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Sogod Bay Trip Report
A few months ago I asked scuba boarders for some tips for a first trip to the Philippines. I appreciated those suggestions and so here is a short report for the first third of my trip
We(my wife and a friend) flew from Orlando, Florida via Korean Air/Delta to NYC to Seoul/Inchon South Korea to Cebu City. There is no direct flight from North America to Cebu City that I am aware of. We spent a couple of days in Cebu City at Harold’s Hotel - great service and an included breakfast with a lot of variety. If Harold’s is over budget there are an abundance of 3 star hotels in Cebu City that would come in around US $30 night. Our two days in Cebu City gave us some time to begin to adjust to a 12 hour time change and to see a bit of the city and life in the Philippines. Points of interest around the city include the Casa Gorordo Museum, Fort San Pedro, and Museo Sugbo. For money changing, restaurants, and ferry ticket purchases you can head to the Ayala Center.
We took a fast ferry from Cebu City to Hilongos on Southern Leyte, and then took private transport arranged by Sogod Bay Dive Resort to Padre Burgos. Total travel time was 8 hours or so.
Padre Burgos is a small town. If you are looking for nightclubs, lots of restaurants, casinos, gourmet restaurants, shopping, luxury resorts, white sand beaches, swimming pools, etc. Padre Burgos and Sogod Bay aren’t for you. If you are content to snorkel, dive, read, and socialize with fellow divers it’s your kind of place !
I am only aware of 3 or so dive operators around Padre Burgos: Peter’s, Sogod, and Southern Leyte Divers. I don’t believe there were ever more than 2 boats on any dive site.
We stayed at Sogod Bay Dive Resort and I will go back. Staff was uniformly friendly and helpful and the dive guides did a great job finding organisms. Rooms are basic with older ac but larger apartments are available. The food and drinks were tasty with daily specials: seafood, Western, and local. There is no pool and a coral rubble beach. For 10 days or so of lodging, food, drinks, and usually 2 but sometimes 3 dives a day, the bill came to about U.S. $1,250 (before tips) each. Many of the clients were repeat customers; all had booked individually or in small groups of 3-5 or so . The Philippines is a very inexpensive place to travel and dive.
During the first couple of weeks of April water temperatures were consistently 79-81F, apparently a degree or two below normal. Visibility was 30 -40 feet on the muck dives, double that on the wall. The weather wasn’t particularly cooperative as there was a lot of partly cloudy, overcast, and sometimes rainy weather. Many if not most of the divers were photographers. I don’t do any photography so I can’t help much with those questions.
The diving was varied: a mix of muck, patch reef, and wall including a small number of drift dives. Dives were about an hour and done in small groups of 4 or so. Night dives were available every night if you wanted it, sometimes in front of the resort and other nights under the Padre Burgos pier. The night dive at the pier had the most variety and abundance of organisms I’ve ever seen on a night dive.
For context, the vast majority of my diving has been done in the Caribbean. The big picture for me was the abundance and diversity of large groups of organisms that are not found, or are not widely found, in the Caribbean. Examples include: the nudibranchs(evidently the diversity of nudibranchs in the Philippines is the highest on the planet); the echinoderms(particularly the crinoids, sea stars, and sea cumbers); the health and variety of corals, hard and soft; and the clouds of small fish of seemingly innumerable species . The relative lack of sponge diversity and abundance, however, was notable. Apparently the sponges are the only main animal taxon more well represented in the Caribbean.
Specific species that caught my attention were the ghost pipefishes, marbled stargazers, the blue ribbon eel, the ringed pipefish, the mushroom-coral pipefish, a number of sizeable sea horses, the giant and smaller frog fishes, the anemone fishes, the long-rayed sand divers that display what looks like a dew lap ventrally, the clown triggerfish , flamboyant cuttlefish, mimic octopus, and banded sea kraits. Wow, even this partial list is wearing me out and no doubt you too- I’ll bring it to an end by saying Sogod Bay is a feast for someone schooled on Caribbean diving. I found the new Coral Reef Philippines book by A.S. Ryanskiy a good travel-sized guide to the most common creatures. I don’t want to leave out that over the days I was there we saw a number of turtles — green and hawksbill I believe.
What you won’t see are many large or even medium-sized fish or even rays(evidently a favorite on the local menu). We saw one shark on scuba, stationary under a ledge.
We also took part in a specially organized whale shark trip that included a dive later in the day. There is no artificial feeding of the sharks. We had spectacular luck as we had two very good and long looks at 2 different animals — the dive master said on the previous two trips they had not located any. Whale sharks in Sogod Bay are apparently hit or miss.
We retraced our steps to Cebu City and my wife and friend went home. I went south to Dumaguete and Dauin/ Apo Island for 10 days or so, which I hope to shortly report on.
A few months ago I asked scuba boarders for some tips for a first trip to the Philippines. I appreciated those suggestions and so here is a short report for the first third of my trip
We(my wife and a friend) flew from Orlando, Florida via Korean Air/Delta to NYC to Seoul/Inchon South Korea to Cebu City. There is no direct flight from North America to Cebu City that I am aware of. We spent a couple of days in Cebu City at Harold’s Hotel - great service and an included breakfast with a lot of variety. If Harold’s is over budget there are an abundance of 3 star hotels in Cebu City that would come in around US $30 night. Our two days in Cebu City gave us some time to begin to adjust to a 12 hour time change and to see a bit of the city and life in the Philippines. Points of interest around the city include the Casa Gorordo Museum, Fort San Pedro, and Museo Sugbo. For money changing, restaurants, and ferry ticket purchases you can head to the Ayala Center.
We took a fast ferry from Cebu City to Hilongos on Southern Leyte, and then took private transport arranged by Sogod Bay Dive Resort to Padre Burgos. Total travel time was 8 hours or so.
Padre Burgos is a small town. If you are looking for nightclubs, lots of restaurants, casinos, gourmet restaurants, shopping, luxury resorts, white sand beaches, swimming pools, etc. Padre Burgos and Sogod Bay aren’t for you. If you are content to snorkel, dive, read, and socialize with fellow divers it’s your kind of place !
I am only aware of 3 or so dive operators around Padre Burgos: Peter’s, Sogod, and Southern Leyte Divers. I don’t believe there were ever more than 2 boats on any dive site.
We stayed at Sogod Bay Dive Resort and I will go back. Staff was uniformly friendly and helpful and the dive guides did a great job finding organisms. Rooms are basic with older ac but larger apartments are available. The food and drinks were tasty with daily specials: seafood, Western, and local. There is no pool and a coral rubble beach. For 10 days or so of lodging, food, drinks, and usually 2 but sometimes 3 dives a day, the bill came to about U.S. $1,250 (before tips) each. Many of the clients were repeat customers; all had booked individually or in small groups of 3-5 or so . The Philippines is a very inexpensive place to travel and dive.
During the first couple of weeks of April water temperatures were consistently 79-81F, apparently a degree or two below normal. Visibility was 30 -40 feet on the muck dives, double that on the wall. The weather wasn’t particularly cooperative as there was a lot of partly cloudy, overcast, and sometimes rainy weather. Many if not most of the divers were photographers. I don’t do any photography so I can’t help much with those questions.
The diving was varied: a mix of muck, patch reef, and wall including a small number of drift dives. Dives were about an hour and done in small groups of 4 or so. Night dives were available every night if you wanted it, sometimes in front of the resort and other nights under the Padre Burgos pier. The night dive at the pier had the most variety and abundance of organisms I’ve ever seen on a night dive.
For context, the vast majority of my diving has been done in the Caribbean. The big picture for me was the abundance and diversity of large groups of organisms that are not found, or are not widely found, in the Caribbean. Examples include: the nudibranchs(evidently the diversity of nudibranchs in the Philippines is the highest on the planet); the echinoderms(particularly the crinoids, sea stars, and sea cumbers); the health and variety of corals, hard and soft; and the clouds of small fish of seemingly innumerable species . The relative lack of sponge diversity and abundance, however, was notable. Apparently the sponges are the only main animal taxon more well represented in the Caribbean.
Specific species that caught my attention were the ghost pipefishes, marbled stargazers, the blue ribbon eel, the ringed pipefish, the mushroom-coral pipefish, a number of sizeable sea horses, the giant and smaller frog fishes, the anemone fishes, the long-rayed sand divers that display what looks like a dew lap ventrally, the clown triggerfish , flamboyant cuttlefish, mimic octopus, and banded sea kraits. Wow, even this partial list is wearing me out and no doubt you too- I’ll bring it to an end by saying Sogod Bay is a feast for someone schooled on Caribbean diving. I found the new Coral Reef Philippines book by A.S. Ryanskiy a good travel-sized guide to the most common creatures. I don’t want to leave out that over the days I was there we saw a number of turtles — green and hawksbill I believe.
What you won’t see are many large or even medium-sized fish or even rays(evidently a favorite on the local menu). We saw one shark on scuba, stationary under a ledge.
We also took part in a specially organized whale shark trip that included a dive later in the day. There is no artificial feeding of the sharks. We had spectacular luck as we had two very good and long looks at 2 different animals — the dive master said on the previous two trips they had not located any. Whale sharks in Sogod Bay are apparently hit or miss.
We retraced our steps to Cebu City and my wife and friend went home. I went south to Dumaguete and Dauin/ Apo Island for 10 days or so, which I hope to shortly report on.
