Malapascua or Moalboal in January?

[Luko]

There are some mandarin shrimp and nudibranchs etc.

What's a mandarin shrimp??? fist time in my 15 years of diving I hear about a mandarin shrimp... if you're speaking of mandarin FISH it's not on Monad 25m deep that you best spot them.
And c'mon, be honest : when you go shark spotting, there's not much around... you seriously can't compare to other coral place in the Phils, and besides that when you're 25m deep on the plateau you can't stay that long looking for critters.


...Looks like there are some people who want to keep you a full week there. I'll then stay off the thread and let 'em do their business.

 

[gee13]

Must be a mandarin speaking shrimp

Anyway I have my sights on mainly seeing the threshers. And i like the idea of a nice isolated quiet island to relax. I do not like to rush my trips and given that after losing 3nights in travel I will only have 5 diving days. I wil definitely go down to Moalboal or Apo Island another time. Or even better take a Tubbataha liveaboard. Its not that I havent seen fantastic corals having been to Fiji, Maldives, Great Barrier Reef and Sipadan.

But anyone experienced in diving PI please do let me know where the coral capital is of diving Philippines.

 

[Karl_H]

Got to agree with Matt here about the weather - anywhere can have big storms but it's pretty much unheard of to loos a full week of diving! Dauin is not much better protected than Malapascua, while when all said and done while almost all the good diving off Alona is well out into open water so I'm not sure how that would work either.

Basically if you get unlucky and one of the few serious Visaya storms do hit you'll probably loose 1 or 2 two days of diving, if you're up for less than ideal conditions then this is more likely to be 0 to 0.5 days of lost diving!

The transport is simply down to 'you'll get what you pay for', you can indeed get cheaper options but you have to think about how easy it would be hop on a bus and be taken door to door as opposed to trike, bus and taxi - with all my gear I'd not be too happy about the 'cheaper' option.

Rape is a pretty strong word to use, haggling is always an option here but bear in mind the $10 Peso's you save will buy you a few beers while it would feed the drivers family for a week or two. The Malapascua trip could well be 6-8 hours for a driver when you factor in the empty return journey, take out fuel and the boat charge and the drivers waiting time per trip suddenly the $90 each way starts to look pretty poor when it's split down....

Just my thoughts anyway, maybe I just enjoy paying too much !

Karl

 

[gee13]

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[gee13]

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[gee13]

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[gee13]

Thanks Karl. Thats why id rather give myself the 5 days rather than cutting it fine with a split moaboal leg. And what you say about the transport makes a little sense. I think the poster who used the rape term is rather harsh. However I still believe it is quite expensive relative to other asian countries. To put things into perspective for that money $170 US I can hire a driver with private car In Bali for 4 x full 12hour days. And a return small speedboat trip from Sanur to Lembongan is about $32.

 

[gee13]

Sorry guys not sure what happened how do you delete a repeated post?

 

[eagerbeaver]

I don't think you can mate! you could just delete the text and put in some amusing jokes instead - this thread has gone 4 pages without being hijacked by any of the PPD so it's about time something happened!

 

[jbb]

We can talk about weather til we're blue in the face - BabyD and I recently got slated for saying that July/August are not so bad and rainy....and this July and August I think I saw maybe 5 days of rain, and definitely no cancelled diving.

Same goes for January...I'm pretty certain we didn't have any cancelled days of diving this year...weather wasn't fantastic all the time, but that's life, and if there was a storm here, good odds it was crappy in Alona and Dauin the day before or 2... So I'm pretty curious about anyone who missed a week of diving.
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Hmm, well let's get blue. Yes weather can be all over the place sometimes but I understand that we are into a La Nina event now with ocean temps. How does that effect the weather in the Philippines? More rain or just lower energy storms? I know it has considerable effect here in the U.S. especially along the western coast.

I personnally have had good trips and bad weather trips visiting Malapascua over the years but then I usually travel in May and November which are on the edge of typhoon season. There have been two times I have questioned myself getting on a boat from Malapascua to Maya. I got pretty wet without diving.