Castaways and Manta Rays

It was probably all those re-runs of Gilligan's Island, or perhaps Tom Hanks and his volleyball, that fuelled our imagination but I suspect at one time everybody has imagined how they might feel to be shipwrecked and washed up on the white sandy beach of some remote and uninhabited island. Komodo's violent currents did their best to tear our kayaks apart and although we survived without being dashed upon the shore we certainly found a true castaway island, Gili Mauan, in the heart of this incredible World Heritage area.

Imagine pouring half an ocean's water through a narrow channel, then reversing the flow every 6 hours. Swirling and ferocious currents rip cliffs into the rocky islands and the remnants of once-proud islands lie submerged, terrorising the flow and kicking enormous and very unpredictable eddies and whirlpools into the current. That any islands have survived the torment unleashed upon them by the relentless oceans is truly a miracle, especially the tiny Gili Mauan which lies in the centre of the flow, splitting the current like a lone traffic cop in the middle of Times Square in rush hour. The massive current is so precisely split that at one point on the beach the current will tow one foot east and the other west.

Gili Mauan became our home for three days, as we took an essential break from many long days of tough paddling. Shady trees kept the beating rays at bay and their limbs held our hammocks in comfortably sagging smiles. The 'fresh' water we had collected in Komodo village came from a very suspect source but we had plenty of firewood to boil and boil our billy, and rehydrate with too many coffees.

Anemone fields harbouring thousands of 'Nemo' fish wrapped around the island's shallow coral shelves and during the short slack tide we watched the fins of manta rays cruising the deeper channel torn into the reef at the end of the tiny island. Eagles soared over head and dipped into the shallows to collect a feed while baby reef sharks patrolled the shore searching for a fish that had swum too far from the school.

It was the mantas though that really caught our attention. We calculated the tides carefully so that right at the turn of the current when we had a slight chance that we weren't going to be whisked out into an endless whirlpool, we donned our masks and jumped in for a snorkel. And we hit the jackpot. Fifty metres off the beach we swam into a massive manta ray, happily cruising the warm water for millions of microscopic morsels. Now when I say massive, a fully grown manta would have a wingspan somewhere up around the 5 metre mark - an imposing creature indeed.

Although manta rays are technically fish it doesn't feel right to tar them with the same brush. Mantas fly through the water with a grace and ease that truly is one of nature's wonders. We swam with this giant of the deep for several minutes, often passing within a metre or so of its gently flapping wings, staring into its enormous eyes and watching the tiny specs of life being vacuumed into the manta's wide open mouth. As it silently flew off into the deep we were left bobbing at the surface, dumbfounded by the spectacle. Yet that was only the beginning.

Over the next half an hour twenty or thirty mantas came cruising and swirling around us in the calm water of our deserted island. Sometimes five or six at a time would circle us, flying around us doing aerobatics like biplanes at an air-show. Everywhere we looked enormous mantas, with their black wings and white bellies, eyed us off as though they were as excited to see us as we were them. When we finally flipped back to the beach to escape the rapidly building current we were both speechless from the spectacle we had just witnessed. It was brilliant.

There are some moments in time that will be impossible to forget and swimming with a school of giant manta rays in the tropical sunshine of our own castaway island will be a moment I'll gladly carry with me for ever.

Photos: Gili Mauan, our campsite was in the trees behind the beach. Juz and Lain loving life after swimming with a school of manta rays.