Took a boat trip out to some of the nearby islands for a spot of snorkeling this afternoon. It was good, in a not-nearly-as-spectacular-as-the-Philippines kind of way. The highlights being a bad tempered Titan triggerfish and swimming into a cave where no-one was quite brave enough to reach the bit without daylight.
The tour ended with some sunset scoff on a small uninhabited beach half an hour or so offshore.
Except thick clouds ensured there'd be no sunset, and we soon discovered the beach was far from being uninhabited. One minute we were enjoying the peace and quiet, the next, a right old racket was kicking up from the trees behind us. At first, we thought it was the resident birdlife having one last sing-song before lights out, but as the noise grew louder it became obvious something far more unusual was about to happen.
Then it started. Five or six large silhouettes appeared on the treeline before launching into the night sky. Again, we thought they must be birds, but the size of the things and their erratic, jaunty flapping action suggested otherwise. These were bats - very, very big bats.
Half a dozen soon became twenty or thirty, withing minutes there were hundreds, and before long so many bats were overhead, they literally turned the sky black.
It was great. And what made the spectacle even more awe-inspiring was the fact that once airborne, they immediately stopped calling, so by the time the last few stragglers left the trees the only noise to be heard was the clicking of our cameras as we tried in vain to capture the moment.
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