I just came back from a two-week trip to the Philippines. The first half was a diving vacation; the second was mainly work 9conference) with a couple of dives squeezed in. A quick note to give back to the community and a few photos.
A few general notes - the water is much colder than I anticipated. My wife really wished she brought her 7mm wetsuit instead of 5. She borrowed shorty from every shop. I started doing that in PG where we had 24C water on the first day. Biodiversity is amazing, especially for small creatures. It's a pain to get there, but once you are in that part of the world, diving is a must.
1) 3 nights/ 7 dives - Anilao. We stayed in Buceo - no complaints. I like the simplicity of this diving-oriented operation. The accommodation is okay for the price, though it is more expensive than PG. The food is good - we mainly stuck with Filipino cuisine options. The sea was a bit rough, so we mainly did close-by sites except for the first day, where we crossed to dive near Maricaban Island. We also did a blackwater dive (- amazing!) and a night dive on a house reef (excellent). Bottom times were around 60min
2) Puerta Galera (4 nights/9 dives) - We stayed in Steps and dived with Captain Greg. Happy with both choices. Steps are on the hill, but we left the diving gear in CG, and folks in Tamarind restaurant (the best in Sabang) who are under the same ownership helped us with the bags. I feel like we got a great deal on accommodation, $45/night for a superior room, and CG diving rates are unbelievingly low. Compared to Anilao, I feel like the water temperature was 1-2C lower and visibility slightly worth it (that may have to do with the storm on the day of our transfer) but the diversity of small creatures is as good. Bottom times were a bit shorter, perhaps averaging 50min but justified given the dive profiles and water temperature. The only thing that was considerably better in Anilao was night diving. On the last day, we went to a muck site in Batangas channel by San Antonio Island, which was perhaps more diverse than all our anilao dives.
3) We did one night-shore dive and one wreck dive on Boracay with Calypso. It's not as good as PG/Anilao, but it's still very enjoyable. The night dive was 60min, but the wreck was only 33 min - disappointing as we were told to go up when we still had 10+min of non-deco time and a half tank of air. I think one of the other divers ran out of air, and there was only one guide per group.
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Hopefully, you can visit again here in Boracay and try diving at Crocodile Island.
