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‘Beep, Beep, Beep’ the alarm on my phone is ringing, its’ blinking light illuminating our pitch-black room. I hit snooze. Just 5 more minutes. I listen to the water flowing and splashing below our room. Then in an instant I’m up with more enthusiasm than I’ve ever had at 4:45 in the morning. Today I get to dive my dream Scuba site. A location often found topping lists like Best Dive Destinations in the World. Quietly we gather what we need for the day. Towel, Check, Camera, Check, Sunscreen, Check, until our waterproof bag is full. With a giddy pep in our step we make our way down the raised wooden pathway of our water village. The Celebes sea gently lapping against the wooden stilts, the only other sound is a faint gasp of breath from a sea turtle in the dark. Loving this paradise already, we arrive at the dive shop, which is a buzz of activity. Coffee being sipped, enthusiastic chatter, tanks being loaded onto the boats, lists being checked and double checked and then at 5:30 am we depart the dock. Our Captain, Kata, drives away from our beautiful resort into the darkness. After 10 minutes we arrive at Sipadan. Visiting Sipadan as a diver is like winning a lottery of sorts, as the Sabah Government only gives 178 dive permits a day. We jump out of the boat, join the cue and get our permits approved by the Sabah Parks kiosk on the jetty. With the paperwork done it’s back onto our boat and into our wetsuits. At 6:15 we arrive at the dive site and the pool is open just as the sun peeks out from the horizon. After our buddy checks, we’re in the water with a backward roll. We collect our cameras and descend into the unknown. The first thing that I note is the amazing clarity of the water and then all the healthy coral, this coral that has been growing on top of an extinct volcano for thousands of years. I’m doing my happy dive dance when a rush of silvery-blue goes by and keeps going and keeps going. We have been dropped over a barracuda highway. Their sleek missile shaped bodies twist and turn together to form an incredible tornado. We marvel at this beautiful sight, then swim right into the middle and enjoy the view as they spiralled around us. We snap off some pictures and continue along the reefs edge. Sipadan rises a whopping 600 M from the seabed. Located in the center of one of the richest marine habitats in the world, it’s easy to know 5 minutes into the dive it’s my favorite dive site EVER. I convey my happiness to my buddy with a very enthusiastic ‘ok’ gesture, then bring the camera back to my eye as a hawksbill turtle lazily swims by. We follow him into an underwater limestone cave. Our turtle friend leaves us swimming back out into blue but we stay and explore the cave. With our torches we can see that there are small tunnels fingering out past our beams, too small and dark for us to investigate. Another turn and our light reveals the skeletal remains of other turtles. I later learn that these unfortunate turtles had either gotten lost in the cave or ran out of air. We are getting towards the end of our air too, so we slowly make our way to the shallows. On our 3 min safety stop at 5M, our noses are in the coral looking for tiny critters, when I sense something close. Looking up I see a school of about 14 bump-head parrotfish gliding over and loudly crunching on the reef. I can’t help but laugh at their funny faces. A face only a mother or photographer could love. Bulging pink heads, protruding giant teeth and a lopsided grace. They swim past us in a squadron leaving us in their excreted clouds of fine white sand. Exhausted by the magnificence of this place we surface and are speechless. During our hour surface interval, we change tanks, camera batteries and eagerly wonder what we’ll encounter on the next dive.