The Philippines: Siquijor, Dumaguete, Apo Island, Malapascua
On Siquijor we got a taxi to the dive shop / hotel we were planning to stay at, the hotel was nice but the only room they had was on a cliff with several hundred steps to get to the restaurant and for diving. We decided that running up and down the stairs was not part of the vacation so we chose a place just down the beach, a room on the beach with a view, who did not have a dive shop so we spent time in both places. The weather was stormy most of the time and it was a bit rough for diving, but we managed and dived at the following sites: Sandugan canyon, Cedric's wall, Sandugan mushroom, and Salagdoong beach. Thanks to the overcast weather the mandarinfish were out even in the middle of the day, quite nice ! Things that we saw: mantis shrimp, mandarinfish, porcelain crab, glass shrimp, giant frogfish, snowflake moray eels, turtles, razor shrimp, banded sea snake and lot's of nudibranch. We did not spend too much time on Siquijor as the weather was not too good, however we met lots of fun people and even a couple of quarterly pensioners (they had no contact at all with home, no phone, no internet for 3 months!!!).
We had been trying to get a room in Dauin on Negros but had no luck, we also found out after a while that a lot of places would not answer e-mails, you had to call. We ended up finding a place just outside Dumaguete that offered diving around Dauin. Sad to say this was not the best solution, but we made the best of it, and only did four dives at Dauin: Dauin wreck, The sanctuary and Masaplod North and South. Things we saw included: schools of 200 to 300 trevally, snake eels, moray eels, rockmover wrasse, hingeback shrimp, anemone shrimp and some new nudibranch.
There are other stories of Dumaguete, first the part; Jorunn's sister had decided to get a haircut and some more red colour in her hair so she went to a good hairdresser, the guy who cut her hair was gay and sweet in his own way and did a really good job and Molly was pleased. When we saw the results Jorunn decided it was time for a haircut, so off we went, as we entered the shop the guy who had cut Molly's hair comes rushing out saying "your hair, your hair, what happened to your hair". Jorunn's hair was shorter than Molly's and not red, so he thought that she was unhappy with his cut and went somewhere else. Well we got him calmed down and told him that Molly and Jorunn are twins, same same but different, and it was her sister that had been in yesterday and she really liked what he had done so she thought he could do her hair also. He was still a bit sceptical but went to work, Molly came in a short time later and then we saw the relief in his face and he began to laugh and chatter to the others to come look. It can be fun to be identical twins.
One day we needed a few things so we went to the shopping mall where we went through security (bag check etc.) before entering, ok no problems, Jorunn found a blouse she liked, went to try it on while I waited, I heard some anouncement in the background but was not really paying attention then I noticed that people had stopped, I saw Jorunn come out of the changing room and she said they are praying. I listened a bit and she was right they had all stopped for prayers. A bit more religious than we are used to, and very opposite to most of the expat community.
Just off the coast of Negros lies the small island of Apo home to a few different people, whom are mostly related to one another in on form or another. This is a very pretty place and a great place to dive. We caught a boat ride with the dive guide from Dauin as he was going there anyway. We were met by ten women standing in a row holding up t-shirts and sarongs for sale, it's OK for new guests but for divers in wetsuits it's a bit hard to carry money underwater. The hotel and dive shop were right there too with a short walk up the steps to the Liberty community lodge. The Liberty Lodge is owned and run by locals, with really nice rooms overlooking the ocean and an excellent dive shop that also offered some good underwater naturalist courses. Here we dived the following sites: Rock Point, Coconut (great dive), Mamsa Point, Sanctuary, Chapel, and Boluarte. Things to see here: Lot's of turtles, stick pipefish, titan triggerfish, humphead parrot fish, imperial shrimp, moray eels, sea snakes, frogfish and lot's of nudibranch.
Now to tell a bit more about our stay on Apo Island. Apo Island was very social and we met some fun people from several different countries. One couple was from the USA and they were very nice people and had traveled a lot, and John looked a lot like Tom Selleck (Three men and a baby). We had some really fun dives with them and soon they found the only entertainment on the island, karaoke. Yes, that was it and it turned out pretty wild with drinking, singing, dancing and even some spills, Katie threw John to the floor while dancing. We also had a gay Canadian with us who had never sung karaoke before and of course his first song would be ABBAs "Dancing Queen". The thing that made this even more fun was the fact that all the electricity and lights on the island went off at 10 every night, so it kind of felt like we were back in school with a curfew.
After leaving all the excitement of Apo we took a small boat to shore and caught a ride back to Dumaguete and later by ferry to Cebu City where we spent the night before the 4 hour bumpy ride north to Malapascua on the northern tip of Cebu. At one of the stops a Philippino Elvis came to sing for us while we waited, he must have been about 60 and could not sing but he was worth every penny. After a short boat ride we finally reached the island of Malapascua with nice white sandy beaches and again it was time to dive. This was a fun place and we met more fun people from around the world who had many great stories to tell. The diving was good here, only limited to a few dive sites and some wrecks. We also went out early (5 AM) one morning to see if we could see some tresher sharks, but we had no luck this day. One late afternoon we went on a dive to see mandarinfish mating (very small, shy fish with lot's of bright colours; orange, red, green and yellow) and we saw a total of about 14 so we were very lucky. We dived: 4x Gato island, Monad Shoal, Dona Marilyn wreck, Lapu Lapu, and Lighthouse Reef. Things to see: Nurse sharks, whitetip sharks, lot's of seahorses, lot's of mandarinfish, shrimps, crabs, pipefish, squid, banded shrimp, dragonets and plenty of nudibranch. It's a good thing we had a copy of 1001 nudibrances by Neville Coleman (We really recommend this book).
Link to pictures from Siquijor
Link to pictures from Dauin
Link to pictures from Apo island
Link to pictures from Malapscua
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