Hi!
Cebu: The airport (Mactan) is 30 minutes from one of the dive centers I dove with last December 2019. The dive center picked me up from my accommodations too, without extra charges. It is pretty easy to get a taxi within the city, where there is also a mall. Plenty of restaurants around too.
From Mactan, many people take a 6-hour bus ride to the Maya New Roro port, then take a ferry (an outrigger) to
Malapascua, which serves as a base for dive operations that head out at 5am to see the Thresher sharks at Monad Shoal. With a rented car the ride is about 5 hours long.
Moalboal is accessible by a 3-hour bus/van ride, which is known for its sardine run. From Moalboal it is even possible to get to
Dumaguete within 3 hours by bus and boat.
Anilao: The airport (NAIA) lies approximately 3 hours away from Anilao. Depending on traffic, the airport lies 30 minutes to 1hr away from the Cubao bus terminal where you can take a bus that costs PHP207 to the Batangas Grand Terminal. From Batangas Grand Terminal you would then take a jeepney that takes you to the municipality of Mabini, then within Mabini you can take another jeepney or a tricycle that takes you to the resort. I can't remember the jeepney/tricycle prices from this trip but I spent under PHP100 one-way.
By private car, toll fees fetch about PHP400 and with today's prices you'll need a gas allotment of PHP1500 one-way. It's possible to rent a car with a hired driver, though am not sure how much that costs as we'd always just been taking private cars. Within Anilao there are no taxis, you will have to travel by tricycle or by jeepney. There are no malls within Anilao, but private resorts often have their own restaurants. There are often
lomihans along the main road too.
- Decent lodging at reasonable prices
There are both lavish and modest accommodations in either Cebu and Anilao. The resort I often dive with for fun dives in Anilao offers an air-conditioned room for P3000 a night that fits 2 people, and if you're staying a while you could probably get some kind of discount. The main difference between the two is that Cebu's touristic operations are ongoing the whole week, whereas Anilao is considered a weekend destination. Because of this some resorts offer big discounts for people staying over the weekdays, and many resorts even close operations during that time if nobody's booked.
Cebu: I find that it's a fantastic base if you want a dive trip with much variety and don't mind long drives. Aside from the thresher sharks there's Gato cave in Malapascua that has white-tip sharks and plenty of nudibranchs. At Malapascua it's not uncommon to see Manta Rays either. Mactan has nudibranchs too:
Mactan Scuba Dive Center » Gallery
The sites in Cebu are mostly accessed by boat.
Anilao: It's true that Anilao is hailed the macro capital of the Philippines, there are plenty of muck sites that are easily accessible by shore. Plenty of frogfish and nudibranchs. They say that Anilao diving is "complete," as you have plenty of sites with soft or hard coral and an almost boundless variety of reef fish. Popular sites are Cathedral which sports schools of red-toothed triggerfish and a cross that was blessed by Pope John Paul II (blessed before it was brought into the water - the pope did not scuba dive), macro sites like Secret Bay and Basura, and there's a wreck of a building that burned and fell into the sea whose deepest point rests at around 30m at Dari Laut. We have even taken an outrigger out to Verde Island, though that was an uncommon and rather expensive endeavor. With a base in Anilao it's also possible to get to Puerto Galera in 3 hours.
In Anilao it's possible to stay at one resort and do both shore and boat dives from there, but you will have to shell out more money for gas for the sites further out.
- Are there strong currents in either place?
Cebu: My diving in Cebu was in Mactan and Malapascua, where we experienced moderate currents: We did two dives around the island of Malapascua itself and they were rather tiring, but nothing dangerous. Also, that was about a week after a huge typhoon. Monad shoal is 30 minutes out into the middle of the sea, but you take a line down than hold onto a horizontal line anchored to the shoal so there's actually little swimming involved overall. In Mactan we were drifting a bit but again, nothing very serious.
Anilao: Anilao is mostly sheltered from the open sea, so the chances of being washed out into the ocean aren't high. There are a couple of sites with strong downward current, but conditions are mostly very calm.
- Is there a chamber nearby - as well as reasonable health care facilities?
Aside from the hyperbaric chambers on the list above, there is also a chamber at St. Patrick's Hospital in Batangas City. Treatment here can get rather expensive as it's a private hospital so those without insurance often opt to get treated at the Lung Center of the Philippines in Metro Manila, a 3-hour drive away. There was actually a chamber installed in Mabini in the mid-2010s but they have not brought it into operation. Here is a different list of chambers and numbers with the addition of the St. Patrick chamber:
Dive Emergency Contacts
- Primary focus is macro photography
There are macro sites in Cebu. You do however have a chance to see some really rare critters in Anilao.
- Anything else that I don't know to ask about ...
It would be nice to keep your schedule flexible because a typhoon can really mar your plans - not only for the duration of the typhoon itself, but even for a week or two afterwards. We were planning to go to Gato cave in Malapascua but due to the typhoon in the preceding week, visibility conditions were too bad for the dive to be worth doing. We were lucky that a Thresher shark swam really close to the shoal, because with good visibility one could see plenty of Threshers off into the distance.
In short, Anilao's a bit harder to get to, but it's totally possible to settle in one place and do all your diving from there. Cebu offers plenty of unique diving experiences if you're willing to do the travelling, but I personally would not do the trip if I were to dive only in Mactan.
I hope this was helpful!
Jose
