We took an impromptu long weekend trip to Anilao in the first week of Sept and managed to see quite a few new things despite the murky visibility. It was low/rainy season but we enjoyed ourselves and look forward to coming back next year outside of rainy season.
Photos here: Anilao - Sept 2019
(I don't recognize >50% of the stuff in there so if anyone knows what they are and can leave a comment it would be super helpful)
Transport: Flying from HK we took the Philippines Airlines 2 hour direct flight to Manila and everything went perfectly as planned. Luckily there were no protests at the airport as we flew on a Thursday. We paid for the private transfer (US$110 each way) as we were tight on time and didn't want to bother with the hassle of public transport. We arrived at Manila just after midnight and our driver was right outside waiting for us. The drive took ~2.5 hours and we finally made it into our room around 3am. The staff at Buceo were all really helpful- met us in the middle of the night with a giant smile and carried all of our bags through a pretty long walk to the resort. Normally you would take a short 5 min boat ride (which we did on the return) but as it was dark we walked around ~10-15 min.
Accommodation: We picked Buceo Anilao based on some of the recommendations here. We took the basic standard room and got 30% off as it was low season. It was big enough for the two of us and had all the basic comforts. If you upgrade to a better room I think you get a balcony and better facilities but we were there to dive and didn't feel it was necessary. Our room was the Harlequin Shrimp (sadly didn't see any) and it was right by the pool and on top of the restaurant - great location-wise. The bigger rooms were all on top of many more stairs and while I can imagine the view must be amazing I must says we did feel we made the right choice in picking a room lower to the ground (the entire resort is built on a cliff). The only grip was the hot water was lacking- it was lukewarm at best and ran out pretty quickly. Pillows were also quite overstuffed and uncomfortable but all in all everything was clean and can't complain too much. There were no mosquitos which was a definite plus.
Food: We ate at the resort for all our meals and only paid ~US$100 for the two of us over 4 days. There were some hits and misses - the manga cucumber salad and the grilled pork belly were awesome, most of what we ate were ok, and there was 1 or 2 things that were kind of blah but overall no complaints.
Diving: We wanted to see lots of macro on this trip and Anilao delivered. We did 4 dives a day over 3 days, all with the same dive guide Elmar. He was great and can spot the tiniest critters, apparently he has been diving in the area for >35 years and even has a dive spot named after him (Elmar's Point). Our first 2 dives we had requested a late start given 3am arrival and paid for our private boat and guide. As it turns out there weren't that many guests and we ended up having Elmar as our private guide for most of our dives anyway (normal is 4 guests to 1 guide), there was only 1 other guest that joined us for maybe 1/3 of the remaining dives. Strangely enough most of the other guests were either snorkeling only or only did 1-2 dives a day. Everyone was super helpful, the boat boys were always there to lend a hand and help us gear up. It was also full concierge diving as they set up and disassembled everything for us.
We knocked quite a few things off our list but sadly not the blue ring octopus nor the flamboyant cuttlefish which I was hoping to find. In no particular order, we saw nudibranches of all shapes and sizes (cannot even start to name them all, but a lot was new, including the tiny sheep nudi that I wanted to see), a pregnant mantis shrimp, a pregnant pigmy seahorse, jawfish with eggs, ghost pipefish, ribbon eels of all 3 colors, tiger snake eel, mimic octopus, coconut octopus, electric clams, dragon shrimp, whip coral shrimp, hairy shrimp, hairy frogfish, giant painted frogfish etc etc. There were big stuff too like green turtles and tons of stingrays. Visibility was not great, maybe around 5-10m? It was quite murky and there was quite a bit of surge too (although it only rained twice). I wouldn't mind coming back when the water is clearer. My general sense is there wasn't as much fish density as Sipadan per say, but definitely a huge amount of diversity as we saw something new on almost every single dive. Most dives were ~20-25m deep and we averaged 60 min on each dive. They didn't limit our dive time which was great and we only came up when someone is at 50 bar (often me). Water was at 28 degree C most of the time, we were a bit cold in 3mm wetsuits.
We had 2 hour massage on the last day which was pretty good given the price (US$26), then it was a 3 hour drive back to Manila. Overall it was a good trip and I managed to test out my new camera (Nikon D7500 in Nauticam) which was a big learning curve coming from my old TG5 - and really the reason for our last minute trip. Would recommend!
Photos here: Anilao - Sept 2019
(I don't recognize >50% of the stuff in there so if anyone knows what they are and can leave a comment it would be super helpful)
Transport: Flying from HK we took the Philippines Airlines 2 hour direct flight to Manila and everything went perfectly as planned. Luckily there were no protests at the airport as we flew on a Thursday. We paid for the private transfer (US$110 each way) as we were tight on time and didn't want to bother with the hassle of public transport. We arrived at Manila just after midnight and our driver was right outside waiting for us. The drive took ~2.5 hours and we finally made it into our room around 3am. The staff at Buceo were all really helpful- met us in the middle of the night with a giant smile and carried all of our bags through a pretty long walk to the resort. Normally you would take a short 5 min boat ride (which we did on the return) but as it was dark we walked around ~10-15 min.
Accommodation: We picked Buceo Anilao based on some of the recommendations here. We took the basic standard room and got 30% off as it was low season. It was big enough for the two of us and had all the basic comforts. If you upgrade to a better room I think you get a balcony and better facilities but we were there to dive and didn't feel it was necessary. Our room was the Harlequin Shrimp (sadly didn't see any) and it was right by the pool and on top of the restaurant - great location-wise. The bigger rooms were all on top of many more stairs and while I can imagine the view must be amazing I must says we did feel we made the right choice in picking a room lower to the ground (the entire resort is built on a cliff). The only grip was the hot water was lacking- it was lukewarm at best and ran out pretty quickly. Pillows were also quite overstuffed and uncomfortable but all in all everything was clean and can't complain too much. There were no mosquitos which was a definite plus.
Food: We ate at the resort for all our meals and only paid ~US$100 for the two of us over 4 days. There were some hits and misses - the manga cucumber salad and the grilled pork belly were awesome, most of what we ate were ok, and there was 1 or 2 things that were kind of blah but overall no complaints.
Diving: We wanted to see lots of macro on this trip and Anilao delivered. We did 4 dives a day over 3 days, all with the same dive guide Elmar. He was great and can spot the tiniest critters, apparently he has been diving in the area for >35 years and even has a dive spot named after him (Elmar's Point). Our first 2 dives we had requested a late start given 3am arrival and paid for our private boat and guide. As it turns out there weren't that many guests and we ended up having Elmar as our private guide for most of our dives anyway (normal is 4 guests to 1 guide), there was only 1 other guest that joined us for maybe 1/3 of the remaining dives. Strangely enough most of the other guests were either snorkeling only or only did 1-2 dives a day. Everyone was super helpful, the boat boys were always there to lend a hand and help us gear up. It was also full concierge diving as they set up and disassembled everything for us.
We knocked quite a few things off our list but sadly not the blue ring octopus nor the flamboyant cuttlefish which I was hoping to find. In no particular order, we saw nudibranches of all shapes and sizes (cannot even start to name them all, but a lot was new, including the tiny sheep nudi that I wanted to see), a pregnant mantis shrimp, a pregnant pigmy seahorse, jawfish with eggs, ghost pipefish, ribbon eels of all 3 colors, tiger snake eel, mimic octopus, coconut octopus, electric clams, dragon shrimp, whip coral shrimp, hairy shrimp, hairy frogfish, giant painted frogfish etc etc. There were big stuff too like green turtles and tons of stingrays. Visibility was not great, maybe around 5-10m? It was quite murky and there was quite a bit of surge too (although it only rained twice). I wouldn't mind coming back when the water is clearer. My general sense is there wasn't as much fish density as Sipadan per say, but definitely a huge amount of diversity as we saw something new on almost every single dive. Most dives were ~20-25m deep and we averaged 60 min on each dive. They didn't limit our dive time which was great and we only came up when someone is at 50 bar (often me). Water was at 28 degree C most of the time, we were a bit cold in 3mm wetsuits.
We had 2 hour massage on the last day which was pretty good given the price (US$26), then it was a 3 hour drive back to Manila. Overall it was a good trip and I managed to test out my new camera (Nikon D7500 in Nauticam) which was a big learning curve coming from my old TG5 - and really the reason for our last minute trip. Would recommend!
