Since I started spending time on line and looking at other peoples trip reports, I have wanted to go to the Philippines to dive . . . of all the places I see people go, it seems as though the best photographs, and by far the best slugs, come from those islands. But it is a long way away, and there are many closer dive locations (and some of them have CAVES), so year after year, we didnt go. Until a happy set of coincidences led Peter to decide he liked leading trips, and put us in touch with the Atlantis resort folks, and before I knew it, we had not one, but TWO trips planned in 2014.
This particular trip was what is known as a fam trip, or a trip to familiarize group leaders with a destination to which they are going to lead people. As such, our itinerary wasnt entirely normal it would not usually be advisable to try to hit two different locations and resorts in the short time we had for this trip, but the purpose was to see both of them. It was almost a unique trip for us, in that there were seven of us, only one of whom we had ever met before, and we had dived with none of them. Everyone was very experienced, and two were professional photographers. It is demoralizing to spend a week trying to take pictures in the company of pros!
The Resorts: We started at Atlantis Puerto Galera. Its not really in Puerto Galera, despite the name. Its in Sabang Bay, which is a little way from the town of PG, and across a small stretch of water. Its a very different little community, comprised entirely of dive resorts, which rather resemble dominos, with the narrow ends facing the bay, and the resort property extending sometimes quite far back and up the hill. One resort rubs shoulders with the next, and sometimes there are restaurants or stores interleaved. The bayshore is visually and practically busy and crowded, but if you are staying and diving with Atlantis, you need only go out into the fray if you choose to, because everything you need is right where you are. Except for flipflops, if you lose one in transit, as I did . . .
Sabang Bay
The resort itself is beautiful. Built of white stucco and accented with dark wood, it has a Mediterranean feel to it, and everything is immaculately clean. We had large rooms on the sea side of main street, which is the uneven and eccentric concrete walkway that forms the central thoroughfare for the motley town. Our room was actually a small suite, designed for families, so it had a double bed but also two bunk beds, accessed by . . . a TREE, inset with small shelves that made wonderful places to hang damp clothing. We had a delightful abundance of storage, all of which is open-fronted, something I appreciate, having left too many things in too many hotel rooms over the years. We had a large shower with abundant hot water, as well as an outdoor shower on our patio for sand removal.
Our room
We toured the entire resort and saw all the kinds of rooms they have, and even the smaller rooms are quite nice and have adequate storage. One thing about this place, though be sure your knees are in good shape! The stairs to our room were both steep and had a very big rise. The other stairs had more reasonable step sizes, but the resort is built on a hill, so all but the closest rooms involve a bit of a climb. You dont have to do it with dive gear, though the dive center has plenty of room for everything you are going to use in the water, with both hanging rods for suits and racks and cubbies for fins, masks, gauges, and anything else.
Meals are taken in the large, open air dining room. Breakfast has a menu, which is unnecessary after the first couple of days, as it doesnt change and it is the same at both resorts. Most of it is standard fancy breakfast fare omelettes, scrambles, ham, pancakes, waffles, and French toast. For the lighter appetite, they also have muesli with yogurt, and they have oatmeal on the menu, but it is the real thing and takes 20 minutes to cook. We never had that much time for breakfast, so I never tried it. My best breakfast was an omelette with green peppers and onions and Thai sweet chili paste (my own invention). They have espresso at breakfast (it costs extra the rest of the day, which I thought a bit strange, but I guess its kind of labor-intensive). One of the few things I was disappointed in was that the coffee I thought was AWFUL. But the tea was good, so that was fine.
Lunch and dinner change from day to day, and are put up on chalkboards. Each meal has a starter (usually choice of two), an entrée, and a dessert. No one can believe it if you dont want to eat all three! The menu always has a vegetarian option, and although the cuisine tended heavily toward rich sauces and pasta, there was always something I thought sounded good. And some (maybe all I ate quite late a couple of times due to night dives) nights they have a Mongolian stir-fry, which consists of a selection of fresh vegetables and meats, along with things like garlic and fresh ginger, and a chili powder, which I recommend viewing with definite respect.
The bar at PG is the 50 bar, which lies between the dive center and the beach. Tom Tom presides over it, and he runs the music, which I thought was wonderful. As I went from my room (over the bar) to the dive center, I always wanted to dance. I could have spent a lot of time sitting in the bar, if we hadnt always been diving.There is a beautiful pool, which I never saw anyone use, and just past it is the spa, which offers truly wonderful massages for very reasonable prices. There is a classroom, in which we had meetings, and a large and well-appointed camera room, with air guns, lots of electrical outlets, and cubbies for your camera bags or extra lenses or other gear.
The second part of our trip was at Atlantis Dumaguete. Although the two resorts have a lot in common, they are also quite different. Dumaguete is not actually in town at all, and it takes a half hour or more of driving from the town to get there. It lies in a very rural stretch of coastline, with an almost vacant lot on one side, and a private home on the other. Like PG, the Dumaguete property is narrow and deep, but it is also flat. The architecture is different, looking more Polynesian than Mediterranean, but the property is equally immaculate, pretty, and beautifully landscaped. The pool is stunning, but again, I never saw anyone in it.
Again, we had rooms facing the ocean, and although there is an upcharge for those rooms, I would HIGHLY recommend them. We slept with the doors open and the AC off, with the sound of the surf in the room, and it was delightful. Like PG, there are standard rooms, sea view rooms, and suites. Unlike PG, the rooms arent oversupplied with storage, but each has a closet. When I complained that ours had only one shelf, which was almost entirely occupied by the safe, I came back that afternoon to find they had INSTALLED a second shelf while we were diving. The Atlantis folks take their promise to make you happy quite seriously.
Our room at Dumaguete
The dining room at Dumaguete sits right above the beach, so you are taking in the ocean view while you eat. The menu and meal procedure is the same, except that Dumaguete doesnt have the Mongolian stir fry option, to my disappointment. Dumaguete also has a classroom and a large camera room, as well as a similarly well laid-out dive center. I should mention that both resorts had a good supply of critter ID books, a necessity in a place where we were constantly finding the weird and the wonderful! The resort here, being built on a flat lot, doesnt challenge the knees the worst you are going to have do is one flight of normal, wooden stairs.
View from the dining room at sunset
---------- Post added March 21st, 2014 at 12:01 PM ----------
The Dive Op: Both places have excellent operations. Each has a diver area which is composed of sections of hanging bars and racks, separated by a double row of cubbies. When you arrive, you will find a cubbie with your name already neatly labeled on it. There are plenty of hangers for suits, and benches to sit on while getting into them. Each place has very large, deep tanks for rinsing masks, fins, suits, and cameras each tank is carefully labeled so that cameras are not mixed with the other gear. Floors are textured or matted with non-slip, which is nice when your feet are wet. A large fan moves air through the storage area, so that things do dry, despite the humid climate.
Nitrox is available and encouraged, and made by a membrane system. Our mixes were pretty much spot-on, as would be expected. You are required to analyze your tank and log it before diving; they will not assemble your gear until an analysis sticker is on the tank. For the most part, the o-rings seemed in good condition I only saw an occasional champagne bubble leak from the yoke reg users. A lot of the tanks have Pro valves, so it was not a big deal to get DIN tanks for us.
Divers handle their own exposure protection, masks, fins and weight belts. The resort staff handles getting the rigs assembled and onto the boats. I was delighted to discover that a lot of the staff dive backplates, so unlike our trip to Indonesia, our gear was not strange to anybody.
Although Dumaguete has a house reef which you can dive from shore, in practice, all the diving is done from boats. The boats range from skiffs to medium or large bangkas. The skiffs varied in PG, the freeboard was lower, and one sat to get into the gear. In Dumaguete, the hull was higher, and I at least was essentially standing when gearing up, which I actually preferred. You put on mask and fins, and the staff brings your rig to you and stabilizes it while you get into the straps. I liked standing, because it made it MUCH easier to get my crotch strap done up. Im not sure it made any difference to anybody else.
The bangkas are a bit daunting at first glance. Theyre large open boats with canvas roofs and outriggers. They are used to get out to the islands (Verde and Apo) and for ferrying guests from Batangas to Sabang. When diving from them, one wades out into the water and hands up fins, camera, and weight belt, and then climbs into the boat. When you board for ferrying, you have a ramp, so you dont have to get wet in your street clothes. Entry from the skiffs and the small bangkas was by back roll, and from the large boat at Apo, by giant stride. Reboarding is done by floating into the space between the hull and the outrigger and catching the line strung there. You doff gear in the water and the staff pull it up, then you take off your fins and climb the ladder. Unless you are diving with Marco, our DM at Dumaguete, who sneaks underneath you and takes your fins off before you can get to it. I found this extremely unnerving the first time he did it, simply because no one had ever removed my fins for me before. But he doesnt do it until you are solidly attached to the ladder, and I got used to it. In rough water, this process looks formidable, but it was actually quite easy.
Bangkas waiting to go out
Getting into the water
Photo by Christopher Bartlett/Indigo Safaris
In both PG and Dumaguete, the boat rides to the coastal dives are quite short. I think our longest one was about 15 minutes, to the giant clam site in PG. This means you spend your surface intervals at the resort, which is pleasant. On the island excursions (Verde and Apo) we did three dives off the big boat, with a break between the first two and the third for lunch. At Verde, it was served on land, and at Apo, on the boat. They manage quite a spread for having to haul all the food from home! The boats are well supplied with cold water and soft drinks which are available any time, and also with hot tea and coffee for those who have gotten chilled.
Buffet on the boat
The big boats are supplied with an O2 kit which is hung in a conspicuous place. I didnt inspect the contents. I didnt ask if the small boats had oxygen on them, and if they do, its not as well marked.
The Diving: Sabangs coastal diving was mostly sloping reef, with some sites that had ledges. The reefs are STUNNING, second only to Rangiroa in my experience for color, diversity of corals, and density of life. There is a wide variety of reef fish, although not in big schools, and a lot of cryptic critters to be found in the niches and especially in the sandy areas between the coral heads. To my absolute delight, slugs are frequent, and many are big enough to find easily. I think by the second day of diving, Peter had identified 15 different species that he had photographed. There was current on almost all the dives, but it wasnt ever very strong, and for the most part, made for a nice drift. Visibility during our trip ranged from very good to okay. I think the lowest was the clam dive, where Id say it was about 25 feet or so.
Verde Island was the high point of the Sabang stay. On one tip of the island is a pinnacle called the Dropoff, which has dramatic structure, and attracts a plethora of fish, both small reef fish and predators. It also had the most current of any of the dives we did. I thought the beginning of the dive was rather challenging, but our compatriots from Florida thought we were wusses. Unfortunately, the site is quite exposed and the weather had turned windy, so the conditions were deemed too difficult for us to do a second dive there. We did two more on the lee side of the island, one of which resulted in a group separation due to current. I was pleased that the boats (there were several in the area) picked up our SMB and DiveAlert whistle fairly quickly, and we didnt spend much time drifting at all.
Dumaguete is quite different. The coastal diving is muck diving dark sea floors of mixed silt and sand, punctuated by coral clumps and mooring buoys. It may not sound inspiring, but the variety of unusual marine life you find in such places is amazing. There was very little current here.
Bristle worm
The boat trip is to Apo Island, which I think would be really stunning, if we hadnt spent three days on the gorgeous reefs at Sabang. We did see amazing coral formations, with the biggest tabletops that anyone in the group had ever found before. My opinion may be colored by the fact that the visibility on the day we were there was relatively poor but we did find a lot of interesting stuff to photograph, and our guide, Marco, was a fellow slug nut, so he delighted in pointing out nudibranchs I wouldnt even have recognized as ANIMALS without his help.
I have to say something about the guides, and the staff in general. In both places, the guides were knowledgeable and had fantastic critter-spotting eyes. ALL of the dive staff were cheerful, friendly, and sometimes almost overly helpful. Either Atlantis does an extremely good job training their help, or people enjoy their jobs, because the atmosphere is really a happy one.
To wrap up, Id like to tell a story of why one might want to dive with a relatively expensive, high end operation like this (apart from the things Ive already listed that were wonderful).
After three days in Sabang, we were to spend a day of travel to get to Dumaguete. We took the 45 minute boat ride to Batangas, and the two hour bus ride to the airport, and got on the Cebu Airlines flight to Dumaguete. An hour and a half later, the plane tried to land, but crosswinds were too strong. After two tries, they flew off to the airport at Cebu, the next island over, and put down to wait to see if the squalls would pass. Unfortunately, Dumaguete then told them it was too LATE to land there, so the airline wanted to take us back to Manila. They told us, You can rebook your flights for any time in the next 30 days, but that wasnt going to help our group, which was on a tight schedule. 15 people mutinied and demanded to be let off the airplane where we were, with the thought that we could find land transportation to the south end of the island and take a ferry across to Dumaguete the following day.
So, there we were . . . in the Philippines, in a place we werent meant to be, in the dark, with no knowledge of the area at all. Our group leader got on the phone, and within about ten minutes, the Atlantis folks had found us a really nice and affordable hotel right near the airport, and had booked van transportation for all of us to the ferry, and bought the ferry tickets. Now, of course, this was added to our bill, but having the organization do all the leg work and front the money for all this unexpected trouble was amazing. I now know that, when we come back in October, if we run into any kind of trouble, all it will take is a phone call to people who will sort it out. This is fantastic insurance if you are going halfway around the world to go diving.
In the end, I really cant say enough good things about diving in the Philippines, or about the Atlantis organization. If they upgrade their coffee, I wont have a single thing to criticize!
This particular trip was what is known as a fam trip, or a trip to familiarize group leaders with a destination to which they are going to lead people. As such, our itinerary wasnt entirely normal it would not usually be advisable to try to hit two different locations and resorts in the short time we had for this trip, but the purpose was to see both of them. It was almost a unique trip for us, in that there were seven of us, only one of whom we had ever met before, and we had dived with none of them. Everyone was very experienced, and two were professional photographers. It is demoralizing to spend a week trying to take pictures in the company of pros!
The Resorts: We started at Atlantis Puerto Galera. Its not really in Puerto Galera, despite the name. Its in Sabang Bay, which is a little way from the town of PG, and across a small stretch of water. Its a very different little community, comprised entirely of dive resorts, which rather resemble dominos, with the narrow ends facing the bay, and the resort property extending sometimes quite far back and up the hill. One resort rubs shoulders with the next, and sometimes there are restaurants or stores interleaved. The bayshore is visually and practically busy and crowded, but if you are staying and diving with Atlantis, you need only go out into the fray if you choose to, because everything you need is right where you are. Except for flipflops, if you lose one in transit, as I did . . .
Sabang Bay
The resort itself is beautiful. Built of white stucco and accented with dark wood, it has a Mediterranean feel to it, and everything is immaculately clean. We had large rooms on the sea side of main street, which is the uneven and eccentric concrete walkway that forms the central thoroughfare for the motley town. Our room was actually a small suite, designed for families, so it had a double bed but also two bunk beds, accessed by . . . a TREE, inset with small shelves that made wonderful places to hang damp clothing. We had a delightful abundance of storage, all of which is open-fronted, something I appreciate, having left too many things in too many hotel rooms over the years. We had a large shower with abundant hot water, as well as an outdoor shower on our patio for sand removal.
Our room
We toured the entire resort and saw all the kinds of rooms they have, and even the smaller rooms are quite nice and have adequate storage. One thing about this place, though be sure your knees are in good shape! The stairs to our room were both steep and had a very big rise. The other stairs had more reasonable step sizes, but the resort is built on a hill, so all but the closest rooms involve a bit of a climb. You dont have to do it with dive gear, though the dive center has plenty of room for everything you are going to use in the water, with both hanging rods for suits and racks and cubbies for fins, masks, gauges, and anything else.
Meals are taken in the large, open air dining room. Breakfast has a menu, which is unnecessary after the first couple of days, as it doesnt change and it is the same at both resorts. Most of it is standard fancy breakfast fare omelettes, scrambles, ham, pancakes, waffles, and French toast. For the lighter appetite, they also have muesli with yogurt, and they have oatmeal on the menu, but it is the real thing and takes 20 minutes to cook. We never had that much time for breakfast, so I never tried it. My best breakfast was an omelette with green peppers and onions and Thai sweet chili paste (my own invention). They have espresso at breakfast (it costs extra the rest of the day, which I thought a bit strange, but I guess its kind of labor-intensive). One of the few things I was disappointed in was that the coffee I thought was AWFUL. But the tea was good, so that was fine.
Lunch and dinner change from day to day, and are put up on chalkboards. Each meal has a starter (usually choice of two), an entrée, and a dessert. No one can believe it if you dont want to eat all three! The menu always has a vegetarian option, and although the cuisine tended heavily toward rich sauces and pasta, there was always something I thought sounded good. And some (maybe all I ate quite late a couple of times due to night dives) nights they have a Mongolian stir-fry, which consists of a selection of fresh vegetables and meats, along with things like garlic and fresh ginger, and a chili powder, which I recommend viewing with definite respect.
The bar at PG is the 50 bar, which lies between the dive center and the beach. Tom Tom presides over it, and he runs the music, which I thought was wonderful. As I went from my room (over the bar) to the dive center, I always wanted to dance. I could have spent a lot of time sitting in the bar, if we hadnt always been diving.There is a beautiful pool, which I never saw anyone use, and just past it is the spa, which offers truly wonderful massages for very reasonable prices. There is a classroom, in which we had meetings, and a large and well-appointed camera room, with air guns, lots of electrical outlets, and cubbies for your camera bags or extra lenses or other gear.
The second part of our trip was at Atlantis Dumaguete. Although the two resorts have a lot in common, they are also quite different. Dumaguete is not actually in town at all, and it takes a half hour or more of driving from the town to get there. It lies in a very rural stretch of coastline, with an almost vacant lot on one side, and a private home on the other. Like PG, the Dumaguete property is narrow and deep, but it is also flat. The architecture is different, looking more Polynesian than Mediterranean, but the property is equally immaculate, pretty, and beautifully landscaped. The pool is stunning, but again, I never saw anyone in it.
Again, we had rooms facing the ocean, and although there is an upcharge for those rooms, I would HIGHLY recommend them. We slept with the doors open and the AC off, with the sound of the surf in the room, and it was delightful. Like PG, there are standard rooms, sea view rooms, and suites. Unlike PG, the rooms arent oversupplied with storage, but each has a closet. When I complained that ours had only one shelf, which was almost entirely occupied by the safe, I came back that afternoon to find they had INSTALLED a second shelf while we were diving. The Atlantis folks take their promise to make you happy quite seriously.
Our room at Dumaguete
The dining room at Dumaguete sits right above the beach, so you are taking in the ocean view while you eat. The menu and meal procedure is the same, except that Dumaguete doesnt have the Mongolian stir fry option, to my disappointment. Dumaguete also has a classroom and a large camera room, as well as a similarly well laid-out dive center. I should mention that both resorts had a good supply of critter ID books, a necessity in a place where we were constantly finding the weird and the wonderful! The resort here, being built on a flat lot, doesnt challenge the knees the worst you are going to have do is one flight of normal, wooden stairs.
View from the dining room at sunset
---------- Post added March 21st, 2014 at 12:01 PM ----------
The Dive Op: Both places have excellent operations. Each has a diver area which is composed of sections of hanging bars and racks, separated by a double row of cubbies. When you arrive, you will find a cubbie with your name already neatly labeled on it. There are plenty of hangers for suits, and benches to sit on while getting into them. Each place has very large, deep tanks for rinsing masks, fins, suits, and cameras each tank is carefully labeled so that cameras are not mixed with the other gear. Floors are textured or matted with non-slip, which is nice when your feet are wet. A large fan moves air through the storage area, so that things do dry, despite the humid climate.
Nitrox is available and encouraged, and made by a membrane system. Our mixes were pretty much spot-on, as would be expected. You are required to analyze your tank and log it before diving; they will not assemble your gear until an analysis sticker is on the tank. For the most part, the o-rings seemed in good condition I only saw an occasional champagne bubble leak from the yoke reg users. A lot of the tanks have Pro valves, so it was not a big deal to get DIN tanks for us.
Divers handle their own exposure protection, masks, fins and weight belts. The resort staff handles getting the rigs assembled and onto the boats. I was delighted to discover that a lot of the staff dive backplates, so unlike our trip to Indonesia, our gear was not strange to anybody.
Although Dumaguete has a house reef which you can dive from shore, in practice, all the diving is done from boats. The boats range from skiffs to medium or large bangkas. The skiffs varied in PG, the freeboard was lower, and one sat to get into the gear. In Dumaguete, the hull was higher, and I at least was essentially standing when gearing up, which I actually preferred. You put on mask and fins, and the staff brings your rig to you and stabilizes it while you get into the straps. I liked standing, because it made it MUCH easier to get my crotch strap done up. Im not sure it made any difference to anybody else.
The bangkas are a bit daunting at first glance. Theyre large open boats with canvas roofs and outriggers. They are used to get out to the islands (Verde and Apo) and for ferrying guests from Batangas to Sabang. When diving from them, one wades out into the water and hands up fins, camera, and weight belt, and then climbs into the boat. When you board for ferrying, you have a ramp, so you dont have to get wet in your street clothes. Entry from the skiffs and the small bangkas was by back roll, and from the large boat at Apo, by giant stride. Reboarding is done by floating into the space between the hull and the outrigger and catching the line strung there. You doff gear in the water and the staff pull it up, then you take off your fins and climb the ladder. Unless you are diving with Marco, our DM at Dumaguete, who sneaks underneath you and takes your fins off before you can get to it. I found this extremely unnerving the first time he did it, simply because no one had ever removed my fins for me before. But he doesnt do it until you are solidly attached to the ladder, and I got used to it. In rough water, this process looks formidable, but it was actually quite easy.
Bangkas waiting to go out
Getting into the water
Photo by Christopher Bartlett/Indigo Safaris
In both PG and Dumaguete, the boat rides to the coastal dives are quite short. I think our longest one was about 15 minutes, to the giant clam site in PG. This means you spend your surface intervals at the resort, which is pleasant. On the island excursions (Verde and Apo) we did three dives off the big boat, with a break between the first two and the third for lunch. At Verde, it was served on land, and at Apo, on the boat. They manage quite a spread for having to haul all the food from home! The boats are well supplied with cold water and soft drinks which are available any time, and also with hot tea and coffee for those who have gotten chilled.
Buffet on the boat
The big boats are supplied with an O2 kit which is hung in a conspicuous place. I didnt inspect the contents. I didnt ask if the small boats had oxygen on them, and if they do, its not as well marked.
The Diving: Sabangs coastal diving was mostly sloping reef, with some sites that had ledges. The reefs are STUNNING, second only to Rangiroa in my experience for color, diversity of corals, and density of life. There is a wide variety of reef fish, although not in big schools, and a lot of cryptic critters to be found in the niches and especially in the sandy areas between the coral heads. To my absolute delight, slugs are frequent, and many are big enough to find easily. I think by the second day of diving, Peter had identified 15 different species that he had photographed. There was current on almost all the dives, but it wasnt ever very strong, and for the most part, made for a nice drift. Visibility during our trip ranged from very good to okay. I think the lowest was the clam dive, where Id say it was about 25 feet or so.
Verde Island was the high point of the Sabang stay. On one tip of the island is a pinnacle called the Dropoff, which has dramatic structure, and attracts a plethora of fish, both small reef fish and predators. It also had the most current of any of the dives we did. I thought the beginning of the dive was rather challenging, but our compatriots from Florida thought we were wusses. Unfortunately, the site is quite exposed and the weather had turned windy, so the conditions were deemed too difficult for us to do a second dive there. We did two more on the lee side of the island, one of which resulted in a group separation due to current. I was pleased that the boats (there were several in the area) picked up our SMB and DiveAlert whistle fairly quickly, and we didnt spend much time drifting at all.
Dumaguete is quite different. The coastal diving is muck diving dark sea floors of mixed silt and sand, punctuated by coral clumps and mooring buoys. It may not sound inspiring, but the variety of unusual marine life you find in such places is amazing. There was very little current here.
Bristle worm
The boat trip is to Apo Island, which I think would be really stunning, if we hadnt spent three days on the gorgeous reefs at Sabang. We did see amazing coral formations, with the biggest tabletops that anyone in the group had ever found before. My opinion may be colored by the fact that the visibility on the day we were there was relatively poor but we did find a lot of interesting stuff to photograph, and our guide, Marco, was a fellow slug nut, so he delighted in pointing out nudibranchs I wouldnt even have recognized as ANIMALS without his help.
I have to say something about the guides, and the staff in general. In both places, the guides were knowledgeable and had fantastic critter-spotting eyes. ALL of the dive staff were cheerful, friendly, and sometimes almost overly helpful. Either Atlantis does an extremely good job training their help, or people enjoy their jobs, because the atmosphere is really a happy one.
To wrap up, Id like to tell a story of why one might want to dive with a relatively expensive, high end operation like this (apart from the things Ive already listed that were wonderful).
After three days in Sabang, we were to spend a day of travel to get to Dumaguete. We took the 45 minute boat ride to Batangas, and the two hour bus ride to the airport, and got on the Cebu Airlines flight to Dumaguete. An hour and a half later, the plane tried to land, but crosswinds were too strong. After two tries, they flew off to the airport at Cebu, the next island over, and put down to wait to see if the squalls would pass. Unfortunately, Dumaguete then told them it was too LATE to land there, so the airline wanted to take us back to Manila. They told us, You can rebook your flights for any time in the next 30 days, but that wasnt going to help our group, which was on a tight schedule. 15 people mutinied and demanded to be let off the airplane where we were, with the thought that we could find land transportation to the south end of the island and take a ferry across to Dumaguete the following day.
So, there we were . . . in the Philippines, in a place we werent meant to be, in the dark, with no knowledge of the area at all. Our group leader got on the phone, and within about ten minutes, the Atlantis folks had found us a really nice and affordable hotel right near the airport, and had booked van transportation for all of us to the ferry, and bought the ferry tickets. Now, of course, this was added to our bill, but having the organization do all the leg work and front the money for all this unexpected trouble was amazing. I now know that, when we come back in October, if we run into any kind of trouble, all it will take is a phone call to people who will sort it out. This is fantastic insurance if you are going halfway around the world to go diving.
In the end, I really cant say enough good things about diving in the Philippines, or about the Atlantis organization. If they upgrade their coffee, I wont have a single thing to criticize!
).
