dogdrjohn
Contributor
Short report on my week of diving at El Dorado Resort in Dauin (Dumaguete) Negros.
Nice place - $29US/night for a decent room with AC and cable TV and continental breakfast, free Nitrox, 18 dives for about $600 (extra charge for credit card) including shore, boat, night and trips to Apo and Suquijor (sp?) Islands and all sanctuary fees. Food was fine for 1 week, decent variety and reasonably priced, not many other places to eat nearby. Averaged 3 dives a day, including first dive at 11:30AM the day I arrived there at 9AM. First time diving in Pacific other than Hawaii and western Mexico. AMAZING CREATURES!!! Robust ghost pipefish, Ornate Ghostf Pipefish, Ribbon Eels, Amboyan (sp?) scorpionfish (very rare I was told), toadfish, frogfish on every dive from 1cm to nearly 1 foot long, colors - red, orange, green, white and orange, yellow and purple, white, and even a free-swimming black one that came after me and landed on my wetsuit and walked around on me - I could hear the other divers laughing underwater, more than 2 dozen different nudibrancs, many types of lionfish and anemonefish (Nemo!), turtles, sea snakes, many different eels, anemone shrimp, anemone crabs. mantis shrimp holding her eggs, Leaf scorpionfish - white, green, brown - and Flamboyant Cuttlefish!!!! (What I came to see) Dove Ducomi Pier three times - amazing diversity of creatures on pilings. Great hard and soft corals on Apo and Siquijor Islands, but I preferred the critter diving near shore to see all that weird stuff you will never see in the Caribbean Got a picture of a juvenile Sweetlips - cutest little thing but constantly moving like a tiny butterfly, lucky to get 1 picture in focus out of many attempts. I would go back again except for >$1000 plane fare and 17 hours travel just to Manila, the another 1 hour flight to Dumaguete after an overnight in Manila each way. But with a free ticket with miles from Northwest Airline from Portland to Manila I probably spent about $1000 total and had the dive trip of my life. Caribbean diving will seem bland after that trip, but I am already looking forward to my next trip to Curacao in November.
Nice place - $29US/night for a decent room with AC and cable TV and continental breakfast, free Nitrox, 18 dives for about $600 (extra charge for credit card) including shore, boat, night and trips to Apo and Suquijor (sp?) Islands and all sanctuary fees. Food was fine for 1 week, decent variety and reasonably priced, not many other places to eat nearby. Averaged 3 dives a day, including first dive at 11:30AM the day I arrived there at 9AM. First time diving in Pacific other than Hawaii and western Mexico. AMAZING CREATURES!!! Robust ghost pipefish, Ornate Ghostf Pipefish, Ribbon Eels, Amboyan (sp?) scorpionfish (very rare I was told), toadfish, frogfish on every dive from 1cm to nearly 1 foot long, colors - red, orange, green, white and orange, yellow and purple, white, and even a free-swimming black one that came after me and landed on my wetsuit and walked around on me - I could hear the other divers laughing underwater, more than 2 dozen different nudibrancs, many types of lionfish and anemonefish (Nemo!), turtles, sea snakes, many different eels, anemone shrimp, anemone crabs. mantis shrimp holding her eggs, Leaf scorpionfish - white, green, brown - and Flamboyant Cuttlefish!!!! (What I came to see) Dove Ducomi Pier three times - amazing diversity of creatures on pilings. Great hard and soft corals on Apo and Siquijor Islands, but I preferred the critter diving near shore to see all that weird stuff you will never see in the Caribbean Got a picture of a juvenile Sweetlips - cutest little thing but constantly moving like a tiny butterfly, lucky to get 1 picture in focus out of many attempts. I would go back again except for >$1000 plane fare and 17 hours travel just to Manila, the another 1 hour flight to Dumaguete after an overnight in Manila each way. But with a free ticket with miles from Northwest Airline from Portland to Manila I probably spent about $1000 total and had the dive trip of my life. Caribbean diving will seem bland after that trip, but I am already looking forward to my next trip to Curacao in November.
