Maybe We Should Retire

All I can say is wow. You see today we had a few dives that made us wonder why if we should ever go diving ever again. No dive we ever go on will ever compare to today. Well, we can compare them to today, but it'll lose. Our first dive was a drift dive, where we started a bit away from the boat and gradually made our way back to it. To get to the starting point they put us on tenders (dinghies) and then dropped us off. We were the third boat to leave, which is a pain in the ass because it means that we need to wait around for a while as the boat loads up, leaves, goes to start point, drops off the first load, and then comes back for us, and once I have my wet suit on I get a bit impatient to be in the water. After what felt like an eternity we got dropped off and started to descend. Within a minute this happened (full screen the video)

For those who are curious, the second person you see in the video is Isabel and the third is me. Yes, we saw a WHALE SHARK. It was only a little guy, just 20 feet or so and it was amazing. For those who don't dive, this is pretty much the Holy Grail of diving. It was beyond amazing. I spent most of the rest of the dive in a daze thinking, "whale shark, whale shark. whale shark whale shark. whale shark."
Most people would be pretty content with this dive, but as they say on infomercials, but wait, there's more. AJ (dive leader and first person in the video) started gesticulating wildly and yelling "look." (He was pretty good at speaking understandably underwater). We look, BOOM HAMMERHEAD. I have never seen a hammerhead before, so this was the icing on the Holy Grail Cake! But now I'm left wondering, should we just call it quits for the rest of trip?
Here are some whale shark pics

The next dive was a shark feed. For this the dive masters sat us in a natural underwater amphitheater to watch. They had a cage with tuna heads in it. This got the sharks attention. They swarmed over, but realized they couldn't get through the cage so they called down, but still stayed close by.

Cage in Bottom Left

Once they were back under control, Rins released the chain that held the chain shut, and the sharks went at it. Apparently they like tuna heads

 

There were a couple more dives that day, and awesome food, etc etc, but who can even remember those? We saw all the sharks. I have explained to Isabel that this is not typical for dive trips. She has gone diving a few times before, but never to this degree and never seen anything like this. Now she's spoiled and will expect whale sharks and feeds and everything else imaginable. (Though we haven't seen any turtles yet. A few other people some one, but alas not us. Also, I've never scuba dove, scuba dived? scubad? with mammals before, so I still have a few things left).
One thing of note is the remoras. Remoras are fish that hang on to the sharks. They're tiny and thin, and you can see one just below the middle of the last photo. They like to hitch free rides and draft off bigger fish (and turtles). Because there had been so many sharks frantically swimming around, they detached some of their own remoras who got lonely. When we were diving later on in the day, the lonely guys decided that we would perfectly serve as surrogate sharks. It was cool to me, but I think other people found it rather irritating. Fish are funny.