DONSOL, Sorsogon. Total number of people wishing and hoping to interact with the whaleshark, 20 snorklers! Out of the 20 snorklers only 7 were part of the blessed group. And guess what, I was part of the lucky 7, although I feel for those who weren't able to see, especially to the group that was hallucinating of actually seeing one! Afterall, it took us 9 hours(one way) of riding the bus--Cagsawa Tours (read it like the jingle--for those who know!). I was pretty happy with the bus company since the drivers were not reckless and they even had ties on! Hopefully we'll have better luck next time! |
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| MALAPASCUA diary | |
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It all started out when we met at the airport at 5:00 am, well, some came at 5:45 or even later. Our flight was at 6:30 am via Air Philippines. Our total number was 23 including 3 non divers. Whoa! Some kind of a very big group! (By the way, thanks to all those who came, hope you had a grand time!) |
| After landing at the Cebu Airport, it took us a while to start loading the coaster since we were having our pictures taken inside the baggage terminal--tourista! After we finished clicking 20 cameras with the same pose, we finally started our trip to Maya. When we arrived at the northern tip of Cebu, we were greeted by Sea Explorers' shop manager, Hugo, and our DM, Tata. We then started loading our gear to the boat. Sea Explorers has a very big boat. It fit 23 of us and all our baggage. | |
| Our group was divided into 3 dive groups. We did our first dive, a welcome dive at "Lapus-lapus." Vis was very bad. My group saw a black frog fish. After the first dive, we were hanging out in Cocobana, our resort. We started drinking early since we had to be in bed by 10 pm. Our dive the next day would be at 5am. | 
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My group was the luckiest of all! On our first dive at Monad Shoal we immediately saw a big thresher shark. It was so macho and cute at the same time. After our first encounter, we saw schools and schools of divers! Nevertheless, we continued our search. All of a sudden, something made me look up and I saw my first 2 Mantas--Tan's says it were devil rays. |
| I was so excited even if they did not have 5m wingspan. Then we continued searching for the thresher sharks, then we saw 1, no--2, no--3, NO! 4 Mantas--Tan still says they were devil rays. At this point, I was ecstatic. We gave up on our search for the Thresher, and we headed to towards the shallow. We were swimming in mid water when we saw a school of devil rays! There were around 10 devil rays. I tried counting them, but could not. I was near panic! | |
| After our first dive to Monad Shoal, my group still had the dreamy eyed-look, however the other 2 groups did not feel the same way; although we still had our hopes up for them cause we were going to dive it again the next day. We then headed to Gato Island. | |
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Here, we entered the tunnel, which I very much enjoyed since it was a different environment. After the tunnel, we were brought by our DM, Martin, to this crevice were one can find a sea horse. For most of us, it was our first time to see one. We were expecting a sea horse like aquaman's. We saw three, one pregnant, one white and another yellow sea horse. In Gato, we made 2 dives. Gato Cave and Gato Wall. Gato wall is where I saw my biggest white tip shark. They were all under this big rock. There were probably 10 sharks inside. But the biggest one was around 7 feet long and very fat. It actually gave me the creeps cause I imagined it out swimming. |
| On our last day at Malapascua, we decided to dive Monad Shoal twice since not all the groups were able to see the thresher sharks; and the Dona Marilyn wreck was almost 2 hours away from Malapascua Island. Luckily for our last 2 dives all 3 groups were able to see a thresher shark(s) up close. I noticed one thing though, if you plan to go to Malapascua, it is advisable that you bring your dive computer since most of the dives you stay at 60-70 ft and just wait for the sharks. Until our next dive trip....
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| The International Clean up Day was a success! Game Plan and Planet X were with us during the event. Everyone was so excited to do the clean up dive. Our resources were very limited due to the influx of divers. We had to squeeze in 2 dives with one tank, which actually was not a problem since our max depth for the clean up was at 30 ft. Our group was assigned to clean Caban Cove. And if you don't know caban cove, it is the dirtiest area during the amihan season. If you really want to know how it looks like, watch Game Plan at Channel 23 on Oct 10. The video will attest to how dirty the area is. After the clean up dive, we had our free lunch which was sponsored by Anilao Sea Sport. After completing 2 dives, we headed back to the resort (mind you the waves were scary), and sorted our trash. After all the hard work, it was Party time. There were free beer, games and the raffling of the mosquito computer. The rest was history!
 
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| Have you heard the latest development? | |
| The latest news is that the dive n trek house reef is probably one of the most colorful reef in the whole of Anilao. My friends, family and I went there last Saturday to do some easy and relaxing dives.
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| We made our first dive in Pinnacle along the Ligpo Island. In this dive, we were lucky we saw a blue spotted ray resting under a table coral. Then on we went to our second dive to the Batcave. We started descending from the lobster cave and then we smoothed our way through the batcave. Unfortunately, Batman was not there. His loyal midnight snappers were diligently guarding his territory while he was away. Some of them actually grew to almost three feet. It's kind of scary to be in their way after seeing their teeth. On we went with our dive to the shallow portion of the Dive 'n Trek House reef to visit our mama clams. Along the way we see the residents of the area such as the big ass parrot fish eating all the coral they can, surgeon fish with their scalpels tucked, and hundreds of sergeant majors patroling the area and many more while we were flying at 30 feet. We made a u-turn and started heading for the pier where our banca was, but this time we were gliding through 10 feet. We had a mission....to find the jacks! And...very fortunate of us, we see the whole clan of jacks....They were just swimming around all of us. It was a picture perfect moment. While we were busy gawking at the jacks, we almost missed the big mama cuttle fish. Literally mama. I first thought that it was feeding from the coral because it was inserting its tentacles into the needle coral. Then I figured after 2 minutes of staring at it that it was actually laying eggs and it was putting it inside the coral to protect it. No wonder it would not leave despite that it was already surrounded by 8 divers. It was an amazing scene. It was magic. |
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| Welcome to my dive sites... | |
| I have surfed a lot of diving websites, especially that of the Philippines. I got a bit frustrated because, although the sites were very good, I did not find significant information on the dive site itself. It usually just states what you can see in the dive site but it does not actually say how to go about when you are already down there and also other trivial information.
I hope that this will compensate on the things that the other sites do not provide! See you underwater! THANKS!!! |
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