whale shark.

They're a mythical creature for divers, so rare and beautiful, so peaceful, serene and powerful. The whale shark is the world's largest fish, and though this was just a baby, 4m of solid flesh is a powerful sight, and one that fills you with feelings of awe and wonder.

The rest of the dive passed uneventfully after that, though nothing could actually compare, how could it? We did see a giant eagle ray, one of the many we would spot over the 15 dives we squeezed in to the four days.

Back on the dhow, we attacked a full cooked breakfast, frankfurter sausages, scrambled eggs, spicy beans, halloumi, croissants, and fruit. We had the same every morning, and I'm rather missing my savoury croissant concotion, though when I'm not spending my days swimming in the sea for an average 6hrs a day, I don't really think that kind of breakfast is justified.

We were anchored in a small bay, just north of Dibba, though I forget the names of most of the sites, I am determined to copy them from Ben's dive book at some point, probably to immortalize them here, to refer back to before next time. At some point that day, before lunch, we noticed ripples in the water close to the boat, and spotted small dorsal fins breaking the surface - dolphins. About four of the guys launchedd themselves off the top deck to go play, I followed about five minutes behind. Suspended in the deep blue, the creatures stayed just out of reach, stubbornly refusing to come closer, or make any noise, or behave like dolphins, or porpoise should. Turns out they were batfish throwing themselves out of the water, potentially because they were being hunted, which makes my enthusiastic splashing around either rather annoying for them, or rather annoying to whatever was hunting them, which in retrospect wasn't really a terribly good idea. I'm glad I believe that most things in the sea are more scared of you than you are of them, as otherwise, I could have had a nasty nip from the school of barracuda or other predator was circling underneath.

I forget the next dive, I think we were still overawed by the morning's sighting of the whale shark. Not everyone had seen him though, so we did have to restrain the gloating somewhat, though it was understood by all. We did another dive after breakfast, at around 9.30am, then another at around 1pm, then 3.30, then a night dive at 6.30, then dinner, drinks, and more lounging on loungers star gazing. The night dive was my first, I think, though I think I could have done a really rubbish night dive in Oman once where we say absolutely nothing, and it was more like dusk with torches. This was proper black ink darkness, with glimpses of shocked fish staring in to the bulb of the torch as it swept over their night time hidey hole. Simon scared the shit out of me tho, by roughly leaning over and switching off my torch, waving his hands through the water in what I could only assume was panic. Turns out he was showing me the phosphoresence. It was amazing, but I could have thought of better sign signals to demonstrate how cool it was - quite amusing in retrospect. He also kept staring in to tiny holes and getting within half a foot of the reef wall. Turns out he was looking for shrimps, which are apparently the coolest thing in the sea... hey, I was all over the whale shark, so Si can take the shrimps - go for your life mate! He's right about one thing, the beauty is often in the smallest details and vibrant colours and patterns on the tiniest creatures.... but shrimp?

The next morning we arose with a bit more verve and vigour, having actually retired at a decent hour, rather than pushing it again for the sake of it. Not that we didn't rack up a couple of cold beers and a nice fresh G&T after the dive, but no taking the piss that night. The dive sight was deep, cold and clear, and we were diving with Markus and Neil, just the four of us. We descended to about 45m pretty steadily, and swam along the foot of a coral wall, where the island hit the sandy sea bed. Then we saw the second whale shark. 5.5m, at least, and we swam within an arms length, for a good ten minutes. The battery on this damn laptop just told me it's dying, so more soon.