VW Beetle becomes fish home in second life

Around 2014 I spent a lot of time in Anilao Batangas, Philippines. I used to see a little red VW Beetle parked at Monte Carlo Dive Resort’s frontage, slowly rotting away. Being a grease monkey since birth, the neglected icon caught my eye.

During my teenage years, I used to rebuild old cars and seeing that worn out Beetle shown little love prompted me to find the owner and attempt to rescue it from further deterioration.

The owner of the Beetle was the Manager of Monte Carlo Resort, a man whom I had dived with several times. After a dive one day, I went over to the resort and made an offer of US$400 (since the Beetle needed major body and engine repairs). The owner, with a cartoonish laugh, said he’d rather throw it in the ocean. I told him I love rebuilding cars and pleaded he part with his beetle. He laughed again and said he had plans for his little red Beetle.

Fast forward 2016: I was back in the Philippines. Driving the hillsides of Anilao once more, I found myself steering towards Monte Carlo to ask what happened to the iconic junk. One of the local in-house Dive Masters of the resort greeted me and I explained I wanted to know what had happened to the little red bug.

“The Beetle can be found in our backyard,” he told me. I made him explain what ‘backyard’ meant since the resort doesn’t have space for a car out the back. The Dive Master smiled, telling me the old manager had the Volkswagen put in the ocean as an added attraction for their guest divers!

I used to see car wrecks in Dumaguete but you couldn’t even recognise what make or model they were. This could be a cool shoot, I thought, a dilapidated but still recognisable icon! After finding out the location, delighted, I thanked him, gave him a small tip and headed out.

Once at Pier Uno, a resort owned by a friend roughly 10 kilometres from Monte Carlo, I asked some guest divers if they would like to look for the sunken Beetle. There was a resounding chorus of yeses. I found myself on a boat with eight happy divers from the club Dive Nation Philippines.  

We did a search of roughly 15 minutes, descending from Monte Carlo’s buoy. Not far off, there she was: sitting proudly on a once-barren reef. I raced forward and was happily shooting the lovely new wreck. After a while, I banged my tank and signalled out to my buddies to model for me with the Beetle. It was quite a happy day for everyone.

The Beetle not only provided a new attraction for Anilao but upon closer inspection, it is now home to several species of fish such as sweetlips, juvenile groupers, shrimp and tiny nudibranchs. It was a nice addition to Anilao as it gives underwater photographers a new wreck to shoot beyond tiny wildlife.

I have to give credit to the owner: he was a man of his word when he said he would throw the Beetle in the sea!