Philippines Eleven Days Dive Holiday

I had an email from some friends we have met through travel in the past with this wonderful invitation to join them for an eleven day Philippines Dive Family.

Ray and Penny from Pack Ya Bags Travel were getting a group together to experience the diving in the Philippines. We were being sponsored by the Philippine Airlines, On ground Suppliers, Philippine ‘Tourism Board’ and Pack Ya Bags Travel.
With very short notice Ray was trying to fill the trip, he had had little response from Travel Agents who he had invited. I phoned around to as many as possible and put the word out about the trip. In the end Chris Nipper and partner Monique Mearns, Roy Vale and a friend Charlene James from California, joined the group. Also Summer Abrahamson from the Flight Centre in Thames also joined us. Charlene did a refresher course and Summer and Monique did a full PADI course and they were both fully qualified in the end to join us on the last diving days we did, including their first open sea dive, which was diving with the whale shark.

The flight to Manila was through Cairns with Philippine Airlines. We had a short stop over in Cairns and another stop over in Manila before we flew to Tagbilaran on the island of Bohol. There was a very interesting trip through the towns to the port where we had a boat trip to Cabilao. The Island of Bohol is under repair with major works
being carried out on their roads, most being replaced with thick cement. All of our transport was very upmarket and the boats with the bamboo outriggers comfortable and dry.
The Pura Vida Cabilao Resort was a magic place, our accommodation was wonderful. Some of us on the beach front, one garden villa and Peter and I were very privileged to have a beautiful suite room on the cliff top with a magic view.

We were offered a dive when we first arrived and Ray Aucott, Chris Nipper and I did this, the others rested after our marathon 24 hours travel. We checkout the dive shop and geared up, good quality gear provided and headed out to Light House 2 with Santi as our dive master guide. She was wonderful pointing out so many things. First time I have seen frog fish, these were bright yellow and so hard to find on bright yellow coral growth. Many colours of lion fish, huge sponges, lots of soft corals and a very deep drop off.
The diving was easy, lots of help from the crew on board. Santi even took a magnifying glass down with her to point out the tiny pygmy sea horses.

The second dive turned into a night dive this one Peter and Roy Vale joined me. Roy’s first dive in 10 years; good on him at 81, getting back into the water. Water temp on all of our dives was between 28-30C; sometimes the water was warmer than the air temp. I had a total of 17 dives over the seven dive days we had. That was almost 16 hours in the water, bit water logged in the end.

The next day we had three dives, we could do as many dives as we wanted, they were very accommodating. We had an electric clam pointed out and swam through a cave complex in beautiful clear brilliant blue water. Everywhere covered in hard corals and some very pretty and colourful soft corals, and millions of brilliant coloured small fish and often seeing unusual shapes and colours of nudibranchs.

Charlene had finished her refresher course and was able to join us on the 3rd dive today, and this dive was called gorgonian wall, and what a wall and huge drop off it was. Most dives saw turtles and sea snakes, the turtles were friendly and on one of my dives I scratched the algae off the back of the turtle and he just responded by rubbing his shell against me. What an incredible encounter that was!

After three nights at Cabilao we packed our gear and left early by a very classy outrigger boat to travel to Balikasad Island and a turtle haven. This area attracted many divers from all over, a beautiful island with white sandy beaches, and a very popular place. There are huge black coral outcrops at 40m around this island. We never dived to this depth to see it as the guides do many dives a day and don’t take the risk of going too deep. Most dives were around 20-28m, with 50 -75 minutes in the water. We were rewarded with seeing around 20 turtles on each dive, garden eels, coral coated huge bommies, and red and black Fluro-nudibranchs. The last dive being a very easy slow drift dive, all boats raft up and use buoys instead anchor, when we popped up they were there to meet us.
Monique and Summer continued with the PADI theory at every spare moment and Airen their Instructor travelled with us so the girls could finish their course.

To Be Continued....