Finally, we went on a threesome trip to the Visaya Islands of the Philippines 
Moalboal Dec 29th – 31st:
We arrived at Changi Budget Terminal more than 2 hours before departure but strangely the queue didn’t seem to move so we ended up being almost the last three persons to check-in for our Cebu Pacific flight to Cebu. The flight departed at 0035, Dec 30th & we landed at 0415. It was raining & luckily we have made arrangements for pick-up & after 2.5 hours van journey, we arrived at Moalboal just after daybreak & checked into Sunshine Pension House. We took the family room (fan type without hot shower), which was very spacious with a queen size bed & two single ones. After settling down, we went to the restaurant & ordered the Filipino breakfast with Longanisa but the miserably small sausage was so unlike the ones that we had in Batangas. Bummer!!
We were booked for three diving days with The Blue Abyss Dive Shop but were informed only upon our arrival that there will be no diving on Jan 1st. Luckily, Chris has some friends in Malapascua so we made arrangements to get there on that day. Other than that, the dive shop was pretty well organized & has friendly staffs.
They offer two boat dives & one house reef dive daily as a standard dive package. To maximize the diving, Aili & I did a together of 8 dives in two diving days comprising Pescador Island, Tongo Sanctuary, Sampaguita, Talisay & 4 House reef dives. The dives involve setting up the tanks in the dive shop & then transporting the tanks to the boat, which was parked in waist length water. Luckily, for us girls, the boat crew helped us to carry the tanks onto the boat. Poor Chris, he has got to carry his own tank & walked barefooted in urchins infested water because he has a pairs of full foot fins. Eventually, he borrowed a pair of booties to do the job.
It was raining for both diving days & the water temperature was 27-28 degree Celsius. Water visibility was pretty bad (5-15 meters) & dark at most sites, especially at the walls. The diving was good & mainly macro or probably that was what I’ve focused on. Most sites, other than the House reef was 20-30 minutes by boat. We did our first dive at the famous Pescador Island. The walls were filled with colors & offer a huge variety on both soft-and hard corals, as well as overhangs crevices, step drop off and beautiful coral gardens on the reef shelf. However, I did not feel the constant spectacle of action as I’ve anticipated. Other wall sites were not so interesting. My favorite site was definitely the House reef. Our dive masters, Junior & Clement showed us many interesting stuff from flame fire shells emitting red electric currents when shone with the torch to the uncommon ornate pipefish. We saw few turtles, school of batfishes, many anemone shrimps, juvenile whip coral shrimps, squat lobsters & shrimps in feather stars, few different nudibranchs, a free swimming giant frogfish, lion & scorpion fishes, mandarin fishes, cowries, and many more. I encountered some problem with my strobe during few dives, apparently the optic cable became loose so I had only few pixs from Moalboal.
Jan 1st to 6th:
We had an early breakfast & then made our way to Malapascua. We had a late night out celebrating the New Year, so we slept through the bumpy van ride which took about a grueling five hours to the jetty. The Exotic boatmen met us & motioned us towards the banca. The outrigger boat was slowed down by the restless sea and it took another hour before we finally set foot on the island, famed for the magnificent thresher sharks that regularly come up to the cleaning stations at Monad Shoal.
As we were a day earlier & do not have a room with Exotic Dive Resort, so we went on to register with them & signed up for the diving for the next day before Chris’s friend, Janet showed us the way to Kuan Bar. Exotic own three dive boats & each offer different dive schedules. We were given a box each for our dive gears & were told that the dive crew will carry the box up to the boat accordingly to the schedule before each dive.
The room at Kuan Bar was very small for the three of us & the extra mattresses that they provided were torn & dirty. After checking in, we were hungry & went to Hippocampus for some snacks before dinner. The waiting time was ridiculous. We waited one & half-hours for our food & made that our dinner instead. We had an early night & woke up the next morning at 4.30am, totally disgusted that there was no water for freshening up. Damn!! Imagine how grouchy I was, having to bring my toothbrush & toothpaste to the Exotic dive shop to wash up before my first dive in Malapascua.
Our next four days of stay was at Exotic Resort. Our room was directly facing the restaurant & the dive shop. It was much more spacious & clean. We air-con & hot shower too, which was such a treat after our dusk dives. Housekeeping was done daily & they have 24 hours of electricity supply. We had most of our meals at the Exotic restaurant, which offer great variety from local Filipino, European, Chinese Thai & American. The food was tasty & the service was great & fast too. Exotic dive operation has four dive masters (Paul, Toto, Tong and Rey). They took turns to dive with us and all of them are very knowledgeable. The dive crews are also very well organized and helpful. I must say that Exotic is one of the best & organized dive resorts that I've came to know so far.
Unlike Moalboal, we had 4 good diving days with clear skies with occasional passing showers. I did a total of 16 dives comprising of the daily 5.30am Monad Shoal dives, a 98 meters Dona Marilyn Wreck sank in 1987 during a typhoon, 3 dives at Gato Island, 2 dives at Lighthouse, 2 dives at Exotic House reef, Chocolate Island, East Garden, North Point and also an afternoon Monad Shoal dive. The water visibility was considered poor for our trip, averaging 8-12 meters and the water temperature at 26-27 degree Celsius, freaking cold for my 0.5mm wetsuit.
Despite doing 5 dives at Monad Shoal, I did not get to see the magnificent thresher shark nor the elusive hammerheads. The afternoon dive at Monad Shoal yielded some good sightings of two giant manta rays, school of jacks and a couple of tunas. Some of the rest finally caught a glimpse of the thresher shark. I was not disappointed for not seeing the thresher shark as I've reaffirmed that Malapascua is not just a shark's den. The diversity & prolific marine life did not fail to thrill. Gato Island being my favorite dive site, is a rocky island rising from middle of nowhere. It offers everything from the myriad of rare and unusual nudibranchs, seahorses, puffers and yellow box fishes, hermit crabs, sea snakes, whip-tip sharks living in the caves to a very rare find of the Holy grail of diving, the blue ringed octopus. My bad luck sure continues to loom as I've ran out of battery by then and so I was not able to capture the changing patterns of this delightful creature.
Lighthouse, the favorite site for dusk dives, is inhabited by dozens of mandarin fish and seahorses. It was a sheer delight & magical sight to watch the chasing & mating of these most colorful fishes in the world. Another great site is the Exotic House reef, an artificial reef created by the Exotic staff. At a depth of 12-14 meters, we found an array of marine animals making their home amidst car tyres, bonnets and even metal structures. We saw a flamboyant cuttlefish & two pairs of eggs in shells, fingered dragonet, nudibranchs, banded pipefishes, snake eel, bobtail squids & cuttlefishes, a giant frogfish and many more.
To sum it up, I've had a fabulous trip. Besides some really great diving, what makes this trip so fantastic were the many new wonderful friends we got to know during our short stay on the island. What more can I ask for.
Pix link: http://sg.homeunix.com/jovin/Moalboal-Malapascua-Dec06-Jan07.
Useful links:
The Blue Abyss Dive Shop: http://www.blueabyssdiving.com/diveshop.html
Malapascua Exotic Island Dive & Beach resort: http://www.malapascua.net/index1.html
Till my very next Big Splash..
Happy bubbles,
Jovin-
Moalboal Dec 29th – 31st:
We arrived at Changi Budget Terminal more than 2 hours before departure but strangely the queue didn’t seem to move so we ended up being almost the last three persons to check-in for our Cebu Pacific flight to Cebu. The flight departed at 0035, Dec 30th & we landed at 0415. It was raining & luckily we have made arrangements for pick-up & after 2.5 hours van journey, we arrived at Moalboal just after daybreak & checked into Sunshine Pension House. We took the family room (fan type without hot shower), which was very spacious with a queen size bed & two single ones. After settling down, we went to the restaurant & ordered the Filipino breakfast with Longanisa but the miserably small sausage was so unlike the ones that we had in Batangas. Bummer!!
We were booked for three diving days with The Blue Abyss Dive Shop but were informed only upon our arrival that there will be no diving on Jan 1st. Luckily, Chris has some friends in Malapascua so we made arrangements to get there on that day. Other than that, the dive shop was pretty well organized & has friendly staffs.
They offer two boat dives & one house reef dive daily as a standard dive package. To maximize the diving, Aili & I did a together of 8 dives in two diving days comprising Pescador Island, Tongo Sanctuary, Sampaguita, Talisay & 4 House reef dives. The dives involve setting up the tanks in the dive shop & then transporting the tanks to the boat, which was parked in waist length water. Luckily, for us girls, the boat crew helped us to carry the tanks onto the boat. Poor Chris, he has got to carry his own tank & walked barefooted in urchins infested water because he has a pairs of full foot fins. Eventually, he borrowed a pair of booties to do the job.
It was raining for both diving days & the water temperature was 27-28 degree Celsius. Water visibility was pretty bad (5-15 meters) & dark at most sites, especially at the walls. The diving was good & mainly macro or probably that was what I’ve focused on. Most sites, other than the House reef was 20-30 minutes by boat. We did our first dive at the famous Pescador Island. The walls were filled with colors & offer a huge variety on both soft-and hard corals, as well as overhangs crevices, step drop off and beautiful coral gardens on the reef shelf. However, I did not feel the constant spectacle of action as I’ve anticipated. Other wall sites were not so interesting. My favorite site was definitely the House reef. Our dive masters, Junior & Clement showed us many interesting stuff from flame fire shells emitting red electric currents when shone with the torch to the uncommon ornate pipefish. We saw few turtles, school of batfishes, many anemone shrimps, juvenile whip coral shrimps, squat lobsters & shrimps in feather stars, few different nudibranchs, a free swimming giant frogfish, lion & scorpion fishes, mandarin fishes, cowries, and many more. I encountered some problem with my strobe during few dives, apparently the optic cable became loose so I had only few pixs from Moalboal.
Jan 1st to 6th:
We had an early breakfast & then made our way to Malapascua. We had a late night out celebrating the New Year, so we slept through the bumpy van ride which took about a grueling five hours to the jetty. The Exotic boatmen met us & motioned us towards the banca. The outrigger boat was slowed down by the restless sea and it took another hour before we finally set foot on the island, famed for the magnificent thresher sharks that regularly come up to the cleaning stations at Monad Shoal.
As we were a day earlier & do not have a room with Exotic Dive Resort, so we went on to register with them & signed up for the diving for the next day before Chris’s friend, Janet showed us the way to Kuan Bar. Exotic own three dive boats & each offer different dive schedules. We were given a box each for our dive gears & were told that the dive crew will carry the box up to the boat accordingly to the schedule before each dive.
The room at Kuan Bar was very small for the three of us & the extra mattresses that they provided were torn & dirty. After checking in, we were hungry & went to Hippocampus for some snacks before dinner. The waiting time was ridiculous. We waited one & half-hours for our food & made that our dinner instead. We had an early night & woke up the next morning at 4.30am, totally disgusted that there was no water for freshening up. Damn!! Imagine how grouchy I was, having to bring my toothbrush & toothpaste to the Exotic dive shop to wash up before my first dive in Malapascua.
Our next four days of stay was at Exotic Resort. Our room was directly facing the restaurant & the dive shop. It was much more spacious & clean. We air-con & hot shower too, which was such a treat after our dusk dives. Housekeeping was done daily & they have 24 hours of electricity supply. We had most of our meals at the Exotic restaurant, which offer great variety from local Filipino, European, Chinese Thai & American. The food was tasty & the service was great & fast too. Exotic dive operation has four dive masters (Paul, Toto, Tong and Rey). They took turns to dive with us and all of them are very knowledgeable. The dive crews are also very well organized and helpful. I must say that Exotic is one of the best & organized dive resorts that I've came to know so far.
Unlike Moalboal, we had 4 good diving days with clear skies with occasional passing showers. I did a total of 16 dives comprising of the daily 5.30am Monad Shoal dives, a 98 meters Dona Marilyn Wreck sank in 1987 during a typhoon, 3 dives at Gato Island, 2 dives at Lighthouse, 2 dives at Exotic House reef, Chocolate Island, East Garden, North Point and also an afternoon Monad Shoal dive. The water visibility was considered poor for our trip, averaging 8-12 meters and the water temperature at 26-27 degree Celsius, freaking cold for my 0.5mm wetsuit.
Despite doing 5 dives at Monad Shoal, I did not get to see the magnificent thresher shark nor the elusive hammerheads. The afternoon dive at Monad Shoal yielded some good sightings of two giant manta rays, school of jacks and a couple of tunas. Some of the rest finally caught a glimpse of the thresher shark. I was not disappointed for not seeing the thresher shark as I've reaffirmed that Malapascua is not just a shark's den. The diversity & prolific marine life did not fail to thrill. Gato Island being my favorite dive site, is a rocky island rising from middle of nowhere. It offers everything from the myriad of rare and unusual nudibranchs, seahorses, puffers and yellow box fishes, hermit crabs, sea snakes, whip-tip sharks living in the caves to a very rare find of the Holy grail of diving, the blue ringed octopus. My bad luck sure continues to loom as I've ran out of battery by then and so I was not able to capture the changing patterns of this delightful creature.
Lighthouse, the favorite site for dusk dives, is inhabited by dozens of mandarin fish and seahorses. It was a sheer delight & magical sight to watch the chasing & mating of these most colorful fishes in the world. Another great site is the Exotic House reef, an artificial reef created by the Exotic staff. At a depth of 12-14 meters, we found an array of marine animals making their home amidst car tyres, bonnets and even metal structures. We saw a flamboyant cuttlefish & two pairs of eggs in shells, fingered dragonet, nudibranchs, banded pipefishes, snake eel, bobtail squids & cuttlefishes, a giant frogfish and many more.
To sum it up, I've had a fabulous trip. Besides some really great diving, what makes this trip so fantastic were the many new wonderful friends we got to know during our short stay on the island. What more can I ask for.
Pix link: http://sg.homeunix.com/jovin/Moalboal-Malapascua-Dec06-Jan07.
Useful links:
The Blue Abyss Dive Shop: http://www.blueabyssdiving.com/diveshop.html
Malapascua Exotic Island Dive & Beach resort: http://www.malapascua.net/index1.html
Till my very next Big Splash..
Happy bubbles,
Jovin-
