Background: My boyfriend (BF) and I are budget-backpacking-scuba diving SEA for ~8 months (2/8 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!
Siquijor (San Juan area): We read some reports about the reefs on the south side of Siquijor (San Juan) and decided to go check them out.
Day 0: We left Apo Island around 7:00. From Malatapay Wharf, we walked up to the 7-11 at the highway road and ate breakfast and replenished our supplies. We weren’t worried about catching a bus to Dumaguete, because you could see a Ceres bus or jeepney/multicab whizzing by every few minutes.
We took a Ceres bus (aircon luckily) back to Dumaguete (124P). From the Ceres bus station, we took a tricycle to the port (40P). We arrived around 9:00 and the next ferry was leaving at 10:00 (Montenegro RORO, 478P).
The line was quite long to buy tickets, and after we were done, we hustled through the port entrance to pay the terminal fee (30P) and get onto the ferry. We thought it would take ~2 hrs but it took between 1-1.5hrs.
When you get off at Siquijor Port, there are lots of tuk-tuks lined up to catch people getting off their ferries. These tuk-tuks have laminated cards stating that the ride to San Juan costs 350P and will not budge. If you walk right past them, up to the main road, you can hail a passing tuk-tuk for cheaper (250P). It was about a 20mins ride.
The accommodation: I picked Republika Beach Bar & Accommodation as it had a dive shop (Dive Point) built in as well as nice private rooms (a treat for surviving Apo Island). Although there is no shortage of rooms in San Juan, they are mostly shared dorm rooms, which we didn’t want since we have to spread out our gear to dry.
The basic facilities of Republika themselves are pretty nice: good aircon and clean & comfortable rooms. It’s also located directly on the waterfront, which provides a cool breeze from the ocean and nice views from the restaurant.
HOWEVER the wifi/internet service is horrible. For some reason, the wifi only worked in the restaurant and not in the rooms. To make matters worse, the rooms created some sort of internet dead zone where we couldn’t get service. I messaged the property manager about this problem and her response was that the wifi provider was “having problems” and offered me the password to their StarLink wifi… which sounded good until I realized it was the restaurant wifi, which didn’t extend to the room and I already had access to. I told her that it didn’t reach the room and she stopped responding completely.
The food at the restaurant was mediocre. They had a lot of options but nothing stood out or seemed appetizing (this may just be our personal preferences though). The price was pretty expensive (300-500P per item) but in line with everything in the area. Food prices don’t go down until you cross the San Juan town area to the other side.
Once the restaurant closes (20:30ish) all of the staff leave and there is no one left on the property to manage anything that might come up.
The dive operation: We met with Bozi the main (sole?) person running the dive shop after we checked in to go over paperwork and what we wanted to see.
Bozi is from Slovenia and either there was a strong language barrier or he didn’t care for what we were saying. He was extremely dismissive when we brought up sites we wanted to see and strongly kept advocating for the house reef. It seemed more like he just didn’t want to go anywhere else. They don’t have a dive boat and thus Bozi is required to drive guests in the shop’s pickup truck (from the ‘90s and falling apart lol) to the different sites.
He also didn’t want us to do our paperwork until the next day. This isn’t really a problem but we found it strange, since it would push the dives back.
He also said that he only does 2-tank dives and no 3 dive days. Although initially peeved, this ended up being fine since we didn’t want to do a 3rd dive since the sites weren’t that good.
The tanks were filled well to 2900-3200 PSI. We set up our own gear and changed our own tanks but Bozi carted the tanks to/from the dive shop and loaded the truck.
All the diving is shore-diving. Siquijor is also surrounded by shallow reef flats, so once you get into the water, it’s a long walk/back-swim off the shore. On the way to the farther sites, we could sit in the cab since we were dry. Once we got wet, we sat in the bed of the truck with the gear on the way back or moving between sites.
Bozi did an okay job briefing us about each site and telling us where he thought the best corals would be. Underwater he was a poor dive guide. Although we told him that we like to go slowly so we can inspect coral health, he always swam very fast and we often lost sight of him since he never turned around to check on us.
There was no water provided for the SIs, but Republika had a big jug of filtered water in the room so we refilled out water bottles from that. Bozi bought us some pastries/breads for the SIs on the other sites.
The dives were all 50-60mins and we took 1hr SIs. In the morning we were ready by ~8:15 for the first dive at 8:30-9:00 (depending on how far the site was). We then had our SI and started our second dive around 11:00-12:00. We would be done and back by 12:00-13:00.
The payment was also annoying. They wanted it all completely in cash (which for 12 dives would’ve been a hassle…). We compromised on sending half through Wise and the other half in cash. Bozi said that they were low on cash since they had been accepting lots of Wise payments lately and advised us to the nearest ATM. Not sure why he couldn’t go to the ATM himself…? (Probably due to ATM fees was our guess).
As a note, there was plenty of space to hang our gear outside on the Republika property. Because of the direct breeze coming from the ocean, our things dried very well overnight.
Another note: it seems like “where to dive” based on visibility changes depending on what season it is. During the wet season, the south side has poor visibility and bad waves, whereas the north side has great vis and is very calm. This flips (supposedly) during the dry season.
Day 1: We honestly had decided to go to a different shop after today to be able to dive the sites we wanted over the next 2 days, but after the dives Bozi made plans for us to leave the house reef the next day, so we decided to stay for convenience.
Dive 1: Republika Coral Ridge (house reef)
Max depth 62ft, 61 mins, min water temp 82F.
The corals/reef scape here aligned with what we expected from Siquijor. The dropoff was storm- and wave damaged, similar to Rock Point West at Apo Island, with lots of fingering porites but with most destroyed by storms. Below 5m the good stuff starts at 12m with several hispidose acropora and pavona fields that go down to ~22-23m. Between them at the dropoff is a mixed variety of assorted hard corals with pretty good health.
Dive 2: Republika Coral Ridge
Max depth 65ft, 64 mins, min water temp 82F.
Day 2:
Dive 1: Maite Marine Sanctuary
Max depth 85ft, 58 mins, min water temp 82F.
Not as good as Republika. We had to wade through a huge mass of branches/logs/trash on the shore. The condition of the top of the reef (0-5m) was super similar to Republika but without any of the fields of acropora or pavona at depth. Still some decent assorted hard corals from 5-12m depth with fair coverage (~50%).
Dive 2: Sawang (right side)
Max depth 61ft, 57 mins, min water temp 82F.
When you enter, there are some nice 5m wide patches of short branching acropora, both on and below bommies. Past 5m, you get to see a diverse coral slope that starts with a decent amount of healthy branching porites and slowly morphs into the same mixed corals at depth as the other sites. The coverage here seemed to be the highest of everything we saw (minus the deep fields of acropora at Republika).
Day 3:
Dive 1: Caticugan Marine Sanctuary
Max depth 70ft, 67 mins, min water temp 83F.
The typical fringing reed wall dive. Similar to Moalboal in visibility and fish, but with decently better corals from 5-20m. There is one narrow strip of branching acropora from 10-22m at the buoy-marked section of the drop off. The corals in the shallows (0-5m) are still heavily damaged from the typhoons and wax and wane significantly. Further in the reef flat (20m closer to shore), there are some decent soft corals and bouldering porites, though the live coverage is only around 50%.
Dive 2: Caticugan Marine Sanctuary
Max depth 70ft, 52 mins, min water temp 83F.
Day 4: Rest day to let our gear dry.
Final thoughts: If you are in Siquijor already, then it’s a fine enough place to get a few dives in; however, I would not recommend coming here specifically to dive. It’s a nice enough island but nothing stands out (from the water activities).
Siquijor (San Juan area): We read some reports about the reefs on the south side of Siquijor (San Juan) and decided to go check them out.
Day 0: We left Apo Island around 7:00. From Malatapay Wharf, we walked up to the 7-11 at the highway road and ate breakfast and replenished our supplies. We weren’t worried about catching a bus to Dumaguete, because you could see a Ceres bus or jeepney/multicab whizzing by every few minutes.
We took a Ceres bus (aircon luckily) back to Dumaguete (124P). From the Ceres bus station, we took a tricycle to the port (40P). We arrived around 9:00 and the next ferry was leaving at 10:00 (Montenegro RORO, 478P).
The line was quite long to buy tickets, and after we were done, we hustled through the port entrance to pay the terminal fee (30P) and get onto the ferry. We thought it would take ~2 hrs but it took between 1-1.5hrs.
When you get off at Siquijor Port, there are lots of tuk-tuks lined up to catch people getting off their ferries. These tuk-tuks have laminated cards stating that the ride to San Juan costs 350P and will not budge. If you walk right past them, up to the main road, you can hail a passing tuk-tuk for cheaper (250P). It was about a 20mins ride.
The accommodation: I picked Republika Beach Bar & Accommodation as it had a dive shop (Dive Point) built in as well as nice private rooms (a treat for surviving Apo Island). Although there is no shortage of rooms in San Juan, they are mostly shared dorm rooms, which we didn’t want since we have to spread out our gear to dry.
The basic facilities of Republika themselves are pretty nice: good aircon and clean & comfortable rooms. It’s also located directly on the waterfront, which provides a cool breeze from the ocean and nice views from the restaurant.
HOWEVER the wifi/internet service is horrible. For some reason, the wifi only worked in the restaurant and not in the rooms. To make matters worse, the rooms created some sort of internet dead zone where we couldn’t get service. I messaged the property manager about this problem and her response was that the wifi provider was “having problems” and offered me the password to their StarLink wifi… which sounded good until I realized it was the restaurant wifi, which didn’t extend to the room and I already had access to. I told her that it didn’t reach the room and she stopped responding completely.
The food at the restaurant was mediocre. They had a lot of options but nothing stood out or seemed appetizing (this may just be our personal preferences though). The price was pretty expensive (300-500P per item) but in line with everything in the area. Food prices don’t go down until you cross the San Juan town area to the other side.
Once the restaurant closes (20:30ish) all of the staff leave and there is no one left on the property to manage anything that might come up.
The dive operation: We met with Bozi the main (sole?) person running the dive shop after we checked in to go over paperwork and what we wanted to see.
Bozi is from Slovenia and either there was a strong language barrier or he didn’t care for what we were saying. He was extremely dismissive when we brought up sites we wanted to see and strongly kept advocating for the house reef. It seemed more like he just didn’t want to go anywhere else. They don’t have a dive boat and thus Bozi is required to drive guests in the shop’s pickup truck (from the ‘90s and falling apart lol) to the different sites.
He also didn’t want us to do our paperwork until the next day. This isn’t really a problem but we found it strange, since it would push the dives back.
He also said that he only does 2-tank dives and no 3 dive days. Although initially peeved, this ended up being fine since we didn’t want to do a 3rd dive since the sites weren’t that good.
The tanks were filled well to 2900-3200 PSI. We set up our own gear and changed our own tanks but Bozi carted the tanks to/from the dive shop and loaded the truck.
All the diving is shore-diving. Siquijor is also surrounded by shallow reef flats, so once you get into the water, it’s a long walk/back-swim off the shore. On the way to the farther sites, we could sit in the cab since we were dry. Once we got wet, we sat in the bed of the truck with the gear on the way back or moving between sites.
Bozi did an okay job briefing us about each site and telling us where he thought the best corals would be. Underwater he was a poor dive guide. Although we told him that we like to go slowly so we can inspect coral health, he always swam very fast and we often lost sight of him since he never turned around to check on us.
There was no water provided for the SIs, but Republika had a big jug of filtered water in the room so we refilled out water bottles from that. Bozi bought us some pastries/breads for the SIs on the other sites.
The dives were all 50-60mins and we took 1hr SIs. In the morning we were ready by ~8:15 for the first dive at 8:30-9:00 (depending on how far the site was). We then had our SI and started our second dive around 11:00-12:00. We would be done and back by 12:00-13:00.
The payment was also annoying. They wanted it all completely in cash (which for 12 dives would’ve been a hassle…). We compromised on sending half through Wise and the other half in cash. Bozi said that they were low on cash since they had been accepting lots of Wise payments lately and advised us to the nearest ATM. Not sure why he couldn’t go to the ATM himself…? (Probably due to ATM fees was our guess).
As a note, there was plenty of space to hang our gear outside on the Republika property. Because of the direct breeze coming from the ocean, our things dried very well overnight.
Another note: it seems like “where to dive” based on visibility changes depending on what season it is. During the wet season, the south side has poor visibility and bad waves, whereas the north side has great vis and is very calm. This flips (supposedly) during the dry season.
Day 1: We honestly had decided to go to a different shop after today to be able to dive the sites we wanted over the next 2 days, but after the dives Bozi made plans for us to leave the house reef the next day, so we decided to stay for convenience.
Dive 1: Republika Coral Ridge (house reef)
Max depth 62ft, 61 mins, min water temp 82F.
The corals/reef scape here aligned with what we expected from Siquijor. The dropoff was storm- and wave damaged, similar to Rock Point West at Apo Island, with lots of fingering porites but with most destroyed by storms. Below 5m the good stuff starts at 12m with several hispidose acropora and pavona fields that go down to ~22-23m. Between them at the dropoff is a mixed variety of assorted hard corals with pretty good health.
Dive 2: Republika Coral Ridge
Max depth 65ft, 64 mins, min water temp 82F.
Day 2:
Dive 1: Maite Marine Sanctuary
Max depth 85ft, 58 mins, min water temp 82F.
Not as good as Republika. We had to wade through a huge mass of branches/logs/trash on the shore. The condition of the top of the reef (0-5m) was super similar to Republika but without any of the fields of acropora or pavona at depth. Still some decent assorted hard corals from 5-12m depth with fair coverage (~50%).
Dive 2: Sawang (right side)
Max depth 61ft, 57 mins, min water temp 82F.
When you enter, there are some nice 5m wide patches of short branching acropora, both on and below bommies. Past 5m, you get to see a diverse coral slope that starts with a decent amount of healthy branching porites and slowly morphs into the same mixed corals at depth as the other sites. The coverage here seemed to be the highest of everything we saw (minus the deep fields of acropora at Republika).
Day 3:
Dive 1: Caticugan Marine Sanctuary
Max depth 70ft, 67 mins, min water temp 83F.
The typical fringing reed wall dive. Similar to Moalboal in visibility and fish, but with decently better corals from 5-20m. There is one narrow strip of branching acropora from 10-22m at the buoy-marked section of the drop off. The corals in the shallows (0-5m) are still heavily damaged from the typhoons and wax and wane significantly. Further in the reef flat (20m closer to shore), there are some decent soft corals and bouldering porites, though the live coverage is only around 50%.
Dive 2: Caticugan Marine Sanctuary
Max depth 70ft, 52 mins, min water temp 83F.
Day 4: Rest day to let our gear dry.
Final thoughts: If you are in Siquijor already, then it’s a fine enough place to get a few dives in; however, I would not recommend coming here specifically to dive. It’s a nice enough island but nothing stands out (from the water activities).
