Background: My boyfriend (BF) and I are budget-backpacking-scuba diving SEA for ~8 months (3/8 complete). Our goal is to see as much healthy hard coral in the Coral Triangle as possible. We brought all our own gear (excluding weights & tanks of course), including full 3mm wetsuits, which we carry in 75L backpacks. The prices listed are for two people, unless otherwise noted. Apologies if the report is too long!
Anda: We wanted to survey the impact of Typhoon Odette on the hard corals of the eastern side of Bohol.
Day 0: A medium-length travel day (Camiguin -> Anda).
Left Kokomo early in the morning to catch the 9:30 Super Shuttle Ferry from Balbagon Port back to Jagna (1532P + 60P terminal fee). It only took 3 hrs this time (as opposed to 3.5 on the way there). Being earlier in the morning, the temp was better and there was also a good amount of wind to keep us cool.
After eating lunch, we waited at the bus stop for a bus heading to Anda (important note: the buses to Ubay/Talibon that pass by do NOT go through Anda, so it’s good to wait for a bus with Anda as its end destination unless you want to get off at the Guindulman Public Market and take a tricycle from there). Unfortunately, we had to wait around 30mins in the hot sun. The bus ride was around 1 hr (140P) to the center of Anda.
The accommodation: I was not impressed. The room was very small, barely bigger than the queen size bed. It was a traditional style cottage, which unfortunately meant that the thatched roof kept shedding pieces of wood in the room and bathroom.
The floor was also caving in in some places, especially underneath the bed, where cardboard was placed over the floor (but you could see a small hole into the outdoors through it).
In the bathroom, the water pressure was nonexistent and the spray nozzle was broken, so that when you took a shower, the entire bathroom did as well (walls & all).
I got the impression that Ander Divers Garden Resort was neglected in favor of its bigger, more expensive older brother: Old Castle Beach Resort, which was owned & operated by the Garden Resort’s owner’s (Marlon) father (Michael).
The AC & hot water heater for the shower worked really well. There was a small little “porch” area that we used to hang our clothes, which didn’t work very well for the Neoprene.
The food in the restaurant was pretty good but took a long time to make, even if we were the only people who had ordered (min 30 mins for anything). There was a freshwater jug available so that we could refill our own bottles.
There was a pool that seemed clean and was used by other guests. The property itself was very small.
The dive operation:
It was very disorganized and to be frank, I didn’t enjoy it. There were no DMs and we dove either with Marlon or with Michael and communication was extremely minimal.
After we had checked in, I texted Marlon via WhatsApp to discuss potential dive sites that we wanted to do (mostly in the Virgen and Basdio regions). He informed me that the shop’s boat was dry-docked for the low season and the plan was to shore dive the house reef area. I assume that this was his plan for us for the 3 days we wanted to dive, since he seemed rather irritated and was very resistant to our desire that we wanted to dive elsewhere. He said he would talk to his father to see if anything was possible, since after the first day he would be teaching OW courses anyway and wouldn’t be diving with us anymore.
The first day, we met him at 8:15am to take our gear to Old Castle in a small multicab (~5 mins) along with another diver he had picked up from a different accommodation. At Old Castle, we set up our own gear on tanks, which were then maneuvered back into the multicab so we could drive a few minutes (<5) to the main public beach (Quinale Beach), where we would shore dive from. Our first dive wasn’t until 09:34 so I was already displeased at how long everything was taking. He didn’t bring any additional tanks so after the dive we loaded back up into the multicab, went back to Old Castle, and changed the tanks there and took a 1.5+ hr surface interval (waiting for an Old Castle resort guest who wanted to join us for the second dive). The second dive was at 12:21. Marlon told us that he found us boring divers and asked if we could do a self-guided dive for the second dive, as he didn’t want the other two guests to get mad at him for showing us coral. This was honestly just shocking for liability reasons…
Afterwards, Michael informed us that we could shore dive Basdio the next day, as he would take us in his pickup truck.
The second day, Michael picked us up at 9:00 (but he had all tanks etc. in his truck so no need to go to Old Castle first) and we drove to a public beach in Basdio. We assembled our gear at the site and then climbed down many steps to the beach to get into the water. This time there was also another resort worker with us, who brought down the second set of tanks to the beach/carried the used tanks up so that we didn’t have to climb a lot of elevation between the dives.
Michael also told us that he was bored during the first dive and asked us to dive without him for the second dive. He said he would ask around to see if we could use a fishing boat for the third day.
The third day, the fishing boat didn’t work out, so we ended up only doing one dive again at the first location. Like before, Michael didn’t want to dive with us and simply dropped us off/picked us up at the beach with the multicab.
Generally, the tanks were filled in a range of 2700-3000 PSI. The tanks were quite old and it was difficult to screw in our regulators (DIN). Both Marlon and Michael were friendly enough people but terrible DMs.
Day 1: Anda
Dive 1: Quinale Beach Right
Max depth 67ft, 71 mins, min water temp 84F.
Dive 2: Quinale Beach Left
Max depth 35ft, 71 mins, min water temp 85F.
The shallow area before the drop off had the most amazing, huge table corals that measured around ~15ft/3m in diameter. It felt as if several massive table corals had merged into one. Very neat. The wall itself here was quite boring, mostly sponges and not even interesting soft corals.
Day 2: Basdio
Dive 1: Norbert’s Beach Left
Max depth 55ft, 75 mins, min water temp 84F.
Dive 2: Norbert’s Beach Left
Max depth 58ft, 82 mins, min water temp 84F.
Here the walls were quite interesting because there was more Acropora on the walls themselves than normal (they usually drop off after 30ft!). Also sad to see here were many bamboo fish cages on the bottom, with long rubber lines snaking up the wall to the shore.
Day 3: Anda
Dive 1: Quinale Beach Left
Max depth 36ft, 92 mins, min water temp 84F.
Since we found out quite late about no boat being available, we decided to just look at the nice table corals one last time.
Day 4: Planned rest day to let gear dry.
Final thoughts: I liked that we were able to do long dives (80-90mins). I didn’t like that I had to fight to not dive the same house reef dive 6-9 times in a row and that that was the plan from the DMs. It’s a shame that we couldn’t properly see Anda. Unfortunately the budget constricted us here, since Ander Divers was much cheaper than Magic Ocean/Amun Ini (which were really unaffordable). Seems like we have to come back to properly survey Anda when we’re not on a budget in the future.
Anda: We wanted to survey the impact of Typhoon Odette on the hard corals of the eastern side of Bohol.
Day 0: A medium-length travel day (Camiguin -> Anda).
Left Kokomo early in the morning to catch the 9:30 Super Shuttle Ferry from Balbagon Port back to Jagna (1532P + 60P terminal fee). It only took 3 hrs this time (as opposed to 3.5 on the way there). Being earlier in the morning, the temp was better and there was also a good amount of wind to keep us cool.
After eating lunch, we waited at the bus stop for a bus heading to Anda (important note: the buses to Ubay/Talibon that pass by do NOT go through Anda, so it’s good to wait for a bus with Anda as its end destination unless you want to get off at the Guindulman Public Market and take a tricycle from there). Unfortunately, we had to wait around 30mins in the hot sun. The bus ride was around 1 hr (140P) to the center of Anda.
The accommodation: I was not impressed. The room was very small, barely bigger than the queen size bed. It was a traditional style cottage, which unfortunately meant that the thatched roof kept shedding pieces of wood in the room and bathroom.
The floor was also caving in in some places, especially underneath the bed, where cardboard was placed over the floor (but you could see a small hole into the outdoors through it).
In the bathroom, the water pressure was nonexistent and the spray nozzle was broken, so that when you took a shower, the entire bathroom did as well (walls & all).
I got the impression that Ander Divers Garden Resort was neglected in favor of its bigger, more expensive older brother: Old Castle Beach Resort, which was owned & operated by the Garden Resort’s owner’s (Marlon) father (Michael).
The AC & hot water heater for the shower worked really well. There was a small little “porch” area that we used to hang our clothes, which didn’t work very well for the Neoprene.
The food in the restaurant was pretty good but took a long time to make, even if we were the only people who had ordered (min 30 mins for anything). There was a freshwater jug available so that we could refill our own bottles.
There was a pool that seemed clean and was used by other guests. The property itself was very small.
The dive operation:
It was very disorganized and to be frank, I didn’t enjoy it. There were no DMs and we dove either with Marlon or with Michael and communication was extremely minimal.
After we had checked in, I texted Marlon via WhatsApp to discuss potential dive sites that we wanted to do (mostly in the Virgen and Basdio regions). He informed me that the shop’s boat was dry-docked for the low season and the plan was to shore dive the house reef area. I assume that this was his plan for us for the 3 days we wanted to dive, since he seemed rather irritated and was very resistant to our desire that we wanted to dive elsewhere. He said he would talk to his father to see if anything was possible, since after the first day he would be teaching OW courses anyway and wouldn’t be diving with us anymore.
The first day, we met him at 8:15am to take our gear to Old Castle in a small multicab (~5 mins) along with another diver he had picked up from a different accommodation. At Old Castle, we set up our own gear on tanks, which were then maneuvered back into the multicab so we could drive a few minutes (<5) to the main public beach (Quinale Beach), where we would shore dive from. Our first dive wasn’t until 09:34 so I was already displeased at how long everything was taking. He didn’t bring any additional tanks so after the dive we loaded back up into the multicab, went back to Old Castle, and changed the tanks there and took a 1.5+ hr surface interval (waiting for an Old Castle resort guest who wanted to join us for the second dive). The second dive was at 12:21. Marlon told us that he found us boring divers and asked if we could do a self-guided dive for the second dive, as he didn’t want the other two guests to get mad at him for showing us coral. This was honestly just shocking for liability reasons…
Afterwards, Michael informed us that we could shore dive Basdio the next day, as he would take us in his pickup truck.
The second day, Michael picked us up at 9:00 (but he had all tanks etc. in his truck so no need to go to Old Castle first) and we drove to a public beach in Basdio. We assembled our gear at the site and then climbed down many steps to the beach to get into the water. This time there was also another resort worker with us, who brought down the second set of tanks to the beach/carried the used tanks up so that we didn’t have to climb a lot of elevation between the dives.
Michael also told us that he was bored during the first dive and asked us to dive without him for the second dive. He said he would ask around to see if we could use a fishing boat for the third day.
The third day, the fishing boat didn’t work out, so we ended up only doing one dive again at the first location. Like before, Michael didn’t want to dive with us and simply dropped us off/picked us up at the beach with the multicab.
Generally, the tanks were filled in a range of 2700-3000 PSI. The tanks were quite old and it was difficult to screw in our regulators (DIN). Both Marlon and Michael were friendly enough people but terrible DMs.
Day 1: Anda
Dive 1: Quinale Beach Right
Max depth 67ft, 71 mins, min water temp 84F.
Dive 2: Quinale Beach Left
Max depth 35ft, 71 mins, min water temp 85F.
The shallow area before the drop off had the most amazing, huge table corals that measured around ~15ft/3m in diameter. It felt as if several massive table corals had merged into one. Very neat. The wall itself here was quite boring, mostly sponges and not even interesting soft corals.
Day 2: Basdio
Dive 1: Norbert’s Beach Left
Max depth 55ft, 75 mins, min water temp 84F.
Dive 2: Norbert’s Beach Left
Max depth 58ft, 82 mins, min water temp 84F.
Here the walls were quite interesting because there was more Acropora on the walls themselves than normal (they usually drop off after 30ft!). Also sad to see here were many bamboo fish cages on the bottom, with long rubber lines snaking up the wall to the shore.
Day 3: Anda
Dive 1: Quinale Beach Left
Max depth 36ft, 92 mins, min water temp 84F.
Since we found out quite late about no boat being available, we decided to just look at the nice table corals one last time.
Day 4: Planned rest day to let gear dry.
Final thoughts: I liked that we were able to do long dives (80-90mins). I didn’t like that I had to fight to not dive the same house reef dive 6-9 times in a row and that that was the plan from the DMs. It’s a shame that we couldn’t properly see Anda. Unfortunately the budget constricted us here, since Ander Divers was much cheaper than Magic Ocean/Amun Ini (which were really unaffordable). Seems like we have to come back to properly survey Anda when we’re not on a budget in the future.
