Background: My boyfriend (BF) and I are budget-backpacking-scuba diving SEA for the next ~8 months. 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!
Day 0: There were several mishaps with transit to Coron from Sablayan. The first plan was to take a ferry from San Jose (Bunso), which was unsuccessful because it was suspended in March for government inspection. The second plan was to take a ferry from Batangas (Atienza), which was unsuccessful and an awful experience. I will link a separate comment here where it’s explained. [Link Here]
Day 1: (Note that Day 1 became a travel day due to losing a day from the Atienza ferry experience). What ended up happening: We took a bus to Manila (580P) and arrived late, around 22:00. On the bus I booked a night in a hotel by the airport and last-minute, extremely pricy tickets on an early morning flight to Coron the next day via Cebu Pacific (~23,000P). RIP my valiant attempts to save money via ferry transfers.
Day 2: Woke up around 4:30, took a Grab to the airport, made our 7:00 flight to Coron. I was worried about our dive gear in our checked bags since it was a small propellor plane, but the flight was uneventful (1 hr?) and our gear arrived safely. We paid the Coron eco fees (400P) and took a shared van to Coron town (500P).
Our accommodation was Coron Backpackers Guest House and I do not recommend this accommodation unless you are not traveling with your dive gear. There was very little room to spread gear out on the floor to dry and no where to hang in the room. In addition, the showers/bathrooms are communal, so it was a real treat to rinse off our gear in them and then lug it back to the room through the shared common spaces.
We checked in with the dive shop (Maco Coron Diving Center) to sign paperwork.
At this point it was maybe 10:00 so we headed to the port to figure out if we could make a private snorkel trip happen on one of our days. We found a guy and set up a trip and then proceeded to take a trike to Siete Pecados (300P) for a half snorkel day. We paid the eco fees (200P) and hired a small bangka (500P) to take us around each Pecado.
We heard online that it still had beautiful corals left but were quite disappointed. The snorkeling here has degraded a lot since pictures/reports from 2017. While fish life was excellent (schools of barracuda, jacks, several juvenile napoleon wrasses, and 4+ turtles), the coral cover was mostly rubble. There were exceptions with 10m staghorn fields and some nice colonies of various hard corals, but they were concentrated in the northeast corner of the islands. The south side that used to be all staghorn corals is now 80% rubble.
Triked back to Coron (300P).
Day 3: Finally, our first dive day! This day we had 3 other dives with us, a couple that was OW and one AOW. They split us into 2 groups based on skill levels.
The dive operation: Both BF and I remarked that Maco felt the most “by the book” we had experienced so far in the Philippines. We had our first boat briefing, and the briefings of each dive site were good as well (included max depth, time, what they considered low air, even history of the wrecks, etc.).
The DMs felt competent and ours was very flexible and understanding when BF and I stressed that we wanted to do NO penetrations of the wreck. Mel (our DM) thoroughly explained that what we were going to do were only swim-throughs and the locations of where light would enter and alternate exit points we had. He stated that we would only do swim-throughs after he assessed our skills underwater and there was a possibility that we wouldn’t do any depending on what he saw (which I felt was very responsible, considering I heard that in Coron, they take brand new divers through the wrecks all the time). We had Mel as a DM the entire trip and were very pleased with the experience!
We had a set schedule of meeting at the shop at 8:00 and then taking a trike/jeepney down to the port (less than 5 mins). The boat usually left at ~8:30 and the rental gear was set up for everyone and tanks were available for us to set up our own gear. The wrecks are quite far away, 1-2 hr boat ride (big bangka) and they always provided us with donuts and coffee/tea/water. Within 10 mins of reaching the dive site the DMs would come over with a picture of the wreck for the briefing and to let everyone gear up. We always did a 1 hr surface interval, with a longer one after the second dive for lunch time (~1.5-2hrs SI). Because of the long distance away, the day ended at the port between 16:00-17:00 and we would then get shuttled back to the shop via trike/jeepney.
As a note, the lunch (and donut breakfast) was always good and enjoyed by everyone. A few days we had vegetarians as well and everyone was appropriately accommodated for.
Tank fills were variable with lowest being 2800 PSI and highest 3600 (!!!) PSI.
One thing to note is that there are no rinse tanks/hoses at the shop. The DMs and shop workers said that they rinse the gear down at the port (there was an old, abandoned building that everyone used apparently…?) and offered to do our gear for us. We declined, since we like making sure it’s done properly. They also offered to drop us off at the building while shuttling everyone back to the shop, but we declined again since we’d have to pay for an additional trike to go back to our accommodation from the port.
It was quite pleasant diving with Maco and we felt very taken care of the whole time. They had some areas to improve (e.g. rinse tanks for people with own gear) and not strict regulation of people who went into deco (sigh). They let us pick the sites out every day which was nice and were understanding that we had to dive one less day than planned due to our disaster ferry.
Dive 1: Okikawa Maru
Max depth 76ft, 57 mins, min water temp 85F.
Only note here is that the space inside requires good buoyancy and the AOW with us silted the entire place up (he informed us he had 12 dives…). This site was also the farthest away for us (2 hr boat ride).
Dive 2: Lusong Gunboat
Max depth 65ft, 63 mins, min water temp 85F.
Very nice corals on the backside of the boat but we spent most of the time in the muck unfortunately. After this dive there was a sudden thunderstorm, and I became very cold (foreshadowing…).
Dive 3: Malpadon Reef
Max depth 69ft, 52 mins, min water temp 85F.
Very boring reef. Sparse corals, but we saw a sleeping cat shark which was nice!
-- Broken up due to character space limit
Day 0: There were several mishaps with transit to Coron from Sablayan. The first plan was to take a ferry from San Jose (Bunso), which was unsuccessful because it was suspended in March for government inspection. The second plan was to take a ferry from Batangas (Atienza), which was unsuccessful and an awful experience. I will link a separate comment here where it’s explained. [Link Here]
Day 1: (Note that Day 1 became a travel day due to losing a day from the Atienza ferry experience). What ended up happening: We took a bus to Manila (580P) and arrived late, around 22:00. On the bus I booked a night in a hotel by the airport and last-minute, extremely pricy tickets on an early morning flight to Coron the next day via Cebu Pacific (~23,000P). RIP my valiant attempts to save money via ferry transfers.
Day 2: Woke up around 4:30, took a Grab to the airport, made our 7:00 flight to Coron. I was worried about our dive gear in our checked bags since it was a small propellor plane, but the flight was uneventful (1 hr?) and our gear arrived safely. We paid the Coron eco fees (400P) and took a shared van to Coron town (500P).
Our accommodation was Coron Backpackers Guest House and I do not recommend this accommodation unless you are not traveling with your dive gear. There was very little room to spread gear out on the floor to dry and no where to hang in the room. In addition, the showers/bathrooms are communal, so it was a real treat to rinse off our gear in them and then lug it back to the room through the shared common spaces.
We checked in with the dive shop (Maco Coron Diving Center) to sign paperwork.
At this point it was maybe 10:00 so we headed to the port to figure out if we could make a private snorkel trip happen on one of our days. We found a guy and set up a trip and then proceeded to take a trike to Siete Pecados (300P) for a half snorkel day. We paid the eco fees (200P) and hired a small bangka (500P) to take us around each Pecado.
We heard online that it still had beautiful corals left but were quite disappointed. The snorkeling here has degraded a lot since pictures/reports from 2017. While fish life was excellent (schools of barracuda, jacks, several juvenile napoleon wrasses, and 4+ turtles), the coral cover was mostly rubble. There were exceptions with 10m staghorn fields and some nice colonies of various hard corals, but they were concentrated in the northeast corner of the islands. The south side that used to be all staghorn corals is now 80% rubble.
Triked back to Coron (300P).
Day 3: Finally, our first dive day! This day we had 3 other dives with us, a couple that was OW and one AOW. They split us into 2 groups based on skill levels.
The dive operation: Both BF and I remarked that Maco felt the most “by the book” we had experienced so far in the Philippines. We had our first boat briefing, and the briefings of each dive site were good as well (included max depth, time, what they considered low air, even history of the wrecks, etc.).
The DMs felt competent and ours was very flexible and understanding when BF and I stressed that we wanted to do NO penetrations of the wreck. Mel (our DM) thoroughly explained that what we were going to do were only swim-throughs and the locations of where light would enter and alternate exit points we had. He stated that we would only do swim-throughs after he assessed our skills underwater and there was a possibility that we wouldn’t do any depending on what he saw (which I felt was very responsible, considering I heard that in Coron, they take brand new divers through the wrecks all the time). We had Mel as a DM the entire trip and were very pleased with the experience!
We had a set schedule of meeting at the shop at 8:00 and then taking a trike/jeepney down to the port (less than 5 mins). The boat usually left at ~8:30 and the rental gear was set up for everyone and tanks were available for us to set up our own gear. The wrecks are quite far away, 1-2 hr boat ride (big bangka) and they always provided us with donuts and coffee/tea/water. Within 10 mins of reaching the dive site the DMs would come over with a picture of the wreck for the briefing and to let everyone gear up. We always did a 1 hr surface interval, with a longer one after the second dive for lunch time (~1.5-2hrs SI). Because of the long distance away, the day ended at the port between 16:00-17:00 and we would then get shuttled back to the shop via trike/jeepney.
As a note, the lunch (and donut breakfast) was always good and enjoyed by everyone. A few days we had vegetarians as well and everyone was appropriately accommodated for.
Tank fills were variable with lowest being 2800 PSI and highest 3600 (!!!) PSI.
One thing to note is that there are no rinse tanks/hoses at the shop. The DMs and shop workers said that they rinse the gear down at the port (there was an old, abandoned building that everyone used apparently…?) and offered to do our gear for us. We declined, since we like making sure it’s done properly. They also offered to drop us off at the building while shuttling everyone back to the shop, but we declined again since we’d have to pay for an additional trike to go back to our accommodation from the port.
It was quite pleasant diving with Maco and we felt very taken care of the whole time. They had some areas to improve (e.g. rinse tanks for people with own gear) and not strict regulation of people who went into deco (sigh). They let us pick the sites out every day which was nice and were understanding that we had to dive one less day than planned due to our disaster ferry.
Dive 1: Okikawa Maru
Max depth 76ft, 57 mins, min water temp 85F.
Only note here is that the space inside requires good buoyancy and the AOW with us silted the entire place up (he informed us he had 12 dives…). This site was also the farthest away for us (2 hr boat ride).
Dive 2: Lusong Gunboat
Max depth 65ft, 63 mins, min water temp 85F.
Very nice corals on the backside of the boat but we spent most of the time in the muck unfortunately. After this dive there was a sudden thunderstorm, and I became very cold (foreshadowing…).
Dive 3: Malpadon Reef
Max depth 69ft, 52 mins, min water temp 85F.
Very boring reef. Sparse corals, but we saw a sleeping cat shark which was nice!
-- Broken up due to character space limit
